A Guy Got Angry His Sister Got a New Tattoo Months Before His Wedding

I thought we were past the point in history where people found tattoos "unacceptable." I thought it was agreed by now that having tattoos should not inhibit your professional opportunities or your personal relationships. I thought we all knew that having tattoos actually makes you cooler than the average person. 

But apparently, that is not the case! Apparently, there are people out there who still find tattoos "uncouth," whatever that means. This story, which was recently posted on Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?," underscores this reality in a really bizarre way. Who has two thumbs and cares deeply if someone has visible tattoos at his wedding? The guy written about here. 

Glowflower posted that her brother is getting married in a few months and that she has been asked to be in the wedding party. She's in her early 30s (a.k.a. a full-grown adult who can make her own decisions) and already has a bunch of tattoos! She says she's been getting tattooed nearly once a year since she was 20. So she has several visible tattoos, most of which are nature and abstract art, none of which are "offensive/shocking designs."

She wrote that no one in her family really likes her tattoos, which is crazy to me because tattoos are cool! Unless they're religiously opposed, they should support her! But she has a good attitude about it. "It's not their body or their money so their comments never bothered my much," she wrote. 

Of course, as we all know, some popular tattoo artists have long waiting lists. She had been trying to get an appointment with this one artist for several years when he contacted her recently and said he had open appointments. So she took one and got a new tattoo! She wrote that it never occurred to her to think about the wedding before she got it done. First, it's months before so it's not like it would be gross and healing for the wedding pictures, and second...she already has a bunch of tattoos. What's one more? 

That makes sense to me. It makes sense to you. But it did not make sense to her brother, the one getting married. He saw a picture of the new tattoo on social media and told her he was upset because the tattoo would be "a distraction" during the wedding. Give me a break, dude!

The dress that she was set to wear at the bride's request is short and strapless, so she offered to wear a different dress that covered more skin, but they said that would be distracting too. She really tried to accommodate them as best she could, but it wasn't enough.

Finally, she asked the question we all want the answer to. Why did this tattoo bother them but all the others she already had didn't? "They said it's because they 'had to accept' the old ones and thought I'd 'respect them' by not getting any more." That's insane. They're basically saying, "We don't respect you as a person because you have art on your body, but we think you should respect us as people because we're better than you."

Luckily, pretty much all of Reddit was on the poster's side. "Sick of all this bride and groomzilla bulls**t being worried about their guests or wedding party distracting from the day," one commenter wrote. It's so true! If you invite someone to your wedding, it should be because you want them, all of them, including tattoos if they have them, to celebrate your day with you. Once you start getting obsessive about how uniform your photos will be or what will distract people, you're forgetting why you're having a wedding with the people you love at all. 

"Offer to not be in the wedding. It sounds like they really don't accept you for who you are," another commenter wrote. I hate to say it, but it's true. If they're willing to make a fuss over your tattoos and if your whole family makes comments about them regularly, they have a lot of work to do to earn back your love and trust. That's entirely on them. 

Another commenter asked this completely reasonable question: "Why would you know not to get a tattoo? That is completely unreasonable for them to expect that you would somehow know that they wouldn't want you to get an additional tattoo when you have many already." Yeah! This! It's like her brother was like, "I can't believe you don't think of me and my wedding the second you wake up and through every moment of your day. How dare you?!"

If her brother had asked her not to get another tattoo and she had (for some reason) agreed, then went and did it anyway, it would be little more of a murky situation. But she didn't do that! She was living her life as she normally would months before her sibling's wedding...as anyone would do. On a deeper level, her brother clearly doesn't accept his sister for who she is. But on a surface level, get over it, tattoos are cool, end of story! Grow up!