Tattoos: Once Extreme, Now Just Mainstream
AUGUST 23, 2007
SAN DIEGO (TNA) – During a 10-year period, famed author Truman Capote interviewed more than 100 killers and found that 85 percent of them had tattoos.
“I know from experience there's something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed,” he said.
Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at it, but others might consider tat wearers as terribly rebellious.
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Tattoos like these are no longer |
While tattoos have long been the province of rebels and iconoclasts, it’s a pretty safe bet that one in four Americans don’t qualify as rebels any more than they qualify as killers.
“The whole notion of a rebel, or what’s cool or hip, is defined against what most people are doing,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. “The way the thing works is, just when you finally identify a new thing that’s rebellious, cool, hip – according to the fact that it’s not what most people are doing – within a matter of days, most people are doing it.”
Tattoos have always been a part of the world’s history, serving as cultural rites of passage, symbols of religious devotion, marks of protection or slavery, and later, showing up on American sailors.
According to Thompson, this was an exhibition of their owner’s worldliness – proof that they had survived dangerous ports of call and encounters with “frightening people with painful dyeing mechanisms.”
The progression of such exhibition naturally went on to include bikers, gangsters and prisoners, and eventually, bad boy rockers. But today, Thompson says the tattoo has become “as domesticated as ear piercings and hip-hop CDs.”
Indeed, tattoos seem to be experiencing social acceptance in all realms, says Madame Chinchilla of Triangle Tattoo & Museum in Fort Bragg, California. “Grandmas are getting them, grandfathers, they’re bringing their grandchildren in – tattooing has been fully accepted into the mainstream.”
It’s true, from cigarettes and cell phone endorsements to entire clothing lines, “Tattoo imagery is almost everywhere,” says Chris Nunez of TLC’s hit show “Miami Ink.”
“It’s really kind of hit a renaissance for itself,” he said.
Nunez believes this current wave has much to do with the clients’ stories. “When a client comes on the show and explains why they’re getting what they’re getting and it’s something touching or moving, I think people relate to that in some way or another.”
Even on the West Coast, the TV series is having an effect.
“Everybody asks me about [“Miami Ink”] says Fip Buchanan, who owns Avalon Tattoo II in San Diego and moonlights at Ed Hardy’s Tattoo City in San Francisco. Not only has Buchanan noticed he’s busier than ever, the bulk of his crowd that used to be 18-25 is now mostly 30-50. “TV opened it up where it seems like it’s OK for everybody,” he says.
But if ol’ grandma is sportin’ a koi fish on her forearm and the soccer mom next door is prancing around with flowers on her ankle, then what of the future’s would-be rebels? How can the truly dark and mysterious be expected to maintain their edge in a society where tattoos have become commonplace?
By going for the throat, says Buchanan, who thinks maintaining today’s edge demands size, quantity and taking things to the extreme.
But however true that may be, etiquette expert and founder of the Protocol School of Palm Beach, Jacqueline Whitmore, cautions against it.
“I think tattoos are more acceptable now than ever, but there are still industries that have very strict dress codes,” she says.
Depending on the type of job you’re applying for, Whitmore says the rules of etiquette dictate that it may be more appropriate to cover tattoos, or avoid getting them in hard-to-conceal places.
Madame Chinchilla couldn’t agree more.
“I went into the Safeway the other day and they had kids working there that were heavily tattooed, one of them even had a tattoo on the side of his neck. So it’s already become OK, which I think is great – but I still won’t be the one that’s going to do it.”
Strange refusal coming from a woman whose body is pretty much covered from feet to shoulders, but Madame Chinchilla sees extreme tattooing on the face, hands and neck as nothing more than an act of immature rebellion.
“Kids that are doing that – it seems immature to me. They aren’t thinking about their future at all,” she said.
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'Miami Ink' star Chris Nunez predicts people who |
“Look what happened to the leisure suit,” he quips. “The permanence of tattoos means that as long as they’re still in style, everything is fine.”
This may be bad news for women with lower back tattoos.
Buchanan first heard the term “tramp stamp” after hearing Vince Vaughn’s character refer to a lower back tattoo as a “bull’s eye” indicating promiscuous tendencies in the 2005 movie “Wedding Crashers.”
“I think it’s a good spot,” says Buchanan. “But it does seem like we do it less and maybe that’s why … It’s kind of weird how something like that in pop culture can fuck it up.”
While Buchanan may be inking fewer lower back designs, he doesn’t think the actual tattoo trend will be reversing anytime soon.
“It’s an art thing that keeps people kind of more connected with themselves and there is that thing about it, it does hurt and all that, so it lets you know you’re alive,” he said.
Nunez isn’t too worried, either. With the media showing the public the kind of art that’s out there, if anything, he says, people are starting to overanalyze tattoos.
“People have really taken their thoughts and put everything into it and it’s almost like you let them down when you tell them that it’s not going to look very good,” he said.
And as far as any trends toward removal, Nunez is confident in one thing: “People with bad tattoos are going to start to get their tattoos removed, but it’s only going to be to cover them up with better ones.”
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