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Imagine my delight when my copy of the Smithsonian magazine arrived yesterday, with cover art featuring a tattooed man, and a story inside about photographer Chris Rainier who travels all over the world to take pictures of people’s body art.  (The image at right is not from that article, I hasten to add.)

Rainier’s work seems to bear out what I’ve felt for a long time, that decorated people were more numerous than the plain-skinned sort, at least up till recent times.  And times are changing; according to the story, up to 40% of Americans between the ages of 26 and 40 have been tattooed.  I’m outside that age range myself but my daughter’s firmly in it.   Given how difficult, painful, and hazardous primitive skin-marking methods were, this says a lot about how strongly people felt the need to be decorated.

The article includes some links to other fascinating Smithsonian stories about tattoos, which are well worth investigating.  One talks about the differences in regional tattoos in the USA, and one talks about a new type of tattoo ink that’s designed so that a special kind of laser can remove it completely, without causing the kinds of problems conventional tattoo removal can.

Public attitudes in “industrialized” societies have seesawed back and forth over the years.  What started out as something only sleazy sailors did soon became something that the upper classes were mad about (according to the story, King George V had a tattoo) and from there went back to being something only sleazy sailors did.  Now the pendulum is swinging the other way again.

My dad never knew about my tattoos, but I have a feeling he would not have approved. After all, this was the man who didn’t want me to get my ears pierced because it “looked cheap.”  His attitudes toward that kind of thing were formed in the 1940s and 1950s when you pretty much only saw tattooed women in the circus.

I for one am glad times have changed, and I’m also glad we have modern equipment and sanitary practices!

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A hundred years ago, tattoos were quite the in thing amongst the upper crust. All kinds of aristocrats had ink in various places and there was no social stigma involved. On the contrary, it was something enjoyed by the sophisticated creme de la creme.

Over time, however, the tattoo became associated in the public psyche with sailors, circus performers, bikers, hippies, gang members, convicts and other supposedly undesirable elements, and despite the increased popularity of tattooing today, and the numbers of “mainstream” people who are getting inked, the stigma of bad associations gone by still lingers.

Thus, many employers (who tend to be conservative) want nothing to do with people who have visible tattoos (or piercings other than the occasional earring or two). Image is everything in many workplaces, and heaven forbid the nice lady who takes your bank deposit, or the guy who deals with your investment, or the people who fight fires or arrest crooks, have any visible ink. Not that anyone can prove that being tattooed affects their performance in any way. It just doesn’t LOOK good.

Have we really become a nation of Fernandos? (Billy Crystal’s character who thought it was better to look good than to feel good) Do we care so much about appearance that we don’t care about substance or performance? Is this, or is this not, the 21st century?

Have your employer told you “no visible ink”? I’ve never worked in a place where that was the rule, thank goodness, although my tattoos are easily covered when necessary. But it seems like more and more workplaces are getting more and more strict. Or am I imagining things?

If you’d like to read more about celebrity tattoos, do take a look at The Vanishing Tattoo web site, which is a gold mine of information and inspiration.

photo credit: Indiana Stan

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Here are a few:

Tattoo History (The Vanishing Tattoo)
A pictorial history of tattoos (tattoos.com)
Pigments of Imagination (National Geographic)
History of Tattoo (tattoo.co.uk)
Tattoos: The Ancient and Mysterious History (Smithsonian Magazine)

Check Google… there are a lot of great references out there.

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A sacred art

Tattooing was considered sacred, and the application of the designs was part of a religious ritual. The designs conveyed personal meaning–heritage, achievements, and position in society. Shamans were responsible for applying the tattoos, and there were special ceremonies for both the shaman and the person who would be getting the tattoo. If ancient designs were as extensive as historical ones, the full tattoo would take many separate sessions over quite a long period of time.

Symbols on the skin were used for protection, for reverence for one’s ancestors, and to signal the attainment of marriageable status. The tattoos also served as an indicator of status and power. The higher one was up the hierarchy, the more tattoos one had. Women were apparently less-tattooed than men.

The ancient traditions were maintained up to the time of the coming of the missionaries, who, in their zeal to convert the world, forbade tattooing based on their interpretation of the Old Testament. The fact that they were trying to abolish an ancient and very sacred religious tradition was of no particular consequence because it was not their ancient and very sacred religious tradition.

Fortunately, some of the missionaries made drawings and took notes, so the traditional designs were not lost forever, and people who want the traditional sacred designs today can have them just as their ancestors did.

Treat these designs with respect

Since these designs are sacred, it is especially important for people outside the Polynesian culture not to copy them. One may base one’s design on a Polynesian original, but an exact copy would be sacreligious and offensive. People from outside Polynesian culture who want a “tribal” design should keep this in mind. You would not want an image from your own sacred tracditions just slapped on somebody’s body somewhere with no understanding of what it meant.

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As in other cultures, markings on the “skin” of the figurines are thought to be representations of fertility. It seems common world-wide for women (or statues of women) to be marked on belly, breasts and pubic area.

We have written records from Asia that are very ancient and as early as 3oo BCE there are mentions of tattoos and their symbolic meanings. It is clear that in Asia, as in other parts of the world, tattoos were not just for decoration but for punishment–criminals were often permanently marked.

A mark of status

Chinese archaeologists have excavated tomb sites containing well-preserved tattooed mummies in western China. These decorated people were not usually Asians, and are thought to have been connected to the Celts and Scythians. Some of their tattoos are said to be extremely elaborate, but the archaeologists haven’t published much. Heavily tattooed bodies identified as Scythians have been excavated in the area of what is now Siberia, and it appears that at least one of those people was indeed Asian and not Caucasian. Tattooing appears to have been a mark of high status and to record the person’s accomplishments in life.

…or the mark of an outcast

By the Middle Ages, the Chinese appear to have begun to associate tattoos only with criminals and we do not have much in the way of descriptions of decorative tattoos. By about the 1600s in Japan, tattoos were not acceptable among “polite society” and were considered strictly a practice of the lower class and criminal elements. It is thought that the design of the elaborate “body suit” tattoo came about so that a person’s everyday robes could completely cover the tattoo.

While the body art in today’s Japan is astonishing in its beauty and complexity, it is still not a widespread practice and there is still a common association (warranted or not) with lower class and criminal elements.

Archaeologists still have a lot to learn and discover about the decorated people of the past.

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A few mummies have been found with patterns of dots and dashes tattooed into the skin. Since the number of tattooed mummies we have found so far is small, no real conclusion can be drawn about the reason for the designs. But since the best-known mummified tattooed person was a priestess, it has been assumed that the tattoos served some ritual purpose. So far, no tattooed male Egyptian mummies have been found.

Archaeologist Flinders Petrie found implements that could possibly have been used to create tattoos, and later archaeologists have compared those instruments to those still in use in that area of Africa, particularly in Nubia. It has been speculated that the Egyptians adopted the practice of tattooing from the Nubians.

Smithsonian Magazine did an article recently about the history of tattoos, and if you’d like further information on ancient tattoos you can read that article here.

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It’s pretty clear that human ancestors liked to decorate themselves, and it would be a lot easier to poke a few burnt, sharpened sticks into your skin than to make other kinds of nonpermanent adornment. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to try to make a hole in a shell, much less the incredible amount of work it would have taken to make beads.

Magical, medicinal markings

The “iceman,” the oldest human body ever found, has tattoos–dots and lines in various places on his skin. Investigation has shown that those dots and lines are over places where he had problems with his bones. Whether the tattoos were thought to be medicinal in their own right, or just marked the places where what passed for a “physician” in those days to concentrate his or her treatment, of course, is unknown.

Many other more recent ancient human bodies have tattooed marks of various kinds. Some have elaborate designs, some just simple dots or chevrons. It is clear that permanent marks on the skin were significant and important in the ancient world. Long before people had written languages, they had meaningful symbols, and they had the desire to mark themselves in meaningful ways. Paint would wash off. Tattoos wouldn’t.

Is the urge to decorate our bodies part of our ancient heritage? Something that no overlay of more recent belief systems can overrule? Are more recent body modifications like circumcision simply another manifestation of our biology rather than the theology they ostensibly represent?

Food for thought.

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