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By infmom, May 5, 2008 10:59 am

Years ago, before I got inked myself, I read Robert Heinlein’s classic Stranger In A Strange Land. One of
the characters in the book is a fully tattooed sideshow performer named Patricia Paiwonski. She stands in a tank full of cobras, offering money to anyone who can find an inch of un-tattooed skin below her chin. The problem is, of course, that while she’s naked, she’s got a “fig leaf” in the form of a huge boa constrictor, so there’s no chance of anyone collecting the prize.

“Aunt Patty” is a founding member of the Fosterite church, and the Fosterites, as Heinlein put it, were not celibate. And the people brought into the church by Foster himself have his “Kiss” tattooed on them, so they can be recognized by others like them.

I always thought that was an interesting form of identification. But I wasn’t so sure about Heinlein’s amater psychology, implying that “the syndrome that can lead to full tattooing” is a euphemism for being addicted to sex. Of course, there’s a lot of sex in Stranger, especially the uncensored version, filtered through Heinlein’s misogyny and aversion to homosexuals, so who can tell whether a fully-tattooed person is any more addicted to sex than anyone else in the book?

While I do think there is a difference in body consciousness in multicolored people (compared to those who have no desire whatsoever to get inked) I don’t think we’re displaying the equivalent of Foster’s Kiss just because we’re more decorative than others.

Or am I just displaying my own amateur psychology along with my ink?

photo credit: M.V. Jantzen

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By infmom, April 13, 2007 4:12 pm

The other night, one of the local TV stations was doing a story on free English lessons being offered by a local community. The reporter, who obviously did not speak Spanish, was asking Spanish speaking people if they spoke English.

And she mentioned the free lessons, using the word “libre” for “free.”

Yes, “libre” means “free,” but in the sense of “freedom.” The word she wanted was “gratis,” which means “free” in the sense of “no cost.”

How does this enter into the world of tattoos? Because Asian symbols (Kanji) are very popular as tattoo designs. They are beautiful in and of themselves, and of course they mean something as well. However, the handy-dandy translations provided by various web sites might not be entirely accurate.

A Chinese friend once told me that she’d been walking through the mall one day and had seen a woman with a Chinese character tattooed on her shoulder. “I wonder if she knew that the word was bitch,” said my friend.

Could go either way! The woman could very well have chosen that symbol herself, or someone else might have given it to her and told her it meant something else entirely, as a joke. And how would someone who can’t read Chinese know for sure, in the latter case?

If you want a lovely Asian character adorning your body, be very, very sure that what you get is what you mean to get. There are subtle differences (as in the example of “libre” and “gratis” above) and it’s all too easy to pick the wrong character. Not only will you be permanently adorned with something you didn’t mean to say, but you might well be walking around with a design that would be offensive to people who really know what the character means.

OK, that might not matter to some people. But why take chances? If you can’t check your character with someone you trust who speaks the language, be sure you can find the same identical translation of it in multiple sources before you put it on your body till the end of time (or till you can afford laser treatment, whichever comes first).

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