Visible facial scarring enhances men’s attractiveness for short term relationships, or so say the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Liverpool. Such marks are aesthetically pleasing (chicks do dig scars), but they may produce only a superficial level of appeal; they befit the adrenalized Ultimate Fighting Champion rather than the thoughtful aesthete. This superficiality is suggested no doubt, by the lack of deliberation a scar requires (and indicates). One chooses to get a tattoo; scars, at least in the majority of instances, are not deliberate modifications.

There is an important way in which this difference reflects our attitudes towards art. Much modern art that deliberately introduces randomness preys on a ubiquitous bourgeois anxiety as to whether something done by chance can have any creative worth. In fact, we reserve the terminology of aesthetic judgement labelling something as high or low art, for example, for deliberate creations. One would never call a sunset, much less a scar, “high art”, but you might term a blue star tattoo on a wrist “low art”. Some tattoos, indeed, are more deliberate and therefore more artistic than others; the heart you can’t remember getting on your wrist after drinking that bottle of vodka behind the KFC in Swansea is accidental in comparison to a carefully thought out poem or symbolic schema.

Furthermore, what attracts us sexually is often due to accidence of looks, genes, etc whilst what we appreciate aesthetically is deliberate, and the rush of dopamine and serotonin stimulated by a sunset or a scar is neurologically distinct from the cooler intellectual appreciation of a painting. But this is not to say that painting cannot also be sexy, and herein lies the particular attraction of the Cambridge tattoo; the blend of deliberation and wilfulness which it implies. When you see a woman with a tattoo it is hard not to think, on one level, so, here’s a girl who’s capable of making a decision she’ll regret in the future, but, on the flipside, many tattooed statements are designed to be taken on a far higher level. Some tattoos have elaborate artistic references, designs perhaps engaged to express creative companionship, tribute or influence; they are as flexible a medium as the art they sometimes replicate.

And tattoos haven’t always been granted this secondary, higher status. Tattooing in the West today has its origins in Polynesia, and in the discovery of tatau by 18th century explorers. The Polynesian practice became popular among European sailors, before spreading to other areas of Western society, but the initial associations of the tattoo with working class seamen and the Royal Navy, who did and continue to use the marks to identify the bodies of drowned companions, established it as a lower class activity. Its emergence as a practice with little or no class index is due to statements made by musicians, actors and other pop culture celebrities in the latter half of the 20th century, notably initiated by Janis Joplin’s small heart on her left breast. As with many practices that are first taboo, what is initially a statement (ie women with short hair, skirts or trousers) later becomes an accepted standard. It is once this standard had been created that tattoos began to be taken seriously.

But despite this shift in perception, tattoos have not yet lost all of their ability to shock or distinguish. You may have encountered the ideology of the so-called ‘pick up artists’, a community of men recently subject to international media attention, who have attempted to turn hooking up with women into a science. The particular stars are Neil Strauss, author of The Game, and ‘Mystery’, who wrote The (sensibly named) Mystery Method. One of the techniques described in both texts is “peacocking” just as the male peacock spreads his colourful tail feathers to attract a mate (the bigger the tail the fitter the peahen?), so men should adorn themselves with bold and interesting items to gain female attention. The theory behind this is that, with his enormous fan, the male peacock demonstrates that he is genetically strong enough to survive despite the fact he has to lug around a vast and totally useless accoutrement attached to his behind – like, presumably, with men and tattoos. To wear ostentatious body art and survive socially is a demonstration of social as well as genetic value, and I imagine it works similarly to the facial scar (I somehow doubt that the pick-up artists created their plausible-sounding theory with long-term relationships in mind). Therefore, gentlemen, if you want a lot of short-term loving, scar your faces and get some ‘sleeves’.

All body modifications, whether deliberate or accidental, are signs, often created to lure in potential partners and, like almost all signifiers, have different meanings in different contexts. Like pictorial mediums, tattoos can figure on the level of pornography or Picasso, function as external adornments such as jewellery or outward representations of a complex inner emotion of belief. But you’re sceptical of any deeper psychological significance? Jennifer Anniston (as might be expected) puts it simply for you: “Quirky is sexy, like scars or chipped teeth. I also like tattoos – they’re rebellious.” Stick it to the man Rachel.