I am well-educated, liberal, artistic, employed, and healthy; however, I do not date women with tattoos and piercings.

I like women who are original and unconventional. Originality is a quality of mind, not a matter of artwork on the body. These days, everyone and her sister has a tattoo. There is nothing original about tattoos and piercings. People with good self-esteem have no desire to mutilate their perfect bodies with ugly, conformist tattoos or piercings.

It is a truism that females with low self-esteem are more likely to be promiscuous, carry diseases, and have various mental problems. Women who respect themselves do not need to sleep around, do not need to seek a sense of their worth through male sexual attention, and respect themselves too much to get into exploitative relationships. A man who wants a healthy woman with good self-respect and good self-esteem does well to pass by the sad tattooed and pierced conformists (who of course insist they are nonconformists). These women will attract similarly damaged and conformist men to them.

The woman I will marry, who will be the mother of our children, will be a healthy person. A healthy organism seeks pleasure and seeks to avoid pain. Anyone who chooses to subject themselves to unnecessary pain in order to be like others of their generation is not a healthy organism.

I think you did a disservice to women by not urging them to forego the conformity of tattooing and piercing. These things are merely a fad. Instead of urging people to be fad followers, you could have urged originality. And you could have indicated that by tattooing and piercing themselves, young women consign themselves to getting the lowest men on the ladder.

Sincerely, Isaac

I get that there are things certain people don’t like. With me, it’s cargo pants. I hate, hate, hate cargo pants. Unless you’re a pine-cone collector and need somewhere to store your finds, or maybe are going on a trip without a suitcase, what’s the point of all those extra pockets? Most of the time they go empty—just a waste of fabric. Not to mention that they make the wearer’s legs look lumpy. They’re just a stupid garment. Yet my boyfriend wears them and I don’t give him a hard time about it, because my opinion about his pants doesn’t matter.

However, whenever I run a letter from a woman who mentions being tattooed, I get a stack of letters from furious men casting all sorts of nutty aspersions on any and all ladies who might have gone under the needle. Why? Don’t like tattoos—don’t date the inked.

Think about all the crap women go through to look good—acrylic nails, hair dye, plastic surgery, etc. Why is that just dandy, but a chick who decides to get a dragon running up her leg is suddenly a slutty, disease-carrying skag with low self-esteem, doomed to a life of dating dirtbags? Where’s the correlation? Am I missing something? Maybe she just likes pretty pictures. Or was born in the year of the dragon. Why does some anonymous broad with a tattoo infuriate you to the point where you actually go to the trouble of tapping out a nonsensical screed about it?

As far as pain goes, I have a couple minor tattoos and have been pierced in both the nose and ears. I can assure you that the pain involved was nothing compared to the physical hell I went through during my stint at a boxing gym. Yet working out—in order to maintain the status quo, totally un-unique, slimmer bod—is probably fine in your eyes. As was nearly starving myself.

People have been getting tattooed for hundreds of years. Yes, in the past 30 years it’s become more popular outside of the sailor/gangster set, but so what? I didn’t “urge” anyone to get tattooed; it’s none of my business what people do to themselves, nor is it any of yours.

Instead of railing on about these ink-stained wenches, why don’t you figure out why they bother you so much. Is it because you’ve been hankering for a cute little ladybug on your left butt cheek but are a big scaredy-cat when it comes to needles? That’s it, isn’t it?

Dating a dirtbag? Write Dategirl at dategirl@seattleweekly.com or c/o Seattle Weekly, 1008 Western Ave., Ste. 300, Seattle, WA 98104.