The Changing Face Of Tattoos

This is a fairly popular link that has been sent around, so it’s probably not really ‘news’ to point out  Carl Zimmer‘s site which features Science Tattoos:

What you might be intrigued by, however, is research which demonstrates that attitudes towards tattoos are changing. It all started with the professor who introduced me to educational research, talking about a paper he co-authored:

Professor Stephen Houghton, an educational psychologist at the University of Western Australia, has written several papers about tattooing. He discovered that many early studies of tattooing were flawed because academics found their subjects in places such as jails and psychiatric institutions.

And the negative stereotyping that resulted continues. “When you speak with adults or children, there is always that view that if you see someone with prominent tattoos, you watch yourself,” Houghton says.

Which would explain people’s preference for tattoos in places that are easily hidden: the upper arm, shoulder blade, small of the back.

Wherever they are placed, and against popular belief, few people regret getting a tattoo, Houghton says.

“Our research showed that something like 82 per cent of people don’t regret them…. Now the quality of tattooing is so much better. Some of the tattoos today are works of art.”

[By the way - he still has an office FILLED with West Coast Eagles football paraphernalia and he hasn't got the team logo as a tattoo years after that article was written. In case you were wondering!]

When I was on holiday recently, I was with a group of friends waiting outside a shopping center. One of the children with us decided to be particularly curious and zip into the nearby tattoo parlor. Pretty understandable, if you think about it – dimly lit shop, lots of pretty pictures and a big bloody sign out the front that said ‘No Children‘. Stands to reason…

Upon quickly recapturing tyke (who was oggling a Tweety-bird) and heading out, I mentioned that bit of research that I read and the owner of the store overheard and came over to talk to us.

She very kindly proceeded to give us a little tour of the images in the premises (with the errant child kept firmly under an arm and warned that it’d be leaving with a rifle-brandishing Sandinista across its back if it made a fuss – which then prompted another discussion about what would happen to a tattoo put on at a young age and how much distortion of the original image would occur with growth? Quite a bit, was the overall view, although it depends on where you place it).

I didn’t see any examples of particularly science-related images however, but as you can see from the pages and pages (which keep on building!) from the Science Tattoo Emporium, they’re not unheard of!

Rather than screaming loudly in the playground that ‘she’s a tart!’ about the ubiquitous tramp-stamp (which is not entirely fair according to the NY Times and their article “The Double Lives of High-Priced Call Girls”- “Ms. O’Donnell, 25, is a Williamsburg hipster with entrancing blue eyes who carries an NPR tote bag and might offer up a few pleasantries on the Whole Foods checkout line before turning back to her Junot Diaz novel” – apparently you have to at least enjoy public radio and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?) – young children are spotting tattoos on either their mothers or their teachers. Bye bye counterculture – hello kindergarten.

In fact, kids may follow the trend of pointing out how mother indeed carries their name on their sleeve – or more likely ankle or shoulder: New York Times on ‘Etched in Mommy’s Heart…’ reflects on professional women following the trend set by Angelina Jolie -

Mothers with tattooed remembrances of their children’s baby footprints and birth signs may be the final frontier for an art form that, in only a couple decades, has migrated from Navy ships and prisons to private schools and cable programs — a final dismissal of the idea of tattoos as counterculture.

Tattoo Culture, a shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, even stocks a children’s book called “Mommy Has a Tattoo,” by Phil Padwe, which is supposed to encourage children to not fear people with tattoos.

Dave Kimelberg, a Boston lawyer who runs InkedInc.com, a tattoo fan site, said of the mommy tattoos: “It just doesn’t get much more wholesome than this.”

For career women, the tattoos can be the corporal equivalent of cubicle photos.

Some of the research I looked at included ‘College Students, Tattooing, And The Health Belief Model: Extending Social Psychological Perspectives on Youth Culture and Deviance’, where apparently the trend has indeed extended across all ages, primarily women since 1991 – in fact, now almost 50% of tattoos are performed on women. Family attitudes against tattoos will deter college-age youth getting one, but the exploration of the idea and eventually getting one is more likely if ‘the people around us see tattoos in a more favourable light’. Another paper by Wohlrabb, Stahl, Rammsayer and Kappeler (2007) looking at differences in personality characteristics between individuals who were body-modified and compared to non-body modified reflected on how indeed the traditional prejudices were waning but perhaps it was also a signal of ‘being a sensation-seeker and following a more unrestricted mating strategy‘… a possible evolutionary indication that they’re keen to get tattoos on as well as able to ‘get it on’… uh, why am I reminded of Angelina Jolie again? Please, somebody think of the children! :p

Will it one day be seen as profitable as a mainstream advertising strategy? A record of employers logos on your body, like tattoos representing the battles that a soldier took part in? A news item popped up last night on my TV about a guy who has offered his head ‘for a price’ – Man Offers Face As Advertising Space:

And the 37-year-old from Ipswich, west of Brisbane, doesn’t care if people think he’s an idiot – just as long as the crazy scheme pays off and he can better provide for his wife Amy and children Tre, Tanika, Candis and Finette.

Mr Niebling already has the left side of his face and his bald head covered in non-advertising tattoos, but the right half is up for sale to the highest bidder.

 …”I thought, ‘things are getting a bit rough and rent’s going up. What better way to connect my love of art and support my family as well?’.

…”It’s like when you jump out of a plane, the rush you get, that’s what happens when the needle hits my skin,” said Mr Niebling, who will also feature in a documentary called Show Us Ya Tatts funded by anthropologist Dr Mair Underwood…. Two years later Andrew Fischer, from Omaha, Nebraska, gained worldwide notoriety for auctioning his forehead space on eBay for temporary tattoo advertising, with the final bid coming in at $US37,375 ($40,316) for 30 days of display.

There’s also the ’blood tattoo’ (pictured), which apparently heals over with time – Penn Jillette got one which he wrote about in ‘How To Play In Traffic’ and then Lou Reed wrote a song about it for Captain Howdy. This particular one, as you might guess, was done for a card-trick.

Oh, Carl Zimmer has an author tour coming up on the 15th April at the Community Room in Craig Hall, Denver CO – “I’ll be discussing my book, Soul Made Flesh, and the craft of writing science books”. It’s now about seven weeks until his most recent book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life hits the book store! Blog entry with his very own ‘E’ here!

Whilst you’re waiting? Get your reading done at the Skeptic’s Circle, hosted at Archaeoporn!

Tagged as: age, attitudes, Carl Zimmer, Children, gender, Houghton, Microcosm, Penn Jillette, perceptions, research, Science, science tattoos, skeptics circle, tattoos, tramp stamp, women