Serious question. If a tattoo is ink that gets put into your skin, won’t your tattoo fade away because your body naturally shreds old skin?
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Another fun fact to add to the other answers — it does fade almost immediately (first few weeks) for the exact reason you mention.
Most of it stays because it’s deposited into the layer beneath the layer that sheds, but a brand new tattoo is at its sharpest and brightest because to get to the target deeper layer, they have to go through the outermost layer first.
But over the course of the first few weeks, you shed the dead outer layer as you heal, and are eventually left with the mostly final result. A tattoo that’s slightly less sharp than the original and a sort of distinct look due to it being viewed through a window of healed, fresh, uninked skin.
That’s also why temporary tattoos look fake. They’re on top of the skin instead of being viewed through a thin layer of uninked skin.
It’s also why if and when you get your first tattoo, you’ll probably freak out when you start washing it and chunks of your tattoo look like they’re falling off and going down the shower drain. Your tattoo is safe, but that top layer that got inked on the way to the deeper target layer is dying and being refreshed, the way your skin does all the time.
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