The dilemmas of embodied symbolic representation: Regret in contemporary American tattoo narratives

Abstract

Numerous scholars have argued that we are currently in a post “tattoo renaissance” era wherein the practice has increasingly become a legitimate art form accepted by the American middle class. In order to facilitate this cultural transition, tattooed people legitimize their own tattoos through various narratives that ascribe deep semantic meaning to their images and words. Pulling from twenty-two in-depth interviews with tattoo removal clinicians, tattoo artists, people who regret at least one of their current tattoos, and people who have had their tattoos removed or altered, this paper contributes to the literature on the meaning and significance of tattoos in the lives of 21st century Americans. In particular, we aim to showcase that, in the current cultural context, wherein people feel a need to justify their tattoos with a level of profound symbolic meaning, tattoo regret abounds in a form distinct from that of previous generations. Drawing from a post-structuralist framework which understands tattoos as symbols, we discuss tattoo narratives as pervasive normative expectations and explore how people face potential dilemmas when they lack them, as well as when they subscribe static and absolute meanings to the words and images depicted in their body art. These narratives, and accordingly the tattoos themselves, become problematic as a result of the inability of tattoos to function beyond their capacity as symbolic representations. When people cannot reconcile or transcend the dynamic and relative nature of their tattoos’ symbolic meanings, they feel regretful and sometimes opt for tattoo cover-ups or removals.

Keywords:

• Body modification
• Tattoo
• Regret
• Deviance
• Popular culture

Notes

1 For a somewhat different take, see Koch, Roberts, Armstrong, and Owen's (2010) study that finds contemporary American college students with multiple tattoos to be more likely to engage in various forms of deviance.

2 DeMello (2000) states that, traditionally, working class tattoos did have less personal meaning for their wearers. Custom tattooing is a relatively new phenomenon, and pre-renaissance tattooists would occasionally tattoo the same design on every customer regardless of their specific requests (p. 138).

3 Laumann and Derick (2006) estimate that 24% of people in the United States ages 18–50 have at least one tattoo, and a 2008 Harris Poll (Corso, 2008) concluded that 14% of all American adults, 32% of American adults ages 25–29, and 25% of those ages 30–39 have at least one tattoo.

4 Beyond this symbolic meaning, the post-renaissance tattoo must also be esthetically beautiful and artistically well-drawn. Sanders (1989, p. 56) found that 21.47 % of his respondents regretted the artistic quality of their tattoos. While this constitutes a significant portion of people who express tattoo regret and may engage in removals or cover-ups, our interviews did not address this concern with any substance, so we will not delve deeper into this aspect of tattoo regret other than to restate DeMello's (2000) claim that the emphasis on tattoos as artwork is a fairly new conception.

5 Previous scholarship has distinguished these more devoted tattoo “collectors” (Vail, 1999) from “novices” (Irwin, 2001). Any such dichotomy is, at best, a conceptual tool useful in terms of ideal type comparisons, but the degree to which one is a novice or collector would more accurately be represented by a continuum spanning from extreme novice to extreme collector, allowing for movement and flexibility along the scale. We should also note that who qualifies as a collector depends upon who is defining the term. For example, some tattooed people who travel the country or the world to pay thousands of dollars to be tattooed by the most famous and renowned artists would likely view themselves as tattoo collectors, in contrast to someone fully covered in tattoos done by one or a few comparatively lower status artists. Regardless, future research investigating differences between less and more heavily tattooed people is certainly warranted.

6 Straight-edge is a youth subculture which has a philosophy based around refraining from the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs.