Mainstream news orgs were buzzing Monday with the release of a study on the Web site of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, which announced what every porn fan on the face of the earth already knows: tattoos have gone mainstream. Once the exclusive province of bikers, sailors and marines, now one quarter of all adults under 50 have a tattoo. Yowza. That is a lot of ink. As you would expect, people who drink, do drugs, have been jailed or forgo religion (or, presumably, perform in porn movies), are more likely to be tattooed.

Alt-fetish sites like Burning Angel and Suicide Girls, which feature young things wearing nothing but ink, continue to grow in popularity. In fact, in porn these days it’s difficult to find models who are NOT tattooed. Although many claim these tattoos are a form of self-expression, we think they are the ultimate sign of conformity. Truth is, with very few exceptions, Sir Rodney finds the tattoos on porn models strikingly similar, almost boringly so. We have begun to call the ubiquitous lower back design a “target.”

One of these exceptions is Joanna Angel, the self-made porn star who as our readers know is one of Sir Rodney’s personal favorites. A striking Jewish intellectual from New York, Angel recently graduated from Rutgers, where she started alt-porn mega site, BurningAngel.com with producer Mitch Fontaine, also a recent Rutgers grad. As documented in our blog last year, Angel sports eight (!) tattoos, including a mural on her back that looks more like a painting. Actually, at the risk of offending the raven-haired starlita, it reminds Sir Rodney of WWII bomber “nose art.” Certainly, it is not your run-of-the-mill lower back target. One gander at these and you never forget them, although we believe that would be said about this Angel, ink or no ink.

Joanna agrees that “tattoos promote a rebellious sex, drugs, and rock n roll lifestyle…. but I don’t think that’s 100% true. It’s more of a stereotype. I know a lot of tattoo artists with kids, cars, and houses and really boring lives.” With so much ink covering her nearly perfect body, we had to ask Angel if she worries she’ll regret her choices later. “That is a possibility, but you can’t live your life thinking about what you will feel like when you’re 50. If I really hate myself that much I can get them removed.” Needless to say, with eight tattoos, some of them downright enormous, that would take a long time, and really hurt.

Soon we’ll have backlash fetish sites, which promise girls who are NOT tattooed. Seriously. You heard it here first.

6.26.06 addendum: I just found this awesome article on lower back tattoos on Wikipedia while researching one of my new favorite soon-to-be-in-porn sluts, Britney Spears.

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