Don’t plan on working for Bountiful City anytime soon if you’ve got a tattoo. The city council recently voted to enact a ban on all visible tattoos.
The ban explicitly covers head, face, neck and hand tattoos. Current employees are allowed forearm tattoos as long as they are covered. Male employees may not sport any piercings either. The new policy was motivated by a desire to have a professional image.
Although Bountiful might have the right to enact such a policy, the policy is unfair. It would certainly be inappropriate for a city employee to show off a swastika tattoo or Satan high-fiving the Grim Reaper, but not everyone gets tattoos like that. Preventing employees from having swastika tattoos is as easy as just not hiring people with swastika tattoos. A blanket ban on all visible tattoos is unnecessary.
People often get tattoos for personal reasons8212;maybe to mark an important occasion in their life, or a symbol that has personal meaning. Bountiful’s new policy might be aimed at stopping offensive tattoos from being displayed, but it need not discriminate against everyone with a tattoo. You could be the most qualified person for the job, and it would be denied to you because of something with personal meaning.
Judging a person based on their appearance is ridiculous. According to Joe Hanussak, owner of Doc Holliday Tattoos, tattoos are not restricted by stereotype.
“Cowboys, lawyers, doctors, the kids down the street…(people from) all walks of life (get tattoos),” he said.
Having a tattoo has no connection to the type of person someone is. Having long hair doesn’t automatically qualify you as a hippie and having a tattoo doesn’t make you unprofessional.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of people ages 18-25, and 40 percent of people in the age group 26-40 have or have had a tattoo. With such a large number of people having tattoos it seems stupid to discriminate against them. Perhaps this is a generational issue. Only 10 percent of people ages 41-64 have tattoos.
This new policy should not be tolerated by the people of Bountiful. This irrational fear of something as harmless as tattoos is, if anything, more unprofessional than having a tattoo.