6 days Ago By Arman Khan
When my mother noticed a pink crocodile, simultaneously soft and menacing, tattooed onto my left arm, she let out a deep, disappointed sigh. “This is the last nail in the coffin. First you wore skirts to events and we let it slide.
Then you wore heels. Now this? What’s next, a septum piercing ?” It’s not that my devout Muslim mother cannot bear the sight of a tattoo simply because she is conservative and religious. The way she looks at it, a tattoo is also a recipe for trouble, calling attention to her queer son in a world where it’s safer for him to minimise himself and go through life undetected.
Only when I assured her that the ink would fade in a few days to once again reveal unblemished skin did her frown fade. If you grew up in India in the ’90s, begging your parents for a couple of bucks to buy Boomer or Fusen bubble gum just so you could cop a temporary tattoo was a rite of passage. We may have been too young to make a case for permanent ink back then, but temporary tattoos of G.
I. Joe, Beyblade and Ben 10 earned us street cred for a couple of days. Now, as we live through constantly evolving forms of self-expression and internet trends—Brat Summer today, Demure Fall tomorrow—there is an uptick in Gen Zers returning to the era of temporary tattoos.
Only this time, they don’t come free with bubble gum wrappers but are created by illustrators and offered at affordable price points ranging from *₹*200 to *₹*300. The wearer can treat them like an accessory, reflective of their ever-changing tastes and preferences, unlike older millennials who spend years making up their minds before committing—and sometimes, regretting—a permanent tattoo. If a pink crocodile on my arm goes well with the vibe of the drag party over the weekend, then that’s what I’ll go with.
Like Katy Perry, who turned up at the VMAs with a QR code that linked to a pre-save page for her comeback album 143 tattooed on her lower back, you can opt for more functional versions too. While the album was universally panned for its dated ‘girlboss’ messaging and Perry is being investigated by the Spanish government for filming a music video on protected dunes, it is some consolation that the singer could put the tattoo and the memory of the album in the rearview mirror and get on with her life. All of us wish we had the prophetic power of a witch to read our cards right, but we don’t.
It is therefore no surprise that Allied Market Research has projected that the value of the global tattoo removal industry size will reach $795 million by 2027, no doubt raked in over the tears of unpredictable break-ups, failed albums, icons we’ve outgrown and numerous impulsive decisions made in a drunken frenzy. Aakansha Gaur, creative director at Anomalie, a temporary tattoo platform launched in April 2024, explains that temporary tattoos take under a minute to apply and fade away on their own in less than three or four days. And yet, that much time is enough to elicit a reaction from people around you, like my sweet mother, or in the case of Arun Sharma, a Delhi-based graphic designer, his date.
“She hailed from my home state of Uttar Pradesh and when she saw ‘Ishq hai’ tattooed thrice on my wrist, she took it as a cue to switch from English to Bhojpuri. We hit it off immediately.” The illustrators who design temporary tattoos don’t do it as a full-time job.
Most of them are graphic designers who design everything from movie posters to protest signs to brand campaigns. When they sketch temporary tattoos, they are attempting to illustrate little moments of joy and life. Like a grid of nine small squares created by 25-year-old visual artist Kajol Deorukhkar with the words ‘Tomorrow I will bloom like the sun.
I will be yellow—the colour of the sun’ appearing between the little squares. For self-taught illustrator Neha Shetty, working on temporary tattoos adds a lighter dimension to her usual body of work that depicts women with scars owning their bodies and being unapologetic about their needs. In her temporary tattoo titled ‘Three Wise Monkeys Sitting In My Brain’, Shetty depicts a three-headed goddess beckoning its wearer to embrace their inner strength.
The facial structure of the goddess , Shetty says, is derived from the iconic late actor Madhubala, who lived a brief but glorious life of grace. The temporary nature of these tattoos allows us to experiment without regrets. After the pink crocodile with stars all over it faded away, I went for a cute heart that just said ‘Eww’ in bright red lettering.
It helped that I was going to meet the annoying uncle in my family who usually has a lot to say about the flimsy nature of art produced by “the people of this generation”, as he is known to lament. This story appears in Vogue India’s November-December 2024 issue, now on stands. Subscribe here Also read: Queerness and Islam were never mutually exclusive for me 30 best tattoo designs that minimalists will love 24 coolest types of ear piercings to try in 2024.
