Tiny Tattoos Have Become the Ultimate Little Status Symbols | Invesloan.com

The other day, my sister and I found ourselves waiting for tattoos in a New York City basement.

No, this was not a sketchy setup; instead, a popular tattoo studio was offering a special flash tattoo treatment: For $20 to $40, you could pick an already-sketched tiny design and have it permanently inked onto your body. The deal was so popular that we waited for over an hour, and eventually had to depart for our next destination tattoo-less.

Indeed, over the last few years, tiny tattoos and fine-line tattoos have exploded in popularity. These designs are often black, minimal, delicate, and not as cost- or time-intensive as larger pieces.

“The floodgates have opened in the world of smaller tattoos,” said Sam Kelly, the cofounder of Tiny Zaps, a studio in New York City that offers a library of small designs by tattoo artists across the world. “For the consumer, it’s no longer this big body modification.”

A tiny tattoo has become a status symbol that can signal the epitome of small luxury: They’re just pricey enough to show a person has enough disposable income to drop on a freckle-sized permanent alteration. (Despite the big New York City flash sale, most cost around at minimum around $50 to $70 and often tip into the three-figures.) And they telegraph — quietly — that you’re young or in-the-know enough to exhibit a nihilism that says: Why not get a silly doodle permanently inked into my skin?

Anjl Nath, 26, a musician and actor in Los Angeles, went from having zero tattoos to two within a matter of months.

“I never thought I’d actually get one until I learned about fine line tattoos and the daintier smaller ones,” Nath said. The rise in popularity of small tattoos influenced her to finally bite the bullet. She loved her first one so much that she ended up getting in another in a matter of months.

“I kind of just went into it thinking life is short,” she said, adding: “In this generation, people just have that mindset of going after what they want, which I think is really cool. Of course, tattoos are such a permanent thing, but I think this generation sees maybe small tattoos as more of just a whimsical, fun thing.”

Tattoos as a form of conspicuous consumption

The popularity of the tiny tattoo makes sense in an America that’s becoming more inked and increasingly expressing identity through the things we choose to consume.

A 2023 Pew Research survey of 8,480 adults found that around a third of American adults have a tattoo, and younger Americans — those who fall loosely into the millennial and Gen Z buckets — were the most likely across age groups to have a tattoo. For instance, 41% of respondents under 30 said they had at least one tattoo vs. 25% of those ages 50 to 64.

Another way to gauge the popularity of the tattoo: the rise in the number of people giving them. The number of workers in the “other personal care services” industry, which includes tattoo parlors, ear piercing services, and tanning salons, has seen employment jump from 150,000 at the start of 2020 to a little over 180,000 at the start of 2024. At the same time, a rise in consumerism, coupled with Americans’ desires to reward themselves with little treats, might mean a tiny tattoo falls into the category of a small, fun luxury.

“It’s something that I’m willing to spend money on and maybe not spend as much money eating out or on clothes,” Nath said. “I do feel like it is a small luxury, definitely.”

It’s also a fun way to emulate celebrity it-girls like Zoë Kravitz, who have increasingly sported tiny tattoos of their own. And online search interest in “fine-line tattoos,” a common type of tiny tattoo, has surged. There are nearly 469,000 posts with #finelinetattoo on TikTok, and search interest in the term has spiked.

“We kind of joke around where Tiny Zaps is a toy store or a candy store for adults. It’s like a treat yourself moment,” cofounder Kelly said.

Tattoos are a part of what’s called identity signaling, wherein someone opts for a visible change, style of talking, or product to signal something about themselves — think a soccer mom driving an SUV or a Wall Street bro wearing a golf polo from a fancy course. Tattoos are a more radical form of identity signaling, since they are permanent (or painful and costly to remove).

“We can think about tiny tattoos as a form of conspicuous consumption,” said J. Jobu Babin, a behavioral scientist and professor at the University of Northern Iowa who studies the economics of beauty. Conspicuous consumption is when one buys something to display wealth and social status, and Babin said that tiny tattoos might be a less ostentatious form of conspicuous consumption.

“They still serve as an outward marker of self-expression, or maybe connection,” Babin said. You’re signaling something about your identity — maybe your tiny tattoo is an archaic reference to a favorite song or television show — but you’re also showing that you have the time, disposable income, and commitment to getting something inked onto you. Some artists require minimums, often around $200, to do any form of tattoo; others that are more flash-heavy can range from around $50 to $250.

Taylor Clinch, a tattoo artist who specializes in fine-line tattoos, said that when she was working in a tattoo shop, they’d get phone calls every day from people who wanted to treat themselves to tattoos.

“Twenty years ago, when someone thought tattoos, they thought, almost just: “lack of professionalism.” Whereas now tattoos are classifying more as wealth,” Clinch said. “If you have money to get quality tattoos, then you are financially stable or you’re financially thriving. And it is almost equivalent to a spa day now.”

Screw it — get a tattoo

Of course, tattoos differ from dyeing your hair on a whim or going in for a spa treatment; they’re going to live permanently in your skin. And they also carry their own ramifications.

Some research has suggested that more visible tattoos are associated with a drop in income. But the research also said that as the number of people getting a first tattoo increases, one key question is whether “the correlation between tattoos and less favorable socioeconomic characteristics will dissipate over time — and with it, the still primarily negative stereotypes that are associated with tattoos.”

Tiny designs might elide some of that tattoo stigma, which some Americans say is already dissipating.

David Lane, an associate professor at Illinois State University and the author of “The Other End of the Needle: Continuity and Change among Tattoo Workers,” said that it’s a lot easier to show your mom a tiny tattoo, for instance, than a larger or more intense design. In research Lane presented recently on tattooing and stigma, people with tattoos singled out their mothers as the people who most often judged them for their choice.

That might be changing. Kelly, the cofounder of Tiny Zaps, has seen plenty of mother-daughter pairs come into the store. He also said he’s seen some of the more generational stigma disintegrating before his eyes.

“We’ve done some popups at hotels and we’ve legitimately had groups of 75-year-old grandmas on trips together all getting their first tattoos, sipping white wine,” Kelly said.

Nath, the tiny tattooed Gen Zer, keeps coming back to the refrain that life is short. She feels like getting tattoos has helped empower her to live in the moment and not overthink her decision-making. But there is, of course, another advantage of the tiny tattoos.

“We have the technology of tattoo laser removal; I’m like, if I really regret this when I’m 40, 50, 60 years old, I could technically get it taken off,” Nath said. “There’s that aspect of like, it is permanent, but is it really now with technology? If I really don’t want this on me, I could get it removed one day. That helps relieve the pressure of making that type of decision. “