GOODBYE, 2007. Hello, 2008.
Now is the time to wipe the slate clean and start anew.
But what if that slate is your skin and the thing you want wiped clean is injected into your flesh with indelible ink?
The tattoo boom of the early 1990s has given rise to tattoo regret, and an increasing number of hipsters want to get rid of ink that was soooooo last year, studies show.
"It's all about growing up and time passing and your life changing," said Dr. Andrew Pollack, director of the Philadelphia Institute of Dermatology.
"Who hasn't opened their mouth and then said, 'Oh, man, I wish I could take it back.' I'm the guy who helps people take it back," said Eric Bernstein, a Bryn Mawr dermatologist who specializes in tattoo removal.
Pollack and Bernstein are in the burgeoning business of using lasers to erase people's colorful pasts. Among their patients:
_ The once rebellious teen who got a butterfly tattooed on her shoulder is now a 20-something woman who wants to wear a strapless dress at her country-club wedding.
_ The former frat boy who got Greek letters inked on his leg and is now a young lawyer who's embarrassed to wear shorts at the annual company picnic.
_ The ex-con who wants to shed the gang emblem and go straight.
_ And the reformed neo-Nazi with the swastika tattoo who just met a nice Jewish girl and is joining her folks for Passover dinner.
OK, that last example was a bit of a stretch. Actually, the guy who had a swastika tattooed on his forehead never said why he wanted it removed.
"I think the decision spoke for itself," said Pollack, who has also removed numbers from Holocaust survivors.
Bernstein said he recently removed the word "bitch," etched in black ink, from a woman's lower lip.
"She told me she thought they were writing something else on there," Bernstein said.
Like what?
"I don't know," Bernstein said. " 'I love my dentist?' I couldn't tell ya."
A 2006 study by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that 24 percent of Americans ages 18 to 50 are tattooed. Of those, 17 percent had considered removal.
The top reason for tattoo regret is a faded romance, according to dermatologists.
Donna Maleczkowicz's boyfriend convinced her to get his initials - "CS" - inked on her bikini line during a drunken escapade. At the time, she had been dating him for just a month. They met at Delilah's, the Center City gentlemen's club, where she still works as a hostess.
"I really, really thought that he was the one," she said last week.
