Tattoo removal business thrives on second guessing
Michelle LaRue | 4-27-2010 | Comments |
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An increase in laser tattoo removal treatments can actually mean an increase in revenue for tattoo parlors. Many people today will laser off an old tattoo or one they do not like anymore in order to put a new one in its place. Michelle LaRue of Annenberg Radio News has the story.Cary Kandarian is a tattoo artist at Body Electric Tattoo in Hollywood.
“Every day is kind of crazy, you know, every tattoo is crazy,” says Kandarian. He just gave 20-year-old Nathan his fifteenth tattoo. It’s a skull with the words Los Angeles.
“I love LA,” says one customer who wants to be known only as Nathan, “It’s cool, I’ve been here a couple of weeks and, it’s all good.”
Not all customers take tattooing as lightly as Nathan. And many people who have gotten tattoos want to take them off. The old ways of removing tattoos, according to Beverly Hills’ Dr. Tattoff employee Ian Kirby, do not sound fun.
“[People] would blast your tattoo off like a bazooka and leave a horrible scar. Other options for tattoo removal are dermabrasion which is like scrubbing it off with a wire brush, excision which is cutting it off and sewing the skin back together, you tend to have a scar that way.”
Kirby says laser treatment gets rid of tattoos without damaging the skin. “If you think of a pigment molecule like a marble under your skin and your body doesn’t want that pigment molecule there because it’s a foreign body but it’s a marble its too big for your body to remove. The laser comes in and it works like a hammer to smash that marble into a million different pieces that are really small and now they’re small enough for your body to remove.”
In 2009, Dr. Tattoff did fourteen thousand tattoo removal procedures. The youngest patient was fourteen and the oldest eighty-seven. The average patient was female between eighteen and thirty-four. Whether it was someone fresh out of jail, a USC student, or a customer who literally got his tattoo a few hours earlier, Kirby said they all had one thing in common: they wanted a fresh start.
“It’s more than getting a haircut, it’s more than getting your nails done, it’s more than getting a new apartment, it’s a brand new lease on life, it makes you feel like a new person,” says Kirby’s brother and co-worker, dermatologist Dr. William Kirby. Dr. Kirby sees ex-lovers names, fraternity letters, and the ever-so-trendy barbed wire tattoos every day. Some tattoos, however, are more extreme than others.
“I’m a big Willie Nelson fan, I’ve been to Lukenback, Texas, and I have seen Willie Nelson’s face on a woman’s private parts where her pubic hair is Willie Nelson’s beard,” says Dr. Kirby.
Where the tattoo is on the body and what type and color of ink used all determines how easily a tattoo can be removed. The closer the tattoo is to the heart, the easier it is to remove because there is more blood flow. Dr. Kirby says many of his patients – like the owner of Electric Body Tattoo – will clear up an area of skin in order to have another tattoo put in its place. More business for laser removal places can actually mean more business for tattoo parlors.
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