"How many tattoos do you have?"
He bites his lip, looks around, and giggles. His short sleeve shirt shows the front and back of his arms, which are covered in ink. A basketball, surrounded with a crown and roses are on the inside of his forearm, and are engulfed with designs from shoulder to wrist. His chest is filled with clouds and a quote and his name, Rodney Hawkins, reads down the back of each calf.
He scratches his head.
"I wanna say 25 or 26," Hawkins said, a student athlete at Saint Peter’s University.
"The tattoos I get are meaningful and describe me," he said. "They mean something to me."
To many young people, tattoos are art, and a popular accessory.
1 in 3 adults 18-25 have at least one tattoo, according to Statistic Brain Research Institute.
I’m an artist, so I look at it (tattoos) as how I express myself," Kayla Williams, a senior at Saint Peter’s University says. "I don’t know I just like the feeling of having a new piece."
Tattoos are not just random choices; many of them have stories behind them that made them decide to go under the needle.
Alana Rodriguez, a sophomore at Saint Peter’s University describes the significance behind one of her 30 tattoos.
"It’s on my forearm, it’s a Ganesh, a Hindu God that represents obstacles and good fortune," she says. "Other than it being a beautiful picture to see, I feel I can relate to that because whatever obstacle comes my way I can find the good and the reason behind it."
43% of people with tattoos think that personal meaning is the most important factor in deciding to get tattooed, reported by tattooconection.net.
Williams’s life sleeve from her shoulder to the end of her wrist represents lost family members very close to her.
My sleeve is my favorite, it represents my cousin and my uncle passing away a week apart from each other," she pauses. "It sucked, so I got something, kinda like a tribute, which is why everything on it symbolizes them in some way."
Young people have chosen tattoos as their form of expression; of feelings, thoughts, and characteristics of themselves.
There’s a lot of ways to express yourself," Rodriguez says. "But tattoos are one of those physical inerasable things you can do that is 100% creative because it’s on you."
According to tattooconection.net, 1.65 billion dollars are being spent on tattoos in the United States and 45 million Americans with at least one tattoo and this art form shows no signs of slowing down.
"I feel like the body isn’t all the important because it’s perishable," Rodriguez says. "You only have it the time were alive, it deteriorates and turns into dust. It doesn’t matter if my whole body is tattooed because eventually this body won’t exist."