I was never inclined to get a tattoo.
The most prominent reason was not spiritual at all. I don't like needles. I was also raised up to think of 'consequences'. In doing so, I saw the pretty and crisps markings of colorful tattoos on the skin of young people, when I was young.... but also saw the faded and smudged appearances on older people who had aged after getting their tattoos during a younger time. .......My impression..... do I want to wear that ugly thing later in life and be stuck with it?
Another reason why I never got a tattoo: What might it tell others about me? Not that this really does 'tell the truth'. But, most everyone I ever knew who had a tattoo, when I was young, had a 'drinking' story to tell which went with the tattoo. When I was young, I had morals and values which I believed and was raised with, but I also had 'my life' and was not always obedient or lived out those principals. I might drink, and at a party, til I learned 'my limit', even get tipsy or drunk. Yes, it lowered my 'inhibitions' and I might even do or say things which I might later feel ashamed of to include the drinking.... but I never wanted anything on me that would so permanently scar me or mark me for the judgement of others. What a selfish, hypocritical, rebellious and disobedient to Christ, young woman I was for a while after I left home!
On a more spiritual note: I had already read the passage in Deut. which cautioned against marking in the flesh.... and I had also read about the master who frees his slave after a period of servatude for a debt, but the slave wishes to not leave but be joined to the household of his master.... where upon the master takes the slave to the doorpost and nails a hole in his ear. When I read the passage about the markings in the flesh, because the Bible associated it with heathern practices, I straight way considered that this was not something to be done to my body because of God's viewpoint and not my practice of worship. The earring matter was less clear to me: How would piercing my ears give another ownership?
It took me a while to ever consider getting my ears pierced, but the clamp on earrings, so popular when I was young as well as in my mother's generation, were torture for the sake of embellishment.... that I finally got the courage to take the needle..... and almost fainted when the second ear was pierced. lol. Funny thing about that..... I wore earrings routinely only about 5 years after that. I have a few small and inconspicuous nice pairs which I still wear occassionally..... but everytime I do.... worn so seldom .....I have to force open the old holes. lol
Personally, I don't like the looks of tattoos, but I've come to not judge others who wear them. I do sort of feel sorry for so many young people who implusively or as a matter of peer pressure go out and get tattoos because I've heard more tales from older people about their regrets and I know for most of these young people it really wasn't thought carefully through. For many of them it will become a reminder in later life of caving into peer pressure just like for my own and earlier generations it was often a reminder of a time or times on the town getting drunk and/or being 'dared'.
