(Monstrous) Beauty (Myths): The commodification of women's bodies and the potential for tattooed subversions

abstract

Women's bodies are often treated as sites of containment, control and oppression (Grosz, 1994). In contemporary contexts of tattooing, women's bodies, and their relationships to their bodies could be challenged and perhaps even shifted, as there is potential to engage embodiment and its subversive power to elevate female subjects from ‘object’ to active ‘participant’ within the consumerist-art-financial-embodied-identity exchange. This is of course contested terrain (Atkinson, 2002) as tattoos and their meanings, and variety of reasons that women decide on becoming tattooed, vary enormously, however the potential for subversion through tattooing does nevertheless exist. Within consumerist cultures, the body becomes a great commodity-bodies are used to sell almost everything, and the use and representation of bodies in this context is always gendered (Wolf, 1990). Braunberger (2000) engages what she labels ‘monster beauty’ - basically an alternative ‘female aesthetic’ in the context of women who are tattooed, she offers this in relation to existing conventions of feminine beauty which arguably render female bodies as consumer objects. To this end, Naomi Wolf provides a core consideration for this Perspective when she argues that beauty is a currency system - in short both embodied, and commodified - but proceeds to advocate this: “In response, we must now ask the question about our place in our bodies that women a generation ago asked about their place in society” (1990:270).

Keywords:

• Body
• commodity
• tattoo
• women
• subversion

Notes

1. There is a vast body of literature encompassing a range of harmful practices of feminine beauty that engages both industries of beauty in the form of cosmetic surgeries (Kathy Davis, 1995; Naomi Wolf, 1990) as well as the prevalence of eating disorders amongst women (Susan Bordo, 1997; Susie Orbach,1978 & 2002). While many of these studies focus on Euro-American contexts, the impact of globalisation and the prevalence of pervasive Western cultural ideals render this a useful point of departure here.

2. Most scholarly writing on tattoos/tattooing exists within the disciplines of Sociology (Sanders & Vail, 2008; Kosut, 2000), Psychology (Jeffreys, 2000; Riley, 2002) and Anthropology (Schildkrout, 2004).

3. In this context, a ‘tattoo narrative’ is a personal engagement with and telling of a ‘tattoo story’ this is an open categorisation and basically alludes to any story or narrative related to the tattoo(s) and recounted by its/their owner/wearer.

4. Emphasis is the author's.

5. There is a fair amount of literature supporting the common trend for women and girls to acquire what have come to be called ‘feminine’ tattoos, in discrete, often fetishised places of the female body. For further discussion see: Neville, 2005; Schildkrout, 2004; van Wolputte, 2004; Atkinson, 2002; Braunberger, 2000; Kosut, 2000.

6. My family tree is steeped in Celtic heritage, as a young child I became familiar with Celtic mythology, and while Morgana's location within this mythology is contested, she has always been a symbol of great strength for me.

7. A conscious allusion to a South African feminist slogan ‘Wathint’ abafazi wathint'imbokodo’/ ‘You strike the woman, you strike the rock’.