Tattoos

Why do people do it? What is the attraction? I was in England recently, during a mini heatwave and couldn't help but notice how many people, mostly youngsters were divesting themselves to display their ugly tattoos. Young men stripped to the waist displaying entire backs covered in black/blue ink. Women, with tops cut to reveal their own personal body artwork, including tops with short backs showing pictures on the small of their backs.
I did think, in a moment of weakness, that this might be to give some lover, something to look at whilst making love from the rear, but perhaps not.
I saw a young mother cradling a baby in her heavily tattooed arm. What would a new and fertile mind make of this grotesque disfigurement of its mother's body or would it asume that all mother's have the same marking?
Anthropologists might explain why human beings do it. It may be the same reason that people pierce themselves. It's a trait that has existed in the human psyche from earliest times and can still be seen in peoples we consider to be  primitive by Western standards. Captain Cook made mention of it in his logs and Alan Melville described a heavily tattooed south sea islander, Queequeg, in his acount of Moby Dick.
Forgetting the religious viewpoint that they are defacing a body made in God's image and therefore being disrespectful, I would like to know how it benefits humankind. Did it denote rank? Coming of age? Why do it now or is it some fashion statement that persists forever, regardless of how tastes change.

The point I am making is that it's a matter of personal choice what people do to their bodies, but why do they assume that the rest of us want to see it. Please to all those with tattoos, KEEP THEM COVERED. The rest of us are simply not interested.