Acting your age is so pre-pandemic.
Seniors are emerging from the coronavirus lockdown with a newfound wild streak and are heading straight to tattoo and piercing parlors to celebrate their freedom.The trend — which shop owners say has blown up this month — seems to be a direct response to the coronavirus hitting old-timers hardest, having taken more than 14,000 seniors’ lives in New York City alone.
The emboldened elders say they’re more inspired than ever to live life with no regrets.
“I thought, ‘What am I waiting for? I want to seize the day,’ ” said Diane Nadler, who got her first tattoo two weeks ago at age 67. “After everything that’s happened, we can either move forward . . . by taking risks and leaps of faith, or we can cling on to the old ways and play it safe.”
Nadler, who’s been holed up in her upstate home since March, said she “had never even considered” getting inked until she saw a watercolor-style tattoo while surfing the internet. She got to work searching for a local artist and settled on Georgia Grey, a tattooer at Bang Bang tattoo shop in Soho — the same place frequented by A-listers Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Cara Delevingne.
The psychotherapist, whose primary residence is in Murray Hill, opted for a black mystical Hindu diagram called “sri yantra” — with a colorful splash of watercolor on top — which she chose not because of the meaning but because of the cool geometric look.“I decided to get it on the inside of my right forearm, because I don’t necessarily want this to be in everyone’s face,” she said. “I’m doing it more for me than public show.”
And the pain was no problem for the tough-as-nails sexagenarian.
“It didn’t hurt at all. Like, what pain?” Nadler said of the August 9 appointment. “I couldn’t be happier that I did it. It brings me joy every time I look at it.”
But she did have a flicker of doubt.
“I asked [the artist], ‘Am I too old for this?’ And she said, ‘No way! The skin is different, but no, not at all!’ ” Nadler recalled.
Plus, the new ink scored her some serious points with her therapy clients.
“I showed it to some of them, and they were like, ‘Wow, you’re a real badass,’ ” she said.
It was the desire for some much-needed excitement that made Upper East Side senior Jenine Dillon get a cartilage piercing in her left ear Tuesday morning.
“You realize how vulnerable we all are, and it became such a scary time,” said Dillon, who confirmed she’s a senior, but would not disclose her age because she’s “still searching for Mr. Right.”
“It’s lonely,” she added.
Dillon was out for a walk near her apartment in early August when she popped into Rowan Ear Piercing Studio on Third Avenue. After getting two earlobe piercings that day, she decided to come back for the edgy upper ear hole, too.
Photo: Getty Images