Tattoos in Western Society

Popular depictions of tattooing in contemporary Western society have often synonymised this form of body-art with riskiness, crime, and exoticising narratives. From super-villains such as Star Wars’ Darth Maul, to DC’s sailor-turned-criminal Abel Tarrant, and into the real-world of office regulations still widely dictating ‘no visible tattoos’ policies, the cultural perception and practice of tattooing has been revolved around this subversive and ultimately dangerous image of extremeness. Unknown to many however is that the popular opinions that have surrounding tattooing throughout Western history are far from myopic disgust (Atkinson, 2004). Oscillating between periods of embracement and antipathy, this article unpacks the the dynamic production and consumption of tattooing across Europe and North America, to highlight how the individual and social identities both prescribed and formed from this practice, are in fact rooted in the subcultural and Orientalist narratives that pervaded the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in the West.

Embedded with colonial themes of racialisation and Othering, tattoos resurged within 18th century Europe with the return of Captain James Cook from Polynesia, accompanied by native ‘specimens’ wearing extensive tribal tattoos (Werner, 2005). Aristocratic European society held a fascinated horror with the tattooed body, corporealising imaginative geographies of the exotic Other (Said, 1979). Despite this initial popularity, the proliferation of exoticised entertainment through ethnic shows and ‘habitat exhibits’ across Europe and North America, such as the display of tattooed Tahitian communities (Werner, 2005) fetishized the tattooed body as primitive and ‘freakish’ (Kerchy and Zittlau, 2012). Tattoos were simultaneously exonerated or demonised through structures of class and social background, as well as position in colonial worlds as either subject or oppressor.

The short-lived rise of beachcombing in the late 18th century, where white European sailors returned from living amongst Polynesian communities adorned with tribal tattoos, uncovered the vulnerability of whiteness, rendering such bodies as liminal figures; many such beachcombers went on to earn their living through performing in side shows as ‘made freaks’ (Fordham, 2007; Cummings, 2003), cementing their marginalised status. Through subverting white, unblemished ideals, tattoos became associated with the ‘underbelly of society’ (Gilman, 1985).

Pathlogisation of the body in the early 20th century alongside the positivist revolution (Pitts, 1999) shifted associations of tattooed individuals from exotic to criminal and mentally unstable (Lombroso, 1911). Studies of tattooed males in psychiatric wards and prisons (Gittleson et al. 1969), reaffirmed public conceptions of tattoos as degenerate and abnormal (Foucault, 1977). Tattoos became symbols of societal outcasts, affiliated with deviant bodies such as the military, gang members and prisoners (Kosut, 2006)- traditionally male dominated groups, thus masculinising the tattoo and promoting aggressive associations. They were even made illegal across parts of the US, such as New York City in 1961, reaffirming such associations.

However, defiance to norms of ‘unblemished skin’ (Irwin, 2003) encouraged many marginal groups to celebrate tattooing as a sign of resistance and collective identity. Post-War discontent left communities, especially working-class youths, at economic and societal margins eager to materialise their own collectives (Hall and Jefferson, 1993; Steward et al., 1990). Indelible ink became an expressive functionality of multiple subcultures from anti-establishment Punks to working-class Skinhead solidarity, building a heterogeneous tattoo community who recognised and embraced this form of common resistance and utilising style as symbolic subversion.

Alongside these discourses of deviance and resistance, attitudes towards tattoos began to widen throughout the latter half of the 20th century. The ‘Tattoo Renaissance’ that indicated tattooing’s revival was pioneered by artists in the 1950s and 1970s. American tattooist Don Ed Hardy was one such figure, widely credited with pioneering modern tattoo styles such as neo-Japanese works from studying in Japan under tattoo master Horihide in 1973, indicating a modernising shift in the way Orientalist practices of acquisition were carried out under discourses of globalisation and creative hybridisation (Yamada, 2009). Tattoo styles began diversifying, becoming avant-garde through Japanese, single-needle and tribal styles rather than fixating on bold Traditional American or scripture, encouraging personal agency and creative expression regarding the unlimited choice of tattoo style individuals now possessed.

In the last three decades, the tattoo industry has experienced rising popularity. Individuals traditionally distanced from the marginalised ‘tattoo community’ (Pitts, 2003), including the middle-classes, professionals and women (Irwin, 2001; 2003), are becoming inked. This limbing attraction has been attributed to greater tattoo ‘sanitisation’, accessibility to tattoo removal, and positive media and trend-setting through celebrity influence (Velliquette et al., 1998), but the shifting mindset of society towards individualism and employing personal agency demonstrates how the relationship between subcultural capital, conceptualisations of authenticity and tattooing is changing.

Nevertheless, it is this very labelling of tattoos as subversive to conventional society that subcultural scholars such as Hebdige (1979) argue to be part of the sequence of the ‘incorporation’ of subcultures into the mainstream (Heath and Potter, 2006). In this sequence, confrontation becomes conformation, and rebellion is redefined as fashion. Hebdige’s post-War analysis of society explored how subcultures such as Punks, Teddy Boys and so forth emerged as challenges to social normalisations, situating each subculture within historic, racial, socioeconomic and class backgrounds (Torode, 1981). He posited that subcultures follow the same trajectory: stemming from common resistance and utilising style as symbolic subversion, the dominant society then assesses such groups as radical and dangerous to social order, thus finds ways to appropriate and commodify their style to containing recklessness, making it available to mainstream society (Heath and Potter, 2006). Style, ranging from music to drug-use, becomes ‘incorporated’ into the fashion system- a ‘supermarket of style’ where everything is up for grabs and holds little meaning (Sweetman, 1999). Applying Hebdige’s theory to the context of indelible inking, tattoos can be considered as transforming from being socially ‘othered’, to core components of resistive movements, and eventually being ‘incorporated’ by discriminating mainstream society (Hebdige, 1979). The proliferation of tattoos across Western society thus arguably showcases the transition of tattoos from the margins to the core of society as a form of incorporation.

Yet it is imperative to reflect how tattoos evolved into reflections of the individualism within contemporary Western society rather than static repurposed symbols of mediated and neutralised insurgence by dominant society. Tattoos are valuable as they inhabit a unique position within subcultural discourses, as enthusiasts may get inked for purely aesthetic reasons or on a whim (Thomas, 2012; Eubanks, 1996), but may also embody rich and multi-layered meanings representing an interaction of body and mind (De Certeau, 1984). In a neoliberal world where individual agency is often valued over the traditional and structural agencies of the post-War era, tattoos allow for the embracement of individualism regardless of hegemonic narratives or subversive discourses that lay claim to the shifting attitudes towards this body art.

Using subcultural and post-subcultural theorist frameworks, the changes in how tattooing is experienced and worlded into existence by diverse and heterogeneous bodies draws attention to the non-static and plural nature of tattoos as symbolic, as creative expression, as a worlding practice, as a consumer aesthetic, natures that can be engaged with simultaneously and/or separately, individually and/or collectively.