By JULIE GILLESPIE
City Times

Each day we come across new forms of discrimination. People are judged by their race, monetary class, gender, and job. These are things we see that most people deal with everyday, someone judges you for some reason most days.

Then there are things that don’t usually cross people’s minds when thinking about discrimination, tattoos. People with tattoos are judged not by the color of their skin but by the colors of their skin.

You might think, well, they chose to put that on their body. Yes this is true for a great deal of people. However there are people who get tattoos from religious reasons, or those marked forever by the Nazis during World War Two, these are tattoos as well.

So where is the line drawn when considering who should hide there art and who should wear it proudly?

“A 2006 a study done by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that 24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that’s almost one in four,” found in an article on http://www.vanishingtattoo.com. There are many companies with a no-tattoo policy.

Some are accept that it is a part of today’s culture more by requiring individuals to cover them. Others have no tolerance and might even refuse a job or fire an individual for their chosen body art.

In a society where there are entire museum exhibits dedicated to the history and culture of this art form, why are we still such a backwards thinking society?

Also found on http://www.vanishingtattoo.com, “Search Engine Ask.com reveals that tattoos have been stealing the scene as the No. 1 searched beauty term since 2003.”

The tattoo culture is something that spans every area of society; there are housewives with tattoos, soldiers both young and old, people of every race, social class, and gender. These people are discriminated against by people that don’t even realize they are doing it sometimes.

Personally I have been a victim of this kind of discrimination. During a job interview every thing was going great the head chef of the restaurant liked my availability and personality everything was going great until the last ten seconds of my interview when she shook my hand. With a slight twist of my wrist she discovered a tattoo of a flower on the inside of my wrist, suddenly they didn’t have any positions available at that time and they would contact me later if they had one open up.

Later when an acquaintance of mine found out they didn’t hire me she was outraged because the chef is always complaining to her that they are short handed in the kitchen. This was a position that is not seen by the public.

(Julie Gillespie is City Times’ calendar editor)