Why do people get tattoos?

As increasingly diverse groups of people get tattoos, popular perceptions are often out of synch with the individual meanings

behind them

People use tattoos to express who they are, what they have lived through, and how they see themselves in relation to others and to

their social worlds

Tattooed youth

Tattooed youth:a vehicle to mark adulthood

a. greater control and authority over their own lives

b. asserting autonomy over their own bodies

c. signify and solidify group memberships

d. commemorating a passage to adulthood & a committed relationship

Tattooing women

Tattooing women

defy and reproduce conventional standards of femininity

challenging traditional gender norms

conform to mainstream standards of femininity

Tattooing women

enforce rather than challenge traditional femininity

Tattooing women

meanings women attach to their tattoos are “culturally written over” by the larger society

Tattooing women

reclaim their bodies from traumatic experiences[tattoo over mastectomy scar]

reclaiming lost or violated parts of themselves

[A U.K. woman has tattooed herself with the logo of the air ambulance company that helped save her father's life]

Tattooing women

reclaim their bodies from more everyday experiences of feeling unattractive, weak, or different

Tattooing women

complex practice that involves both conformity and resistance to the expectation that their bodies be attractive to men

Limitations

• carry stigma and can provoke discrimination

• teenagers perceived as gang members, drug users, dropouts, and troublemakers

• cover tattoos not only when looking for work but also on the job

• create tensions in interpersonal relations

• contradictory interpretations of tattoos may also confront those who wish to make political or social statements

“Tats”

• ongoing, complex need for humans to express themselves through the appearance of their bodies

• a canvas to record the struggles between conformity and resistance, power and victimization, individualism and group membership

• power as vehicles for self-expression, commemoration, community building, and social commentary