TATTOOS

Of all the skin-deforming arts, one of the most interesting and ancient is tattoo, which traveled like gossip over trade routes and continents. Neolithic farmers tattooed their faces with a design of blue tridents; female singers, dancers, and prostitutes in ancient Egypt wore tattoos.

In 1769, Captain Cook reported in his journal that both the men and women of Tahiti displayed tattoos (a word that probably comes from the Tahitian tatau, “to strike”). King George V, Nicholas II, and Lady Randolph Churchill all had tattoos along with souvenir-crazed Americans and fashionable Victorian women who wished a permanent pink to their lips. The Maori of New Zealand perfected an especially intricate style of tattoo, which Terry Landau reports on in About Faces:

[They have] an elaborate tattoo technique called moko… One traveler described a tribal chief who prided himself on having spared no visible part of his body: even his lips, tongue, gums, and palate were completely tattooed.

-Diane Ackerman, p.99, A Natural History of the Senses, Vintage Books, 1990

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Tattoo involves puncturing the skin with a sharp instrument and inserting pigment through the outer layer, the epidermis, into the second layer, the dermis. Tattoos are intended to be permanent; only recently have expensive laser techniques allowed people to remove them. Tattoo patterns and techniques have varied with different cultures. Traditional Polynesian tattooists tap a needle with a small hammer, while the Japanese work with bundles of needles set in wooden handles. In the West, the electric tattoo machine has revolutionized tattooing, expanding the ease of application and the range of colors and designs. Besides being decorative, tattoos send important cultural messages: a commitment to some group, an emblem of a rite of passage, even a fashion statement. Tattooing has been used to indicate high rank in some societies, rebellion and low status in others. Despite numerous religious and social injunctions, tattooing has been a popular form of body art throughout the world.

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Since this is a site dedicated to tattoos, please only post stuff that are relevant to our group. Thanks!