Tattooed People as Taboo Figures in Modern Society - Tattooed People as Taboo

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Tattooed People as Taboo Figures in Modern Society - Tattooed People as Taboo

I will open with words from “The Body Decorated,” which I think aptly describe the significance of tattooed women in our society, 

“The body is the physical link between our souls, the outside world, and ourselves. It is the medium through which we most directly project ourselves in social life; our use, decoration and presentation of it say precise things about the society in which we live, the degree of our integration within that society, and the controls which society exerts over the inner person”  (Ebin, 1979:iv).

     While often dismissed as a somewhat mystical and an incomprehensible aesthetic, tattoo was once a living symbol of common participation in the cyclical and subsistence culture of the hunter-gatherer. Tattoo recorded the “biographies” of personhood, reflecting individual and social experience through an array of significant relationships that oscillated between the poles of masculine and feminine, human and animal, sickness and health, the living and the dead. Arguably, tattoo provided a nexus between the individual and communally defined forces that shape perceptions of existence.

        The aim of this paper is to prove, women’s tattoo practices, although viewed as tabu, must be seen as a means of cultural expression and nonverbal communication within modern society.  This paper will start with a broad definition of tattoo taken from Michael Delahunt, in The Fashioned Self “a European adaptation of a Polynesian word to describe markings known as tatu or tatau. Tattoo is a form of body art, in which a needle is pushed into the skin and a pigment injected”  (Finkelstein, 1991: 6).  The second definition I offer to clarify my aim, tabu, is also a word of Polynesian origin, “meaning or referring to people or things which are forbidden because they are dangerous as a result of their sacred nature or holy associations” (Kottack, 2000: 663). Cultural expression is based on how people relate to and express (usually through art and symbolism) the values and standards of their particular society (Kottack, 2000: 480).  Whereas, nonverbal communication encompasses many different channels, it is communication “given off” that is, it is nonverbal and relates to the presentation of self and to the impression one desires to make (Goffman, 1959: 29).

        The following is an overview, briefly introducing the arguments I will present to support my claim. There is a historical precedence for women tattooing, as an ancient practice, it is tied inextricably with human concepts about aestheticism, gender and social identity.  I argue that from a ‘body politics’ point, traditional patriarchal Western thinking has separated the body from the mind thus stigmatizing both women and tattoo. Tattoing is a permanent, not easily commodified, and is recognized as an art form in society, but, because of it’s link with deviancy in our culture it is outside our cultural standards of femininity.

 It is my contention that tattoo practices must be seen as part of the overall body decoration theme, and are used as a means of expression or communication within society (Daly, 1973; Freund, 1982).

            In view of their occurrence and wide distribution it would appear that the major modes and techniques of body art are very old. The earliest known firm evidence for tattoo is in ancient Egypt, where they record 6200 years of tattooing. It is of interest to note that most tattoos in archaeological records are those of women, and if one wanted to be contraire, might suggest that this now, most macho of art forms, may once have been a female preserve (Jagger and Krakow, 1994).

Modern western tattoo begins with the exploratory voyages of Captain James Cook in the mid 18th century; to Polynesia where Cook and his crew encountered South Pacific tattoo culture. European eyes often saw this practice, which became popular among sailors as 'savage' or 'barbarous' reflecting the elite eighteenth century's world view of a preordained 'great chain of being' (Gell, 1993; Turner, 1990). This hierarchical construct produced by the great scholars of the age was basically a vehicle for class-based prejudice (Harper, 1988). People and animals were arranged in strict status strata, from the monarch down, with the primitive, the poor, criminals and certain sorts of animals at the bottom of the heap (Harper, 1988). Such schemes later became the basis of such practices as eugenics and apartheid and still colour Western mainstream reaction to body art today (Vale and Juno , 1989).

 In Polynesian society tattooing was the norm however, and played a “key role in the construction of the person” (Vale and Juno, 1989).  In Polynesian regimes such as Hawaii, New Zealand, the Marquesas, Samoa and Melanesian Fiji the cultures, whilst not sharing a cultural logic, do exhibit similarities in that body art is used as a means of expression and communication within society (Gell, 1993).

Moko tatau (the body) and Te Moko tatau (the face) in Maori culture described a woman’s social rank, ancestry, special skills, and her personal life story, her clan or marriage status (Gell, 1993). Among the Samoans some designs showed political loyalty and generational ties in the family: certain districts had what may be called coats of arms, and each generation had some particular variation (Gell, 1993).

     Because “the best way of proving to one's self and to others that one is a member of a certain group is to place a distinctive mark on the body” (Nicholas 1994), body modification was in fact the way of showing one’s own identity. The role of these permanent markings began with the signs of puberty and introduced adulthood into a person’s life (Gell, 1993). Tattooing with Maori women was, and is, a sign of pure feminine beauty (Bateson and Mead, 1942; Gell, 1993; Hambly, 1927). Basically the more adorned you were, the more beautiful and wanted by the men (Gell, 1993). This meant picking the mate you were most attracted to; the man with the stronger, fertile abilities came more easily, thus making offspring strong and healthy (gell; 1993).

Other ethnographical and historical sources of body art come from “Native America”.  Again body art in the America's is described as “usually  connected with an ethnic identity, social role or status” (Vale and Juno ,1989).   It is not without a certain amount of irony then, that white Europeans have adopted the very art styles of the populations who were systematically exterminated by their emigrant and colonial ancestors (Chapkis, 1986; Bolin, 1992).

The Inuit women at contact are an example of this lost form of cultural expression. There seems to have been no widely distributed tattoo design among Inuit women, although chin stripes (tamlughun) were more commonly found than any other (Kruttak, 1998). Chin stripes served multiple purposes in social contexts. Most notably, they were tattooed on the chin as part of the ritual of social maturity, a signal to men that a woman had reached puberty (Kruttack, 1998). 

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     More generally, the chin stripe aesthetic was important to the Diomede Islanders living in Bering Strait. Ideally, thin lines tattooed onto the chin were valuable indicators for choosing a wife, according to anthropologist Sergei Bogojavlensky as quoted in Harrington (1981):

     “A full set of lines was not only a powerful physical statement of the ability to endure great pain but also an attestation to a woman's powers of "animal" attraction. In the St. Lawrence and Chaplino Yupik area of the early 20th century, women painted and tattooed their faces in ritual ceremonies in order to imitate, ...

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