Anchors away!
If you’ve always wanted to tattoo your lover’s name on your arm but worry what’s going to happen when you break up, your ship has come in.
Scientists at Harvard Medical School and Duke University have come up with the solution – a new type of ink that can be easily blasted away with a single laser treatment.
Traditionally, getting a tattoo removed is a painful, expensive and time-consuming procedure – often involving numerous laser treatments – that isn’t always effective and can leave scarring. The average cost per treatment can run as high as $400.
The new development – which is due to hit the market within months – has some who have been reluctant to get wilder body art jumping for joy.
“I would like to get one on my neck. If it only takes one time to get it taken off and there is no scarring, then I wouldn’t have any hesitation,” Andrea Votta, 23, said as she got a cherry blossom tattooed on her foot at an East Village parlor.
Most tattoo artists said they would welcome the new ink – as long as it is safe – but scoffed at the notion that some customers would get a tattoo only if they were reassured that it could later be removed.
“It might open the door for some people who are worried about the permanence, but at the same time, the permanence is kind of the point of tattooing,” said Mehai Bakaty, 34, co-owner of Fineline Tattoo on First Avenue in the East Village.
Professional tattoo ink has traditionally used heavy metals as its base, helping forestall fading. For example, black ink uses iron; blue ink uses cobalt.
Some tattoo artists questioned whether the new ink – which will be built upon tiny beads called polymer microspheres – would hold up as well.
“I think it will age a lot more rapidly, and I think it will be a lot more sensitive towards the sun,” said Boogie, 28, an apprentice at Andromeda Tattoo on St. Marks Place.
Others wondered how much of an effect the new ink would have on convincing people to get a tattoo – an art no longer the pastime of sailors and bikers. In fact, one in four U.S. adults has at least one tattoo, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Pam Fall, 25, who has five tattoos, said she never considered getting any of them removed.
“I don’t think I’m going to want them removed because even if I regret them at some point, they are going to remind me of a point in my life,” she said.