creative forces

Blog 15…November 2012.

Used to be that if you saw a guy with tattoos (and it was pretty much always a guy) you could be almost sure he was a sailor, a biker or just out of the slammer. Today tattoos are ubiquitous (you see them everywhere as well) and have become more or less a fashion statement – a recent New Yorker cover showed Mitt Romney getting his changed to reflect his flip – flopping policies. Tattoo parlours used to be sort of sleazy places, now one of several in my neighbourhood looks like a chic hair salon .

Tattoos have been around for at least 5000 years but they were first spotted in modern times by Captain Cook on one of his voyages amongst the people of the Pacific Islands. I get a bird’s eye view in the changing room where I swim and have to keep from staring at the array of images and the imaginative way they adorn female anatomy.  In the warm weather the horizon widens and I can feast my eyes on body art on the street, the bus, even, I hear, the office.

In primitive societies, tattoos denoted social status, family rank or tribal affiliations. My not so extensive research (n= 10 or so) has revealed many reasons for people to ornament themselves, using their own skins as a canvas to memorialize friends and family members who’ve died or pledging love forever like a valentine. They can be a reminder of a personal mantra “There’s nothing wrong here” or as one person told me, marking the spot of a painfully memorable injection.  There are a growing number of young descendants of holocaust survivor s honouring the suffering and survival of their ancestors with their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms…an indelible act of remembrance.

In psychological terms, tattoos can disguise a shameful body or take possession and control of a body that feels overwhelmed. A body that’s hated can be changed and lovingly decorated. Getting a tattoo can be a rite of passage or an act of empowerment or rebellion, a protest against authority or a badge of belonging to a group (more likely Hell’s Angels than the YMCA). It can be a mark of courage or a creative act to customize a body to reflect who inhabits it

There’s also the issue of how visible the tattoos are. A friend of mine has a discreet small yoga sign on her shoulder that peeks out from under a sundress strap.  My cousin got a tiny astrological glyph on her cheek (the facial one). Some are even more subtle with the deliciously titillating thought that they are only seen in intimate moments.  Or there’s the all - over look, back front, arms, legs, even faces.

Whether modifying the body is rooted in some psychological place or done in a more playful way with a sense of personal adornment, tattoos seem to be here to stay, in more ways than one.  Alessandra Lemma’s book Under the Skin is a very good read if you’re interested in exploring the topic further.