More people are getting their tattoos removed

Summary

What’s really happening under the laser during tattoo removal is much more complex and elegant than it literally sounds (and smells). These days, the best-in-class lasers for the procedure are five-to-six-figure picosecond laser machines, named for the duration of time it takes to heat the ink in your skin—picoseconds, or trillionths of a second. In that time, the laser targets the pigment in the ink, heating it to a temperature it cannot sustain. (If you point a calibrated picosecond laser at a patch of ink-free skin, there is no pigment to attach to and it will do absolutely nothing.) That blood-curdling popping is the sound of the larger ink particles, initially designed to remain in the body forever, shattering into tinier particles. Once they are tiny enough, the ink becomes accessible to the body’s immune processes.In the months following one of these laser sessions, a healthy person’s system will absorb some of these much smaller ink particles and flush them away, the way it would a minor virus or a small bruise. The sensitive lasered skin might sting for a few days, and then possibly get itchy, and laser technicians strongly advise their clients to stay out of the sun in the weeks after a treatment. But then, the tattoo, like the memory of the laser experience, begins to fade, slowly. A couple of months later, it’s time to repeat the process all over again. With a little bit of luck and dedication, for a healthy person most tattoos will be gone within one to two years, at which point the formerly tattooed can simply enjoy their revirginized skin—or they can start getting it tattooed again.There is some poetic justice to the idea that reversing what was intended to be a permanent choice requires such agony and commitment. “We are literally defying the laws of gravity by getting a tattoo and having it be permanent on our skin, when our body just wants it all out,” Rebecca, a laser technician from Inkless, tells me. “We are also defying the laws when we’re remo...