The Sartorial Elegance of Zombie Boy

His tattoos actually look like art, you know. Not just regular ink-on-skin-gangsta-rockstar full-body tattoos everyone has. His tattoos are actually quite artistic and intriguing and they're very beautifully done.

I can't add anything to Ryan S.'s remarks. Well put. Personally, I examined my feelings while looking at Zombie Boy's pictures. Among them: "Why would such a gorgeous young man do that to himself?... What kind of family life must he have had?... it looks cool, yet if I had a kid who did that I would be heartbroken..." etc etc, boring. Ultimately, good for him. I hope the campaign brings him a good nest egg.

I used to think I did stuff for myself. I used to think I cared about how I look entirely for myself. But I did this meditative experiment where I concentrated on up-rooting all of my emotional attachment to the people of this world, including my closest friends and family. As I began to mute these processes in my mind it became increasingly apparent to me that pretty much everything I considered myself to be was dependent on someone in particular, if not a nebulous and vague conception of the "out there" looking at me, or what I look like from outside (someone else). The more I attempted to uproot my psychological attachment to the evaluation of others, the less I cared about looking good/different, acting appropriate to social convention (out of fear of disapproval) and a variety of other habits and psychological barriers put up when I was a child. Specific to this case; I identified a latent desire to be tattooed as essentially appearing some way discrete to the outside world. A part of me pined to show another and say "Hey, look what I've got, isn't it cool?". Besides that there are some neutoanatomical and functional reasons why I think this is true as well.

To be clear; I don't hate. I just recognize the underlying sub-conscious motive that drives people to do things like this. I know a lot of people deny it now-a-days, but very few of us want to look like everyone else. The individualist-consumer culture defined us as entities that obsess over individualization. We want to be "The man..." or "That man..." but not simply "A man." We want to be known for something unique such that our identity is unique. Its the same reason I wanted people to pay attention to my macaroni art.

Good for him. Haters Gonna Hate.