drifter51
"The argument against tattoos."
Sign Up | Log In
content
content
members
Create
- Write a Review
- Post a Quick Tip
- Create a List
- Ask a Question
- Create a Poll
- Create a Community
I think there is a universal tendency to identify with one's body, and that there is a similar tendency to attempt to engrave one's identity on one's body. I choose to wear a beard for this reason, I suppose. Others may choose to have tattoos.
In many other cultures, tattoos are institutionalized as a method of inclusion into the community, much the way circumcision is in Judaism. Ritual surgery isn't that different from tattoos when we think about it except that usually men don't make the decision to become circumcised themselves but rather this decision is made for them by their parents.....
Similarly when we look at something like the henna work that goes on a bride's body in the Moroccan first marriage rites, this is again an attempt to address identity through manipulating the body. In this rite, even though the henna eventually comes off, the bride must remain quite still for many hours during the application and then is completely dependent on the help of others, and some anthropologists have suggested that this functions to help ease the transition of the bride into the hyper-restricted domestic sphere of Moroccan life as a woman.
What makes tattoos less threatening than circumcision or henna applied to the body of the bride to our mind in our culture really ought to be the fact that the first two address transmission of identity by manipulating the bodies of others, while tattoos in our culture are individual choices expressing one's own identity by engraving it on one's own body.
So I guess tattoos don't bother me.
My vote in this category goes to you! **Click**
How tattoos affect employment really depends on the field and the location of the job. For example, a bunch of my friends in the San Francisco Bay Area work in the tech industry, which doesn't really seem to care about visible tattoos or piercings. One of these friends ended up taking up work in Japan, where they're more strict about this type of thing in the work place and he ended up taking out his facial piercings and wearing a watch to cover up his wrist tattoo. As far as the way they look, I've seen some really bad "what were you thinking?" tattoos, as well as some really gorgeous ones. Tattoos, however, are not for me, at least for now, and I choose to find other ways to express myself.