To my recollection, the uptick in young folks getting tattoos seemed to coincide with Nirvana's "Nevermind" getting big in the record charts.
Not that those two things are particularly related -- just trying to put a time-frame on the phenomenon. I think it ties in with the era of "alternative rock" becoming a niche market ... around that same time, tattoos started shedding some of their "low-rent" stigma and became more of a hipster thing.
I can't back up anything I'm saying ... it's just my personal impression of events.
Maybe people who were in high school and down vs. college and up at that moment? We're trying to be precise here.
Schoolkids Records (I believe JW worked there for a time) on Franklin Street had the whole front window plastered with that swimming baby poster in fall of 1991.
So that would put the diving line approximately at people born in 1974 and on more likely to have tattoos, 1973 and before less? It's a start.
Grote, we're treating you as an outlier for now.