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When she was 20, Angela Calisti and a friend entered a tattoo shop with the intention of getting matching butterfly markings on their backs. Because the credit-card machine wasn’t working, only Calisti ended up under the needle. And thus began years of regret.

“The day I got the butterfly, I wanted to rid of it,” says Calisti, now a 29-year-old hairstylist in Astoria, Queens.

She’s not alone. Over the past few months, several stars have reportedly been erasing their ink: From Khloé Kardashian, who announced this summer she was removing a back tattoo, to Victoria Beckham (Hebrew words running down her neck) to Eva Longoria and her lower-back cross.

Tattoo rates have skyrocketed in recent years — about 20 percent of Americans now have at least one, up from 13 percent in 2007. With that surge of popularity has come a surge in regret, and a boom in clinics that remove ink using lasers.

Julie Zuckerman, vice president of Manhattan’s Schweiger Dermatology Group, reports her office used to do 10 consultations a week three years ago; now they’re at 100.

Calisti started going to Schweiger about a year and a half ago to have her butterfly tat, and another on her shoulder of a fairy, erased. Having undergone six sessions, the ink has faded considerably. She expects her skin to be clear after two more.

The Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York in Murray Hill has seen a 25 percent increase in the past year alone, director Dr. Roy Geronemus says.

“Laser technology has been common since 1990,” he says. “But it was a slower process then. There were many colors we could not effectively treat until the past two years.”

Victoria Beckham has reportedly had her back tattoo removed.StartraksphotoVictoria Beckham has reportedly had her back tattoo removed.Startraksphoto

Removal costs between $200 and $500 a session, depending on the size of the design, and most tattoos require several appointments. But it previously required multiple visits spread over eight months to erase a small tattoo — and that can now be condensed into a single session, Zuckerman says.

That’s good news for a generation treating tattoos as temporary.

Ashani Rivers, 24 and studying chemical engineering at NYU, is having the New York Dermatology Group undo what she calls a “not mature” decision: the Ms. Pac-Man symbols she had inked on the backs of her ankles at 18.

How will she celebrate?

By getting a Sanskrit tattoo on a visit to Thailand next January.

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