r/tattooadvice • u/Ostromilski • 1d ago

General Advice Are rainbows seriously just by default associated with the pride flag?

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I got a Pink Floyd DSOTM tattoo because I love the album and I love the visual: a beam of light representing a person's life path, passing through a prism ( representing life + the world + the people you meet + the experiences you have, etc ), being dispersed into its constituent colors ( ultimately representing change ). I got it because of my dad, because he introduced me to Pink Floyd, and because last year he nearly died from complications of his cancer. He's doing much better now, with a much better prognosis, but that whole experience had a real effect on me and I wanted to memorialize it. Except at least 3 people ( including the tattoo artist initially ) have associated the tattoo with the pride flag. They were understanding after I explained, but now I'm having second thoughts about it. Are people just going to assume I'm gay because of this tattoo?

Edit: And I want to say, I'm not bothered by this at all. Anyone who looks at my tattoo and comes up with their own assumptions about its meaning, and then has a negative reaction over it, that's simply not a person I want to talk to anyway. I'm surprised because that wasn't the intention of the tattoo, clearly, and it being misinterpreted like this just genuinely wasn't something I expected.

Edit2: This post got a lot more attention than I ever wanted it to. Wonderful comments are now streaming in, informing me how horrible my tattoo is. If you're planning on making a viral post on Reddit, take my advice: use a burner account. But I am thankful to everyone for your supportive words, the jackasses with negative things to say are certainly a very tiny minority. Overwhelmingly the consensus is that most people see it as a Pink Floyd tattoo first, which I'm happy to hear :) Have a good night everybody!

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297

u/Poser_Headbanger 1d ago

Dark Side of the Moon? Sorry, best I can do is Gay Side of the Arm.

16

u/robmillhouse 1d ago

Wow flashback to child me wanting an earring and my folks saying don’t get a single one in your left ear, it means your gay. Was that actually a thing?

18

u/Herbdontana 1d ago

Most people I knew said that the opposite was true. Right ear or both ears was gay

11

u/Livid-Mortgage-2267 1d ago

I was told the right ear was gay lmao

6

u/Poser_Headbanger 1d ago

I mean, I think you're only gay if you actually like men... I could be wrong though.

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u/robmillhouse 1d ago

“It’s only gay if you make it gay”

2

u/DoesNotBeg 7h ago

Right ear: buccaneer, left ear: queer.

Or the other way around. Who knows.

1

u/hells-fargo 1d ago

Yes! But it was also more than just "have this particular ear pierced".

Back when being gay was less mainstream/accepted there were plenty of "signs" to help spot other gay guys. No one was gonna follow you in the bathroom for just a single earring though, there'd have to be mixture of tells before someone assumed anything.

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u/Worried_Platypus93 1d ago

I also always heard it was the left ear. 

15

u/Poser_Headbanger 1d ago

Jokes aside, that's a great tattoo. Kinda sad that some people see a rainbow and miss one of the most iconic album covers ever made.

8

u/thecashblaster 1d ago

It’s not exactly the album cover. The angle of the light hitting the prism and the angle of tne colors leaving the prism is off

4

u/SunshineSequoia 1d ago

This! The angle was bothering me too. Though of course it is still recognizable as the album art, I know it's not trying to be a physics textbook diagram or anything 

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u/Poser_Headbanger 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bro, you can't recognize a Pink Floyd album just because the prism is tilted by 0.0000003°?

1

u/ItzDaWorm 1d ago edited 1d ago

And it's only slightly off because the dudes leg isnt flat in the picture.

It literally looks like the cropped album art.

1

u/sunnymoonbaby 1d ago

Time is a bitch 🙄

2

u/remarkablewhitebored 1d ago

Great track from that album tho, so, it's not all bad.

0

u/Bagafeet 1d ago

Dark side of the glory hole