Branded for Life: Tattooing and Social Status

Twelve thousand years has not altered the cross-cultural implications of tattoos. From the jungles of Borneo to dorm rooms at Harvard, their implications remain the same. Tattoos have always signified status.

In Indochina, a woman’s forearm tattoos made them desirable for marriage. Various designs demarked the wearer’s station in life. Rich women wore delicate arm tattoos that looked like expensive gloves women buy today at Bloomingdale’s. Warriors’ tattoos on showed how many lives they had taken in battle. Tattoos commanded respect and assured their wearers status for life.

Today, tattoos signify some personal trait or membership in either clan or society. The Hells Angels jealously guard their tattoo. Secret societies do the same. The aura of mystery and secrecy pervades the tattoo wearer whether they repel or attract us. Whatever our reasons for asking, the question remains: “What ARE they wearing? And WHY?”

Some believe a tattoo wearer possesses the spirit of his “dragon, eagle or flower.” William Blake might have said the ferocity of the Tyger belongs to others. Today, tigers, snakes, and bird of prey stalk unchecked in out midst. We might want to be careful whom we antagonize. Mediterranean civilizations used tattoos for espionage, slavery and the demarcation of crime, a filthy practice that continues to this day. Japanese girls were tattooed as rite of passage to womanhood and the Japanese tattoo assumed a religious significance.

Western cultures have tattooed family crests for centuries. Pope Hadrian banned tattooing in 787 AD but thrived in the British Isles until the Battle of Hastings, 1066 AD. William the Conqueror forced its disappearance from Western culture till the 16th century.

Yet tattoos thrived in Japan, notably for marking criminals. First offenses carried a line across the forehead. The second, an arch and the third, another line – the Japanese character for "dog" – The start of the: “Three strikes and you’re out law.” The Japanese tattoo became an aesthetic art form with the “body suit”, a social reaction to strict laws. While royalty alone were allowed to wear ornate clothing, nothing stopped the middle class from wearing elaborate full body tattoos that left the naked considered “well dressed”.

American tattoos were born in Chatham Square, New York City; a seaport and entertainment center attracting the affluent and the working class. Tattoo artists grew in respectability and so too did the tattoo, flourishing as artist husbands tattooed their wives with their work and became their billboards. Cosmetic tattooing meshed with cheek blush, lipstick and eyeliner. Cardinals’ fans might want to investigate Jim Edmonds.

After World War I, tattoos began to symbolize bravery and wartime solidarity. With the Prohibition and Depression, tattoos became travelers’ markers telling the story of where the wearer had been. Post World War II America became disenchanted with the tattoo by its association with delinquency. Tattooing had little respect in American culture. The 1961 hepatitis outbreak all but destroyed any positive status the tattoo had earned. Lyle Tuttle changed the American attitude toward tattoos in the late ‘60s with media savvy and tattooing celebrity women. Scores of magazines rushed to him for information about this ancient art form.

Toady, tattoos are more popular than they ever were. All classes of people seek them and the tattooist is considered a "fine artist". Political consultants, actors and baseball players wear them – proudly or sheepishly – but wear them nonetheless. While the status tattoo wearers enjoy is certainly less clear than it was a thousand years ago, the status the tattoo itself enjoys is a popular, if confused one.

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