The Etymology of Skin
Naked kewpie dolls tangled in mildly crude positions, a green and brown snake with a cavernous mouth lays in formaldehyde inside a mason jar, various vague religious figurines and carvings all sit on shelves, above of which is a desk peppered with sketches of roses, Old English lettering, and wads of cash. Sailor Jerry tributes lie in every corner of the small red-brick studio space: patiently paying praise to the father of modern tattooing. A hallway leaning right of the entrance is littered with dead animal heads mounted on the wall, suggestive sketches of Japanese women with their backs turned in disapproval, and a mocking list of grievances:
$1…. To ask me what my tattoo means.
$.50…. To talk about the women I’ve tattooed.
$3.00…. To use the shop as a meeting place.
$1.50…. To ask me how hard it is to get a tattoo removed.
At the end of this hallway is a white door with a sign of which script is emblazoned on a dagger reading “Employees Only,” at the hilt of which is an eye—watching. The swinging motion of the door cuts through the whir of the tattoo machines, the vibrations echoing against the walls fighting for attention against the heavy metal music, and the mindless chatter from patrons displayed in various positions on black leather chairs attempting to ask their artists about anything beyond the realm of body modification.
Men and women shake tattooed hands, roll up their sleeves to unveil hints of spider webbed elbows, and freshly-tattooed skin shines from the plastic wrap their new art hides behind. V. Vale wrote in the introduction to Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual, “A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.” Tattoos represent the essential keys that underpin social thought: conflict, oppression, ethnicity, power, etc. Tattoos bear inherent meaning, opening up dialogue for unwarranted conversation and sometimes opinion. This is the language of the tattoo parlour—bursts of ink, bits of conversation, and the endless buzzing of art emblazoned.
The Machine
Modern tattoo machines have several basic components: a sterilized needle, a tube system which draws the ink through the machine, an electric motor, and a foot pedal controlling the vertical movement of the needle. The machine moves the needle up and down between 50 and 3,000 times per minute: penetrating the skin by about a millimeter and depositing a drop of insoluble ink into the dermis with each puncture. The machine was invented by Samuel O’Reilly in the late 1800s, at which point tattooing in the west was gaining momentum. O'Reilly based his design on the autographic printer, also known as “The Electric Pen,” an engraving machine invented by Thomas Edison. The Electric Pen did not use any ink, but rather, perforated holes in a master form of which then became a stencil. Ink rolled onto its surface and passed through the holes to make copies onto blank sheets placed underneath the stencil. While Edison created the printer to engrave hard surfaces, O’Reilly modified the invention for tattooing by changing both the tube system and its rotary-driven electromagnetic oscillating unit—enabling the machine to drive the needle.
This, however, is not the true origin of tattooing—rather, it was the beginning of Western tattooing as is popular today. In Ancient Egypt, tattoo apparati consisted of thick, bronze needles which were wedged into the skin after being dipped in ink—at the time, tattoo ink was made by grinding brightly coloured minerals into powder, then mixing the powder with water. Similarly, in Ancient Thailand, the tattoo machine consisted of a single bamboo quill—razor sharp—and a pot of ink. Maybe most painful of all ancient tattoo machinery was the apparatus used by the Maori tribe in New Zealand: a chisel. These bone chisels were used to carve designs straight into the flesh. After the lines were cut, the chisel was dipped into ink and and tapped into the gashes in order to create a design through open wounds which would proceed to heal into darkened scars. Nowadays, thanks to O’Reilly, tattoo machines run on a two coil (or one or three or any other variation) system through which an electromagnetic circuit causes the needle to move up and down—this results in less pain, and more good vibrations.
The Skin
In order for a tattoo to be permanent, ink has to get into the dermis: the tissue just underneath the outer layer of the skin. Because tattooing is essentially making thousands of tiny wounds in the skin, the body's immune system goes into overdrive, sending special blood cells called macrophages to the site of the tattoo to engulf the foreign ink particles. This is part of the body's attempt to rid itself of the ink, as well as the reason tattoos fade over time. Once a macrophage consumes an ink particle, it goes back through the lymphatic highway and brings the consumed particles to the liver for excretion. But other macrophages don't make it back to the lymph nodes. Instead, these blood cells stay in the dermis, and the ink particles they've eaten continue to remain visible—thus, a tattoo is born.
Technically speaking, tattooing is a form of trauma to which your body responds in kind. More conservative folk will discuss modern society with a certain fervor, shaking their pale faces in contempt for the youth and their addiction to drugs, alcohol—and tattoos. And they’re right. The sympathetic nervous system causes a fight-or-flight reaction in response to the pain. The result is a rush of adrenaline, which can become addictive. Endorphins are also released directly from the brain, flooding your body and causing something akin to runner’s high—and so one tattoo leads to another. In accordance with the older generation’s disdain for the youth which they created, one study conducted at The University of Silesia has even shown that adults with tattoos have better sex lives.
The History
From a past history of scrutinization, a culture of commodity has been born. While tattoos and capitalism are inexplicably linked, it is important to return to the origins of ink as is known today—starting with Sailor Jerry.
Sailor Jerry, also the namesake of a popular yet questionable source of rum deriving from a maritime obsession with piracy and alcohol, was born Norman Collins. The American Dream—pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps—conservative challenge to exist beyond your caste through self-motivation and determination produced a counterculture of American youth struggling to define themselves outside blind, polarizing patriotism. Among this 1920s subculture was Collins, who left home as a teenager to travel the country by hitchhiking and train hopping. While the American Dream for some laid in the realm of hard work and rolling the dice of success, for others this dream existed in the space between railroad tracks and statelines—true freedom unbound by social norms. Collins took only a mere two steps into legend: moving to Chicago, then joining the Navy.
Chicago was known as “the corrupt city,” according to John Landesco, author of the book Organized Crime in Chicago. Thanks to an affiliation with mobsters and gangsters, political corruption and corruptions in many other forms was as wide sweeping as the city’s well known winter-chill. The exponential growth of the city's population that occurred during this time period weakened the ability of Chicago's governmental system to operate effectively: increases in the city's numbers weren’t matched by an increase in the number of police officers—thus, rendering Chicago's law enforcement agencies inadequate.
Associated with some of the crime that ran amok on the streets of the corrupt city were tattoo artists—who were giving their clients the means to be society’s outsiders through simple design. Collins began his tattoo career on State Street, offering to practice his art on the homeless in exchange for inexpensive wine or with the few cents he had to his name. Taught by Gib ‘Tatts’ Thomas, tattoo legend, Collins began to form his own tattooing style before joining the war effort.
The Navy was the next step in Collins’ search for adventure—earning his master’s papers in every possible maritime vessel at the time and traveling through parts of the globe. After severing ties with the military, Collins settled in Honolulu, Hawaii. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, Hawaii as Collins knew it changed rapidly: over twelve million Americans settled on the island as aid to the military, bringing with them a subculture of rebellion that only existed amongst deprived, uncultured young men. Bar, brothels, and yes—tattoo parlors—began to appear on Hotel Street in Honolulu, which quickly became famous for its rampant, red-light, way of chaos. Thus, “Sailor Jerry” was born on the outskirts of a culture war. Through WWII, a variety of men were joined together from all facets of society—gathering after-hours on Hotel Street to get a taste of the part-time freedom that couldn’t be found in their hometowns. Sex and alcohol pervaded Honolulu, while getting tattooed was a way to create the memories that booze would wipe away by morning. Sailor Jerry’s style was born through this culture, only to be found on Hotel Street where the long-awaited mischief as characterized by young American men was translated into pigment on the skin. Sailor Jerry’s tattoos were a symbol of sailor-culture: pictures of nude-women lying in cocktail glasses holding a pair of dice, or a dagger reading “Death Before Dishonor,” all expressed the culture of a world-between-war that were often times the last memories these men made before their premature deaths. Sailor Jerry’s tattoos were regarded as a celebration of life—a marker for the immoral limbo between a man’s hometown and the reality of war.
Identity
By the 50’s and 60’s, Americans getting tattoos were included in the most aggressive elements of counterculture: outlaw biker gangs, convicts, and others without the desire or expectation to move up in society. By the late 70’s and early 80’s, getting aggressively tattooed and pierced became a mark of punk culture’s disdain for conformity and social mobility. Modern tattooing has transformed since then into a more accessible mode of self expression. According to Maurice Patterson and Jonathan Schroeder in an essay titled Borderlines: Skin, Tattoos and Consumer Culture Theory, skin has become inherently associated with consumer culture in terms of ambiguity and ambivalence. The authors write,
As consumers, we are routinely preoccupied with skin. We clothe it, we expose it to the sun, we depilate it, we moisturize it, we beautify it with cosmetics, we cleanse it, we tattoo it, we pierce it and we scar it. But skin is important not just because it is the focus of much consumer activity. Skin reflects the dynamic relationship between inside and outside, self and society, between personal identity projects and marketplace cultures. It represents the meeting place of structure and agency; a primary site for the inscription of ideology and a text upon which individuals write their own stories. This liminality of skin, its in-betweenness and ambiguity, contrive to make it a powerful medium for the further exploration of embodied identity and consumption.
The authors agree that tattoos refigure the body—shifting identity into intermediary zones between the subject (of the tattoo, of identity) and the object (of the gaze, of social stigma). Identity, however, is not static: it is ever-changing, shifting alliances and perspectives within a lifetime. In the modern tattoo-renaissance that contemporary society is currently experiencing, the trend of body modification has resurged, exposing itself to a more mainstream clientele.
Tattooing has become a literal mark of consumer culture, and thus a byway of capitalism. Tattoos are collected, the heavily tattooed serve as proof of that. Tattoos, which were once used to mark personal identity, memory, and construct reality are now used for decorative purposes. In 2017, a world marred by the movement of “aesthetics,” tattoos have become as trendy as the latest fashions. Patterson and Schroeder note that skin serves as a site for commodified expression as a materially and metaphorically contested terrain—a site wherein agency, freedom of choice and individual empowerment erupt with the pressures of cultural significance. So tattooing becomes a private, yet obnoxiously public act with the simple question: “What does your tattoo mean?”
Yet, this seems to be only one side of the argument. For others, tattoos are not an act of collection, or adherence to trend but rather, a marker of individuality. Those without tattoos do not seek to join the realm of the other—the tattooed (which actually make up for 21% of the American population)—but rather to convey a means of identity and personal expression.
The change in attitude towards tattoos could be attributed towards a more accepting population of youth—a youth nostalgic for the idea of the past in which they never existed: where concert tickets were a few cents and Kurt Cobain wasn’t six feet under. Or maybe the more accepting climate can be attributed to a generation of rebels who seek a way to lash out against the generation before them in a more permanent manner than a housing crisis. In ancient times, tattooing denoted membership of a certain community or like-minded group—a tradition of sorts linked to ritual and acceptance in a certain faction of society. However, today tattoos symbolize freedom from tradition and constraint: a means of imposing self-modification in order to match the true nature of the self.
Belief
Swallow tattoos are associated with the idea of return. Swallows have a famous migration pattern: always returning home to San Juan Capistrano. Similarly, it was believed that if a sailor died at sea his soul would be returned to heaven on the wings of birds: sailors were notorious for getting pairs of swallows tattooed on their chests for this reason. Dragon tattoos embody conflicting attitudes—they are more like ghosts of the past than reality due to their questionable existence. Perhaps most popular of all tattoos is the rose, which is considered the less cliche yin-yang: a symbol of balance. A rose with thorns is considered a warning against romance, contrasting the beauty of the petals to the sting of love’s thorns. But these symbols change over time, just as tattoos once were regarded as a symbol of outsider-ness, they have become embedded in culture.
One of the most heavily debated tattoo symbols is the swastika. According to Tim Marshall, author of the book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags, in the Chinese text, Book of Silk, comets are pictured spinning in such a way that a swastika is depicted as flying through the sky—ancient peoples would have seen this and regarded it as a sign of peace. Similarly, in Indian culture it was a sign of good luck and hope. The word “Swastika” comes from the ancient Sanskrit language, and at its basic meaning translates to "to be good." The swastika was a symbol of goodness, until Adolf Hitler reclaimed it as a symbol of hatred in the early 1900’s. To most, the Nazi belief system is synonymous with the imagery of the swastika.
One (unnamed) artist at Hold It Down Tattoo in Richmond, Virginia—the third most tattooed city in the country with an average of 14.5 tattoo parlours per 100,000 people—is heavily divided over the symbol of the swastika.
His eyebrows are furrowed over his thin, attractive face. A red flannel clings to his waist, of which underneath peaks a pair of tattered, dirty black jeans. A matching beanie conceals the long shag of peppered brown hair, which he persistently shakes away from his eyes using hands covered in ink cobwebs, daggers, and an all-seeing eye. He recently has made the decision to sport a handlebar mustache, noting that “it makes me look older. I’ve been tattooing since I was fifteen, but I’m only twenty four so that doesn’t say much. But, I’m good and I want people to trust me. You should trust the person with the tattoo machine.” He hates when people get things wrong: “It’s not a gun, it’s a tattoo machine. It’s not a switchblade, it’s a stiletto,” he says referring to the walk-in customers he tattoos daily with disdain for not understanding the art they want. “I have so many, I don’t even notice the change when I get a new one. But I have to think about what my legacy will be—I don’t want to be remembered by a client as the guy who let them make their worst mistake. That shit’s permanent.” The tattooist proceeds to shave the invisible hairs off of a woman’s chest, adjusting the stencil while she makes small talk.
From the next room, a man winces in pain. Lying on his back, eyes squinting against the bright industrial light focused on his chest, the machine whirs with the sound of forgiveness. “It meant something different back then,” Tom says, “all my friends have this, it was your typical Richmond born-and-raised tattoo. I never thought it would cost me a friend, or a job.” Referring to his confederate flag tattoo, Tom is on his third cover up session. In tattoo-speak, Tom is getting a “blast-over.” This is when a total cover-up cannot occur, and so a different design is chosen to blur the image of the tattoo underneath. The tattoo is dark, but not dark enough—red and blue peak out from underneath raven wings, spreading over the entirety of his chest.
Tom explains that confederate flags used to be somewhat of a joke to him and his friends in their early twenties—a heritage-not-hate symbol of Richmond pride. “Don’t get a tattoo before you’re thirty. The world will change, everything will mean something different, and you won’t recognize the person you used to be.”
The tattooist began tattooing at a young age, practicing on the skins of lemons before apprenticing in Richmond. Though he won’t do confederate flag tattoos, noting that they are purely a symbol of hatred (though he describes both sides of the war as being “fucked”), he will do the occasional swastika provided he knows his client’s intentions and they don’t publicize it. “I believe that anything can be appropriated—that’s what appropriation means, right? Taking something and marring its original meaning. That’s the swastika for you.”
ManWoman, a Canadian artist and poet, led a movement to reclaim the swastika from the 1960’s up until his death in 2012. Armed with two-hundred swastika tattoos, ManWoman wrote a book titled The Gentle Swastika: Reclaiming the Innocence. ManWoman’s mother was a Polish immigrant whose sister and her child were imprisoned in Auschwitz. Despite growing up with the usual prejudices against the swastika symbol, ManWoman viewed reclaiming the symbol as his life’s purpose. In a 2012 interview, when asked if he believed his tattoos were necessary, he replied:
Oh yeah… I've got over 200 swastikas tattooed on my body. There are so many different versions of the swastika around the world from different cultures, so I had them all tattooed on my arms and chest and back… Everybody wants me to tattoo a little tiny swastika on them! Well, I've never tattooed anyone, and now all of a sudden I've tattooed about 30 people with a little swastika, and some of these are very serious, top-of-the-line tattoo artists. But they just want a little token from me because they appreciate and admire what I've done.
Tattoos construct identity through social projections—symbols carry different meanings to different individuals. The influence of tattoos is in their oppositional nature to the status quo and the ability of the tattooed to use their body-art as a tool for contesting existing power structures and accepted body ideologies. Tattoos symbolize power. Foremost, they give the individual agency over their own body. A person cannot choose what class they are born into, what skin color they are born with, or the genetics to which they are predisposed. An individual can, however, choose the means through which they convey personal expression—whether this be through mode of dress, a hairstyle, or perhaps most boldly: through a tattoo. Tattoos transport meaning. That is the inherent nature of imagery. In modern society, the ink alone has the power to change how others view you and how you view yourself. Whether the aim is to seduce or repel, tattoos—down to the size, placement, and color—automatically carry the ability to reconstruct identity in both the private and public sphere of the self.
Tattoos— as a reflection of choice— are a biopower through which an individual constructs their identity. French sociologist Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower is understood as the power that lays within the biological condition of life held by an individual—a power form both existing and rooted deeply within the social community of that individual. If tattoos construct identity, then tattoos construct the way a person exists in society through their willingness to attract or subvert the gaze, allowing the individual to use their body as a pièce de résistance.
Divide
There are divides in all societies, so there are of course divides within the tattoo community that exist in the grey areas between acceptable and shameful. If the tattoo parlour represents the acceptable then past the grey area of self inflicted stick-and-pokes come the “scratchers.” Scratchers are known within the tattoo community as untrained people with tattoo kits. The art of tattooing has long been a trade which traditionally was handed down from generation to generation through apprenticeships in which a student would work under the supervision and training of the master, and in return for free labor, the master would train the student. According to an underground online tattoo forum: “There are such folk known as tattoo scratchers, the infamous scoundrels who scar and distort the image of the tattoo industry. They give the art form a bad image and destroy its artistic integrity. The scratcher is a thief and a liar. Sadly, the scratcher survives and strives on.” Scratchers threaten the industry through poor technique, poor sterilization, and a general lack of knowledge about tattooing which is traditionally passed on from teacher to student. Scratchers offer their clients cheap fees, as well as are willing to execute tattoos that most shops would turn away. Scratchers are easily found. With a quick search on Craigslist, results are promising:
Artist looking to hook some people up with some awesome ink for some good prices. Doing names for $30, and cutting deals on everything else. I used to work in a shop in KY and I'm very professional. Clean home environment or I can come to you. Here's some of my work as well as a couple paintings I've done. Located in highland springs. Text at 804 7one4 7one27
*Cash only, no trades*
Appealing? Probably not. But for the tattoos most would turn their glance from, scratchers are among the few willing to trade their morals for a profit.
One man in Charlottesville, whose name he refused to give, offered regret for the “WP” tattoo he had done on his neck. He explained that “WP” stood for “White Pride.” He paid his friend $17 and a six pack of Budweiser for the ink which he now seeks to remove. After admitting to taking part in the recent Neo-Nazi violent protest in Charlottesville earlier this year, he notes that he doesn’t regret the tattoo itself—he just wishes he would have put it somewhere less noticeable, away from the eyes of his granddaughters: “It’s part of my belief system. This is who I am and I can’t change that… I’m proud of my heritage, and I will defend it.” So his skin itself becomes a reflection of his beliefs in both natural and inflicted pigment. A large man, slightly wrinkled with bushy white eyebrows and sprouts of matching facial hair reminiscent of a more disturbing version of St. Nick, he nervously twists and untwists the cap of his energy drink. He seems calmly set in his ways, not bothering to look around at the bustle of people strolling through the area—but why shouldn’t he be calm? To him, the panic is over. A president in favor of his movement, who wouldn’t cast a second glance on the WP imprinted on his neck, holds the throne—so white power persists. His tattoo is not a remnant of his past, or of a fond memory, but rather a symbol of the power dynamic he seeks to keep in place.
If one subjects themselves to the undertaking of a tattoo—a symbol of permanence and steadfastness in itself—without the expectation of remorse, fascism has a place within the tattoo world. Just as the WP tattoo was as visible as the man’s face, his politics were equally as unhidden. Unapologetic in the most alt-right sense, it is not unusual to see the movement’s symbolism in ink. Within white supremacist and fascist movements, imagery plays a starring role through propaganda, uniforms, flags, as well as general appearance—helping the movement to attract larger numbers and even gain respect and protection. Symbols used by this group are recycled and re-appropriated to suit the movement in contemporary society, sometimes by way of the tattoo. It could be argued that neo-Nazis today use the tattoo as a mockery of the past: such as when prisoners of Auschwitz received tattoos as identity signifiers. Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor and advocate for forgiveness, describes the process of getting her tattoo:
The actual tattooing was very, very painful from what I remember. They heated a pen-like gadget with a long needle over the flame of a lamp, which I watched before it happened to me. When it got hot, they dipped it into ink, and burned into my left arm, dot by dot, the capital letter “A,” followed by a dash, then the numbers 7-0-6-3. “A-7063” became my number, which was never clear on my skin… That's okay—I know why it's not clear.
Kor hasn’t gotten the tattoo removed, noting that it won’t change the past—but rather, only inflict more pain.
Understanding
Tattooing has changed over that last fifty years from less use of flash to more use of custom design work which involve collaborations of ideas with the customer that are realized by the artist, thus transforming the tattooist from a tradesman to an artist, placing tattooism in the realm of fine art. What canvas is more difficult than the ever-dying, ever-changing human skin? Tattoos are ephemeral, for better or for worse, an art form whose true meaning is only given by consent of the wearer. With the transition from stock tattoos, such as the Sailor Jerry designs on sailors, to more custom and individualized tattoos it is evident that tattoos have become a means of forming identity rather than a means of remembrance. Because tattooing has had historic association with the lower class and deviant subculture, Margo Demello suggests, in her 1995 article "Not Just for Bikers Anymore," that the media and middle class have worked together to tame the image of tattoos, forming the tattoo culture that is rampant today.
It is impossible to dismiss the role of technology in American culture, specifically in American tattoo culture. Social media forces the question: Who are you? Constructing identity becomes means of creating a personal brand—a hallmark of consumer culture. Modern technology demands us to create ourselves in a way that separates us from others. Postmodern identity requires the structuring of a “core-self,” according to Anne Velliquette, a professor at the University of Arkansas who studies the relationship between consumer behavior and popular culture. In a world shifting every second—from the election of a puppet president, to the revitalization of the Ku Klux Klan, to the Neo-Nazi movement—people seek an anchor. Velliquette’s partner, Jeff Murray explains that “We continue to be struck by rapid and unpredictable change. The result is a loss of personal anchors needed for identity. We found that tattoos provide this anchor. Their popularity reflects a need for stability, predictability, permanence.” People construct their identity and define who they are by the elements that stick with them—people, stories, places, memories—and measure themselves in relation to them. Tattoos are used to give meaning to their owners—they create a protective shell through which the most important stages of life can be conveyed. Through tattooing, the body is utilized as a text for personal and cultural meaning, semiotically producing identity by means of both the artist and the bearer. Through these highlights, tattoos are birthed that allow for a core self to be created: a means through which to understand the world.
Afterword
I recently got my chest tattooed. My mother begged me not to do it. She said it would ruin my femininity. Two roses stick out underneath my collarbones, a little darker than I intended them to be but I love them just the same. It’s tough to change a tattoo once it’s on your skin. I learned my lesson with my first rose: I asked for an outline with no shading. I wanted something simple. After looking down to see what my artist had come up with, I was shocked and felt violated. He had shaded the light out of my vision. So I went to another artist to try to fix it—to add lines to distract from the stippling I detested. This only worsened my case. The tattoo I bear on my left arm is the darkest of them all—it doesn’t fit. I constantly contemplate getting it removed, or blasted over. But I have grown fond of it, the part of me I cannot truly ever change. Other tattoos surround it, but still—to me—it stands out: apart from the rest. A reminder to fail better.
