This is not a value judgement on the interviewer if one’s exposure to tattoo is through cultural industries like galleries, museums, advertising, the music industry, and mainstream print and online media, understanding tattoo as merely an aesthetic object makes sense. Instead, and even despite my using the first question to reveal my work’s modus operandi as one of presenting the stories of unique individuals without the usual fetishization found in mass media, I was asked the traditional set of facile questions tattooed bodies have been facing from mainstream outlets ever since they took a fascination with the ancient practice-what was your first tattoo?, how much have you spent?, where did it hurt the most?, what styles are popular?, are tattoos becoming uncool? what is the future of tattoo?. I was ready to don my sociological hat and put the question to bed. In other words, each unexpected location a tattoo turns up elicits another round of existential interrogations from mainstream media on the socio-cultural place of tattoo. Tattoo expert and art history lecturer, Dr Matt Lodder, informed Gabbatt that the media have been positing these tropes about tattoo’s status-'Now tattoos are middle class’, or ‘Shock horror, women are getting tattoos now’-for decades. Here he defined Vogue’s front page spread of a disrobed and tattooed Bieber and the topless tattooed torso of Adam Levine’s Super Bowl performance as the graceless demise of tattoo’s cultural capital. The bit was a follow-up to Adam Gabbatt’s piece published days before in The Guardian entitled, At arm’s length: are tattoos finally becoming uncool?. Credentials aside, it was my first radio interview, and my blood was flowing with too much caffeine and the all-encompassing fear of saying something irrevocably stupid.
Soulless tattoo skin#
I am not a tattooist-I am a sociologist that has experienced over 150 hours of tattooing and has been writing on tattoo and body modification for over six years for publications such as Vice, Dazed, Inked, Skin Deep, and Things & Ink. Last week I was interviewed live on ABC radio for a segment on tattoo.
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