CRUEL ANECDOTES

Is tattooing a cool fashion statement or a sign of threatening sub-cultures?

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Steward’s book begins with the disclaimer that he wants to explode the myths surrounding tattooing but goes on to tell gratuitously sexual stories of the urban myth variety, uses explicitly sexual language and there is a strong sense of his ‘going native’ and embracing the culture he writes about, including having several tattoos engraved on his body. (See Appendix)

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the lurid style of this book, it – and several others of a similar nature – have become the basis for today’s body of knowledge on tattooing. Steward cannot be ignored, however, because hidden within the book are some very relevant points. He correctly identifies the religious, political, sexual and cultural areas which motivate people to have tattoos but nullifies his findings by his insistence that they are all sexually motivated.

The history of and motivation for tattooing, as presented by Steward and his ilk, still persists to this day but, as noted above, there is a modern movement to establish social acceptance of the tattoo. In choosing to have a permanent, visible marking on the body a person is also choosing an identity to present to the world and will undoubtedly see this as a positive statement. Among his peers, he or she will receive affirmation of this but, in spite of newspaper coverage of rock stars wearing tattoos, there is still a negative reaction from the man in the street when presented with alien body markings.

These attitudes are reinforced by the way in which tattoos are represented through photography in newspapers, books and magazines. Some of the modern representations of tattooed people have not moved on enormously from the days when circuses and sideshows would sell photographs of their ‘exhibits’ such as the zebra man, or The Great Omi as he later styled himself. The Great Omi (above left) was an Englishman named Horace Ridler who deliberately had his body completely tattooed in order to make money from it.

A modern day version of this publicity-driven compulsion is Tom Leppard (above right), more widely known as the Leopard Man of Skye, who spent £5,500 to have his body covered in leopard-like spots in a bid to have an entry in The Guinness Book of records. He now lives in a small cabin on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Once every week, the ex-soldier travels by canoe to buy supplies and pick up his pension. If he went back to civilization, he says he would be plagued by "interfering busybodies" and kids throwing stones at his window. (http://www.tattooculture.ro/tomleppardnews.htm)

Magazines such as Total Tattoo (see illustration right) and Skin Deep solicit their readership from people who already have tattoos or are thinking of acquiring one. The magazines are photograph heavy and promote the idea that wearing a tattoo is both fashionable and ‘cool’. Page after page of photographs show disembodied arms and legs with colour illustrations on them with either very cursory captions or accreditation. There is no sense at all of the identity of these people who are showing off their tattoos, although the tattooists are nearly always named and often have whole features written about them with no credit given to the owners of the ‘body parts’ in the photographs which accompany the article (see illustration above). When looking at the pictures, no one says, “Who is it?”. They only say, “Who did it?

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Clarke (1992, p.86) said that ‘representation of a figure in relation to the surrounding space within the frame is paramount’ but the background to these pictures gives no clue to the identity of the person featured. If not closely cropped, then the background reveals only a tattoo studio, a tattoo convention, a pub or a street scene.