Over 40 percent of millennials have tattoos, according to the Pew Research Center, and we’re telling the stories of the UNC students and Chapel Hill/Carrboro residents who fall into that 40 percent. This is one of multiple stories in the Swerve Tattoo Impression series.
I don’t really know why, but people have called me edgy for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t really know what that means or the fact that I wear a lot of black and swear a lot.
Maybe it’s just because I really like art and expressions of art, no matter how extreme.
That interest never died.
Tattoos have always been something that I thought I’d get in my life, once I settled on the right idea. When I was growing up, my parents though it was a phase, but I think I’m just hardcore as hell.
As it turns out, there are a lot of hardcore as hell people in Chapel Hill, both students and non-students, who loved art so much that they made an effort to carry it with them wherever they went. There are people walking around campus telling silent stories through their skin, wearing their hearts sometimes literally on their sleeves.
Because we’re a new desk, we have the cool opportunity to tell the stories that aren’t possible in other ways. We have the means to cover how students feel, as a generation and as individuals, about topics that define our generation, like drinking, tattoos, money and more.
We have the ability to give you an idea of how what UNC students are thinking at the time. We’re giving you an impression.
Throughout the year, we will be telling the stories of a culture from the people who you sit next to in class. And today, we’re starting.
