Tattoos are to art what graffiti is to urban revolution

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Tattoos are to art what graffiti is to urban revolution
November 21, 2010
by Catherine Ford
TroyMedia

CALGARY, AB, Nov. 21, 2010/ Troy Media/ – This was bound to happen: Ever since Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy captured the imagination of readers, someone was certain to wreak revenge with a tattoo needle.

In the first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo , Lisbeth Salander, the “girl” of the title, ties up the man who viciously attacked her and tattoos “I am a sadistic pig and a rapist” on his bulbous stomach. Not a single woman who has read the book or seen the movie would believe such swift and appropriate justice was undeserved.

A little less righteous is the case currently before an Australian court. Charged with grievous bodily harm and assault is a man who allegedly tattooed a giant penis and a lewd comment on the back of an unsuspecting client who only wanted a yin and yang symbol as adornment. An unresolved dispute is said to have led to the “decorating” error.

Do your homework

Every kid hankering for a tattoo should learn something about tattoos. Unlike graffiti, a tattoo can’t be erased with a fresh coat of paint.

I’m not against adornment - the purple eyeshadow, blusher, mascara and lipstick should be proof enough. But my personal adornment is removable. What I do object to is the permanent kind.

Try and tell some kid that. Listen to the justifications. Listen to the cries of “it’s my body and I can do what I want with it.” Okay, sweetheart, but don’t come crying to me when you are turned down for a job.

Of course, if you want to spend the rest of your life as an artist, or a solitary writer, or as a professional athlete or maybe as a cashier at Safeway, or stock-taker in Wal-Mart, then by all means go right ahead and have that full-colour tattoo emblazoned on your arms or leg, somewhere that isn’t covered up when you’re dressed.

All of those old fogies are the people running offices and in many cases, taking money from other people just like us in exchange for services. They don’t want their financial projections brought to them by a consultant with a full facial moko, unless the chartered accountant is an indigenous New Zealand Maori.

The moko, or facial mask, looks intriguing as photographed by Chris Ranier and published in the Smithsonian, the Washington museum’s regular magazine.

It doesn’t look so attractive on a convicted thug and rapist named Albert Muckle who picked up a pregnant woman in the resort town of Banff, raped, robbed and beat her into a coma, where she remains six years later. He’s where he belongs, labeled a dangerous offender, and in prison for life.

Abigail Tucker, who wrote the text accompanying Rainer’s photography in the magazine, dates tattooing to Polynesia, brought back to England in 1769 by Joseph Banks, a naturalist on board the British Royal Navy ship, the Endeavour.

Since then, tattooing has been “persistently associated with unruly sailors,” writes Tucker. Now, tattooing has gone mainstream. People get tattoos, writes Tucker: “because they want to carve out an identity in a chaotic post-industrial age by inscribing shoulders and shins with symbols of love, death and belonging.”

Fair enough, but Bugs Bunny tattooed into your leg is not going to convince some guy in a suit that you’re a suitable candidate for head office.

And the face piercings? Sorry about them, too. About all any employer wants is one in each ear, maybe two. But metal-pierced tongues, lips, eyebrows and noses aren’t going to convince any employer except for the most avant garde that he or she should take a chance on you.

I really don’t care if you want to mutilate yourself. But don’t ask me to hire you.

Tattoos are to art what graffiti is to urban revolution - the pathetic expression of adolescent angst, which destroys public property in the latter and private property in the former.

But there are exceptions

The delicate rose my friend had tattooed in a place only visible to a lover or other women in a communal shower is her business.

There are good tattoos, but they come from bad experiences. The two per cent of women with breast cancer whose hair does not regrow after chemotherapy can wear a wig, but some also have to deal with the lack of most of their eyebrows and eyelashes. Tattoos create the eyebrows and professionally applied individual lashes do the rest.

Unlike the garish tattoos on the young, the cancer survivor does it to stop people from staring at her.

Read more: Tattoos are to art what graffiti is to urban revolution | Troy Media Corporation http://www.troymedia.com/2010/11/21/tattoos-are-to-art-what-graffiti-is-to-urban-revolution/#ixzz1BPuK76ih