Ryan ChartrandWarriors feared them in Oceania, sailors sported them in 18th- century Europe, and modern anti-establishment iconoclasts idolize them. So, what could “they” be exactly, and where do you find “them”? They have been called many things: from tatau to trash, body art to body defamation. Whatever their name, however we choose to categorize them, tattoos have infiltrated our mainstream cultural defenses and have taken traditional Americana for a loop.
Gone are more conventional pictures of standard blue-collar American life: mama’s homemade apple pie, baseball and “Leave it to Beaver.” Today, we have more palatable canvases on which to depict these nostalgic remnants of a distant past. Today, we have tattoos.
As millions of Americans flock to local tattoo parlors all over the country in search of this holy grail of body modification, getting inked is on the minds of many different kinds of people. So many people in fact, that I can’t help but ask, “Has getting a tattoo become more of a cultural fad than cultural statement?”
These days, it seems everyone has a tattoo. Everywhere you look, it’s ink on skin, ink on skin. At the beach, walking down the street, at the gym, tattoos; like I said, absolutely everywhere. Some people have a problem with this growing phenomenon of artistic expression, my own parents being two of them. Some people believe tattoos are destroying the moral fabric of our lives, that they are evil. These people don’t understand the symbolism of this ancient art, and luckily, I am here to enlighten.
A tattoo is a commitment. It is a permanent mark on your skin, an oath to carry something sacred with you till the end of your days; perhaps a piece of today you want to remember tomorrow. It is the birth of something new.
Tattoos are whatever the bearer wants them to be. They can symbolize rites of passage, depict status or rank, be symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, be decorations of bravery, or even just a silly mark. Tattoos can be many things and can be found on all types of people. Which brings me to my next point:
To define who the modern tattoo connoisseur is and to categorize them into groups would be a gross generalization. Far too often I’ve heard of the “hardcore tattoo enthusiast, complete with full-body tattoos on all body surfaces” people, the “I did it in college” people, the “I’m a cool soccer mom because I have a tattoo” crowd, the “bikers,” the “rockers,” and I’m sick of it.
Maybe people should just stop judging others by the colors they have in their skin and the ink they wear on their sleeves. People are gonna do what they’re gonna do. Perhaps it’s time to let go of these juvenile stereotypes and see everyone as one unit, because in the end we are all just people. We’re all human, and no matter what we do to escape being put into boxes or placed in categories, we all belong to the same collective group and no matter what we do to escape it, we are all already different, and all universally the same; tattoo or no tattoo, so why do they matter?