Style, Skulls and Rick Genest

I know I haven't really touched this space for a while but that's only because I've been busy living my life or rather working my life away. Lately I've been obsessed with changing the way I dress. Yes people. No more T-Shirts... unless of course I believe that that shirt is effing awesome. Anyways, I've been having some trouble looking my age... see I really like graphic retro things, but for some reason, they either make me look too old or too young. See wearing vintage inspired things is easy for the petite, because the petite are somehow presumed to be young - so them dressing up in Mum's old clothes actually looks cool. Alas, I am anything but petite so trying on my Mum's old clothes just makes me look dowdy. If I get pret a porter clothes that are vintage inspired though... they either don't fit right or look to damn kiddy when I wear them. Sigh, and so the predicament continues. Ahh... how to match the inside with the outside. Anyways, on to more solemn and serious things...yeah right. Skulls and tattoos - although I may seem like the good girl type, I have gravitated towards well, skulls and tattoos. For some reason, the symbolism that I normally attach to skulls is different from societal norms. Skulls are scary... and are the symbol of death - that is what most people ( especially older generations) feel about skulls - as for tattoos... they're dirty and associated with crime. Blah blah blah. I just wish that people would look beyond the skull's scary facade and realize that it is so much more than just a symbol of the grim reaper. For me, skulls represent life, and perhaps the will or desire to spend it wisely. After all, death is the only thing that is for certain. Tattoos are a form of self expression, and art form and beautiful not only because of its appearance, but also because it can be seen as a form of sacrifice... since it takes pain to get one and it is a life long commitment for most. Although quite a fair number of people like the appearance of tattoos, not everyone would get them. The pain and permanency that is characteristic of a tattoo causes the individual to consider the meaning (or perhaps lack thereof) of the design. The process of actually getting one crystallizes that persons desire to have that tattoo. - I hope that makes sense. For some reason, I feel that there is a very significant shortage of open-mindedness here in Singapore. - Then again, that may just be how I feel because of the people I work with.

Here's a animated thingimebob on how Rick aka Zombie Boy would look without his Tat

Rick Genest did not have a deep meaning for getting his tattoos (or at least that's what he tells us)- and honestly, neither did I but the act of getting tattooed, and well... sort of recording your life in ink is a meaningful one. I mean, life naturally imprints itself on our bodies, though most of the time that record is not so obvious or visible to the naked eye. For example, the act of living actually causes our brains' to physically change and make and break connections. Skin loses its elasticity and as a result this etches a life's worth of expressions in the form of laugh lines. We pierce our ears and get scarred throughout our lifetimes. I feel that getting inked is just an extension of that process. I mean as Dan Brown so aptly put it in his book, The Lost Symbol, "The act of tattooing one's skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices... cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids... even bulimia and transgendering. The human spirit craves mastery over it's carnal shell."