Food tattoos – tasty or just plain demented?
There is a tattoo trend afoot. We’ve had dolphins, ancient symbols, “ironic” sailor tattoos and now I give you … the food tattoo…
When Lulu Grimes of Olive magazine Twittered these food tattoos I thought it was a pretty funny joke. But it turns out these are real tattoos. As in, these people are stuck with them forever.
Don’t get me wrong, I love food. I spend much too much time planning what I will eat next and have many favourite foods. Most of them involve cheese. But, never in all my days of scraping the last crumb of Stilton off the rind, have I considered marking my love of the stinky cheese in a permanent fashion.
The shaven-headed man pictured above loves fried breakfasts so much that he sports a full English on his shiny pate. At least he could grow his hair back to cover it up, although the thought of a baked bean peeking out of his parting makes me feel a little nauseous. A woman has a cherry-topped cupcake on her foot, but look a little closer and the cherry is a skull. Sinister. And weird. Yet another shows a piece of toast, complete with smiling face, spreading itself with jam. The toast looks happy enough, I wonder whether the owner of the tat is quite so jolly?
There are dripping slices of pizza, rashers of bacon, angry-looking leeks, shrimps and, inexplicably, a blue cupcake sitting on the toilet.
I just don’t get it. Some of the tattoo owners appear to be advertising food joints like the American burger restaurant Wendy’s. What’s the motivation? Is brand loyalty alone enough? And what do you do if you get a meaty hot-dog inked on your arm and then turn vegetarian? Turn it into a gherkin?
And what about your chances with the opposite sex? Eating food can be sexy. Removing your clothes to reveal a carton of milk holding hands with a cookie or all the ingredients needed to make hummus, not so much…
If I was forced, upon pain of death, to have a food tattoo. I would a) probably choose death, b) get the smallest thing possible, like a poppy seed to actual size, and c) have it removed.
What food would you get tattooed?
