Psychology of Gay Baby Boomer and Gen X Men Who Never Got a Tattoo

Psychology of Gay Baby Boomer and Gen X Men Who Never Got a Tattoo A lot of men from the Boomer and Gen X years went their whole lives without a single tattoo, and for gay men there's a real psychology behind that clean skin. Here's the strange part: for a long stretch in the seventies and eighties, gay men dressed exactly like the most heavily tattooed men in America — the sailors, the bikers, the working men — boots, denim, mustache and all, and skipped the one thing those men carried on their arms. This is why so many of them stayed ink-free, and why the bare skin was a statement all its own. SOURCES: Pew Research Center — how many Americans have tattoos, broken down by age (2023) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-rea... Statista — share of Americans with at least one tattoo, by generation https://www.statista.com/statistics/2... The journey of the tattoo from subculture to mainstream   / tattoo-history-from-subculture-to-mainstream   The Castro clone look and where it came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castro_... The Museum at FIT on clone-era gay street style https://www.flickr.com/photos/museuma... A Jaded Gay on the Castro clone and who coined the name https://www.ajadedgay.com/blog/castro...