Permanent Record
When I was 16 I got a three-inch-wide tribal tattoo on my chest, because my frontal lobe wasn’t fully developed and this seemed like a good idea at the time. When I was 26, I told my Dad I was thinking about getting it removed. He reached into a filing cabinet, pulled out a manila folder, and handed me a magazine clipping with the name of a dermatologist specializing in laser tattoo removal. I didn’t ask how long he’d been saving it.
Every six weeks for about a year, I drove to a very fancy neighborhood in Washington, DC to have it basically burned off my body. This was in 2007, and because I'm in the process of having several more removed, I can say with authority that laser technology has come a Very Long Way. If I remember correctly, I had several sessions left on the books when I called it, but the tattoo was 95% gone and I was 100% over the cycle of burn-heal, burn-heal, repeat-repeat-repeat.
I continued to collect tattoos until I was about 35, mostly because why wouldn't I? Where was the fun in not? You only live once, etc, etc. Each one is a visual marker of an exact moment in time—just like a photograph—locked into your identity for the rest of forever. And therein lies my problem.
There's never been a trend round-up I wasn’t at least willing to consider, and I am nothing if not subject to a whim and a fancy. One winter I thrifted—then never took off—a full corduroy suit because I thought it made me look exactly like Wes Anderson; in more recent years I’ve had to throw my phone across the room when confronted with the temptation of curtain bangs and bobs. I’m sorry, what did you say? Someone’s invented a new and even worse way to wear jeans? I was so hoping this would happen. Do they fit true to size?
Look—I know there are some ugly truths in here about consumerism-slash-zeitgeist disguised as self-expression, but identity includes visuals, and I have to believe that we'd be wearing clothes and cutting our hair whether we'd ever invented money or systems of social hierarchy. And in this perfect imaginary world, having also done away with the idea of being perceived, would we not approach visuals-as-identity with a pure heart and a true artistic sensibility? If we cannot emote through an aesthetic decision, if we’re not allowed to say “oooooh, pretty” and get a little kick out of trying on a look—then what other pleasures should we arbitrarily deny ourselves?
What would not be pleasurable, however, is waking up every morning to a large portrait of myself with whisper-thin 90s eyebrows, or watching a mandatory slideshow over breakfast of that aforementioned Wes Anderson winter (there was a beret involved, by the way). I’d actually pay money not to listen to a podcast about the individual crises behind each of my life's most major haircuts. I have a lot of love for the many people that I was before, but near-constant manifestations of the past just aren’t necessary. I’ve moved on. I wear barrel jeans now.
Tattoos and removal, the contents of our closets, how we choose to spend our time—these are all, in effect, one and the same: defining but not definitive, and nothing if not paeans to the lifelong art of self-reinvention. I (non-dramatically) refuse to remain encased in the amber of my own youthful decision-making, and I promise you it's not because I'm quiet luxury-pilled. May we all reserve the right to change our minds and flex our autonomy at any moment we see fit, and may the bandwidth—emotional and otherwise—flow freely to put ink, eraser, and effort into figuring out exactly who we're going to be today.
This post emailed out 3.28.2025 with newsletter-exclusive extras. Subscribe here.