Women and Tattoos
I WAS IN a hospital emergency room
today with my mother (it’s been a busy week) when a young woman came
walking out of the triage room. She was wearing a tank top, slacks and a
backpack. She was obviously there for some medical reason.
The arresting thing was, her arms and neck were covered with large,
scribbly, black tattoos. It was as if a child had taken a black marker
and scribbled all over her or a graffiti “artist” had used her as a
canvas. Even in this age of tattoos, it was shocking how disfigured this
young woman was. If she was there because of her tattoos, undergoing
an emergency tattoo-removal by a concerned physician, that would seem
right. But she was apparently there for some involuntary disorder and
people were just acting as if it was all perfectly normal.
When I returned home from the hospital (my mother is fortunately doing much better), I found a note from this blogger, Desire to Return, recommending his post on woman and tattoos. He writes:
These days, it’s rare to see a young
woman in public who doesn’t have some ink on display, or who hasn’t
added some metal adornment to her face via an additional hole.
I’m not crazy about tattoos on men
either. But, they’re worse on women. Tattoos suggest toughness, pain,
grittiness. However bad tattoos look on men they at least emphasize
traits that are not at odds with the central nature of the masculine.
Not so with tattoos on women. A woman
with a tattoo is declaring herself to be at odds with the essential
nature of her own femininity. She has marked herself with a sign that
says, “Look at me! I’m hard!” The decoration on her skin suggests a
distortion in her soul. It suggests that she does not see feminine
modesty, elegance and reserve as valuable or worth cultivating.
Most women who get tattoos these days
never think about this. Instead, they get tattoos because it’s just what
girls do. In the absence of any real training in womanhood or grounding
for their identity, women get tattoos to show their membership in a
sisterhood, to be like their peers or to commemorate some event.
Tattooing took off between the nineties
and now, in part, because of the increasing transience of our society.
As we have discarded stable family lives and rooted communities for greater professional mobility, it
is no wonder that young women look for a way of creating on their
bodies permanent souvenirs of people and places and events that once
mattered to them but which they have lost.
The fleeting nature of everything now
–families, lovers, jobs, whatever– is hard on men and women in different
ways. Women, who long for security, have an even harder time finding it
in a disposable culture. No wonder then that they turn to tattooing for
something permanent and something a little like armor behind which they
can hide.
The widespread practice of women getting
tattoos, though it suggests a rejection of traditional femininity,
actually affirms its unchanging nature. The feminine wants to belong.
Women want to belong to a family. They want fathers. They want husbands.
They want to be marked as belonging to t a family, a tribe, a
community. When they are unable to find these things, unable to find a
figure of benevolent authority who will mark them as his, we can hardly
be surprised that they would mark themselves in some way.
Well said.They seemed lost, but the women I described could miraculously survive. I hope that someday they will lash out at the forces that have robbed them of their honor and dignity.
