Taking the plunge
I’ve been wanting some more significant tattoos for years. I’ve mentioned this idea before (and have since updated it with pics) and have been wearing a trial version of it done in Sharpie all weekend. I’m happy with the look, but am, unexpectedly, finding myself a bit scared. It’s not the pain that concerns me, since tattoo pain is transitory; like getting snapped with rubber bands, and then dealing with a couple days of severe rug-burn. No, it’s the fact that these will be very visible. While no-one paid much attention to the Sharpie version I know that it will affect people’s perceptions of me, and that is what concerns me. I think it’s that I have no idea what it will mean to people, and, even worse, each person will assign different implications to them.
Some people will think I’m trying to look like a bad-ass. To some it will make me look more butch (probably the last thing I need). Some people will be less inclined to include me in their groups. Some people will be more inclined to include me in theirs (almost as bad as excluding me because of it). Some people will think I’ve done a terrible thing to myself. And some, will just think they’re cool looking. Fortunately, my friends tend to fall into the latter group, although none of them have any notable tattoos in visible places.
The only thing I don’t like about the design itself is that some people are going to think it’s a “tribal”, which I typically associate with white folk who just want something that “looks cool” and are chosen from a picture in a book, or on a wall. See, even I have my own BS mental associations with people’s tattoos. This isn’t a “tribal”. It’s just art.
The truth is that this does say something about me. It may have no deep symbolic meaning (most art doesn’t), but there is a great deal of inherent sociological meaning. There is no question that a tattoo like this, will set someone… apart. I’m not under some delusion that this is a particularly dramatic tattoo, on the scale of things, but the U.S. still hasn’t fully accepted tattoos even though 24% of Americans 18-50 have them. We do accept them to some degree, but as a people, we still want them to be hide-able, as if they’re dirty secrets, and we expect the ones that are visible to be… timid almost: small words, Chinese characters, cute cartoon characters, flowers, and other non-dramatic, harmless things. “Eight percent of people with tattoos report trouble at work” [ Amy Derick, Dermatologist]
But tattoos shouldn’t be dirty secrets. When you place a tattoo in a prominent location you are sharing a piece of yourself with the people around you, giving them a glimpse into your personality. If you’re not comfortable doing that you shouldn’t get it etched into your skin. And that, I think, solves my conundrum…
Time and again I have made choices in my life, in my dealings with others, that essentially say “This is who I am. Take it or leave it, because I am not willing to pretend to be someone I’m not.” So yeah, these new tattoos? They’re a definite reflection of who I am. I’m just doing you the courtesy of giving you some advance notice of the kind of person I am. I think the one thing that will come across regularly, and accurately, from these tattoos is that mine is a strong personality that doesn’t pussy-foot around.
It wasn’t my intent to broadcast that when designing them, but it is true, and it is one thing that won’t change about me. Only time will tell if this helps cut through some of the BS when dealing with people, or leads to more challenges, or maybe both… Fortunately for me, I don’t interact with customers, and in the U.S. programmers are typically very tattoo friendly. If someone refused to hire me because of one of my tattoos I would know that I’d just been saved months, or years, of suffering in a workplace where I wouldn’t be happy.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:07 am
[...] come up with what I think is a great variation on my tattoo idea but it requires someone with experience doing dot work* (stippling), and I may have found someone [...]