Heavily tattooed women’s emotional and embodied geographies of (non-) belonging in Wollongong, Australia

Abstract

This article addresses embodied geographies of (non-) belonging for six heavily tattooed white women in Wollongong, Australia, as part of a larger project on tattooed bodies. The article employs the concept of ‘embodied belongings’ to consider the felt dimensions of how ideas, things and bodies combine in various ways produce shifting inclusionary and/or exclusionary places. Feelings of non-belonging are generated by how women’s heavily tattooed bodies combine with things alongside whiteness, Christian faith and patriarchal femininity to comprise public, familial, and work places. The direct challenge of tattooed bodies to social norms surrounding patriarchal femininity can also, however, within the socio-material relationship that comprise certain pubs and chance encounters in public places create feelings of belonging for heavily tattooed women. This article contributes an embodied spatial and relational understanding of how the faithed, racialized, and gendered politics of women’s heavily tattooed body plays out in daily life.

Keywords:

• Class
• embodied belongs
• gender
• skin
• qualitative methods

Introduction

This article draws on recent feminist arguments about the skin and applies them to explore what it means for white women to be tattooed. Briefly, the project emerged after 10 years of researching the geographies of the body, with a specific focus on examining the skin as a geographical lens for rethinking the body’s boundaries. Following Ahmed and Stacey (2001), I conceptualize skin as a porous boundary that is simultaneously private and public. I was interested in the role of place in how tattooed individuals negotiate various racialized and gendered ‘truths’ as their tattoos transform their bodies. The research was based on tattoo biographical narratives with 24 able-bodied women and 18 men who reside in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Wollongong is a regional city, located approximately 80 km south of Sydney, with a population of around 216,000 people on the east coast. This regional city has an industrial legacy rooted in post-war migration from Europe, steel, and coal. Unlike many industrial cities, however, steel production continues alongside economic diversification into tourism, education, and health.

Tattoo biographical narratives combined semi-structure interviews with sketches to elicit responses related to the felt and discursive dimensions about their tattooed bodies related to faith, gender, race, and class as participants negotiated their daily lives. The 18 women categorized as ‘lightly tattooed’, spoke of hidden single tattoos on backs, hips, ankles, or breasts and designs articulated as ‘cute’ or ‘feminine’ (hearts, flowers, rosebuds, butterflies, dolphins, fairies). As Thompson (2015) noted, for these women tattooed bodies is not about transgressing gendered norms but often memorialising ‘romantic love’ or ‘familial relationships’. Instead, the focus here is on the six 20-something-years-old white skinned women categorized as ‘heavily tattooed’ that sometimes included macabre/masculine tattoos (skulls, snakes, Southern Cross). These women all had large, visibly placed ‘full-sleeves’ covering limbs alongside tattoos on backs and chests, which are covered by clothes. The narratives of the six women’s tattooed bodies illustrate the gender policing and exclusion from place that they face on daily basis from transgressing the faithed, heterosexual, classed, and racialized matrix. In everyday interactions, the bodies of these women, heavily marked by tattoos, are often perceived as different from unmarked white bodies, which are seen as fitting in and belonging. This gendered discrimination becomes evident when heavily tattooed white women’s bodies are visible.

Women’s tattooed bodies have long been read by feminist scholars across various disciplines as key agents in the symbolic shaping of corporeal identities (Armstrong 1991; Frenske 2007, Krakow 1994, Miffin 1997, MacCormack 2006; Thompson 2015; Krenske and McKay 2000; Moran 2014; Rahbari, Longman and Coene 2019; Sheehan and Vadjunec 2015). This research reveals how tattoos, as aesthetic devices, play a crucial role in the representational body-politics. Tattoos are considered as cultural codes that are implicated in broader power structures, religion, gender, racism, sexism, and capitalist class. For example, most Bible and Quaran scholars have interpreted sacred texts as prohibiting tattoos because they permanently alter the body (Botz-Bornstein 2015). As Rahbari, Longman and Coene (2019) illustrate, Iranian women’s tattooed bodies are represented on official online platforms as impure, un-Islamic and unfeminine. In the context of western colonial and imperial white supremacy ideologies, notions of bodily purity are used to reinforce racial hierarchies through the appearance of the skin (Botz-Bornstein 2013). Women’s tattooed skin is read through white supremacy ideology as a contamination or deviation to racial purity and cultural identity. This colonial and imperial framework extends to notions of white feminine beauty that upholds a racial hierarchy by privileging luminous, smooth, clear, and unblemished skin (Dyer, 1997; Price, 2012; Ahmed and Stacey, 2001; Waitt 2022).

According to gender hegemony, white women’s unblemished skin helps to constitute doing femininity following normative patriarchal rules as ‘respectable’, ‘sexy’ and ‘beautiful’. Thus, Young (1990a) argues that the notion of respectability is regulated by patriarchal femininity. Young (1990a: 136) writes that respectability:

consists in conforming to norms that repress sexuality, bodily functions, and emotional expression. It is linked to an idea of order: the respectable person is chaste, modest, does not express lustful desires, passion, spontaneity, or exuberance, is frugal, clean, gently spoken and well mannered.

Three implications are noted in the tattoo literature that refers to normative patriarchal feminine ideals assigned at birth as they cut across dimensions of ability, sex, gender, race, and class. First, as MacCormack (2006) observes, by perpetuating the racial idea that fair skin is the ideal standard of patriarchal feminine beauty for women, the framework of whiteness positions white men’s body as a canvas for tattoos. Given that tattoos are typically understood as masculine, when embodied by a feminine subject, they constitute a threat to male dominance. Second, white women with visible tattoos may be stigmatized and marginalized by associating their physical identity with being unfeminine, inferior, or unprofessional, and in more extreme cases, with notions of religious disobedience, savagery, or criminality (Talvi, 2000; Ahmed and Stacey 2001). The stigmatization or gender policing of women’s tattooed bodies maintains binary gender divisions and femininity’s subordinate position in relation to masculinity and hegemonic femininity. Third, contemporary feminist scholarship acknowledges that following what Rubin (1988) termed a ‘Tattoo Renaissance’, tattoos cannot simply be understood in terms of gender oppression (Botz-Bornstein 2013; Thompson 2015). For some women, tattoos are a highly valued fashion item and body art form to express rebellion, self-acceptance, and resistance against patriarchal feminine identities. Women’s tattooed bodies might be described following Schippers (2007, 95) as ‘pariah femininity’, because they deviate from compliance with normative femininity.

In sum, feminist scholarship on representational body-politics illustrates how normative gender expectations can categorize, differentiate, individualize, and regulate tattooed bodies designated as female. Femininity is understood as a normative ideal that women are expected to embody and live up to Holland (2004). Rather than highlighting the representational body politics, I emphasize Probyn’s (1996) concept of ‘embodied belonging’. In doing so, this article contributes to feminist scholarship that acknowledges while sets of normative expectations are important to understand femininity so too are everyday experiences (McCann 2018; Ahmed 2004). Embodied belongings conceive of femininities as always relational, messy, fluid, social, material, and emplaced. Such an approach acknowledges that while white-skinned women’s tattooed bodies are caught up in gender expectations of bodily appearances, they are also felt through daily practices of negotiating places.

The article is structured in three sections. The first section illustrates the utility of an embodied belongings approach to understanding women’s tattooed bodies. Next the methods are outlined. This is followed by a spatial analysis of what the sense and sensibilities of tattooed skin do. An interpretation is offered of how heavily tattooed white women’s bodies experience non-belonging in and through the socio-material relationships that comprise the white, middle-class notion of respectable femininity in public, familial, and work places. I argue that moments of inclusion are felt in and through the socio-material relationships of certain pubs and chance encounters with other tattooed bodies in public places. These inclusive arrangements affirm heavily tattooed white-skinned woman’s sense of self.

Rethinking heavily tattooed white skinned bodies with Elspeth Probyn

Embodied belonging draws on the perspective presented by Probyn (1996) that the question: ‘Who am I?’ is inherently linked to the question: ‘Where do I belong?’ Probyn’s work on sexuality conceptualizes belonging as a dynamic, relational, spatial, and socio-material process, rather than assuming a fixed and unreflective state. Probyn conceives of belonging as a process fuelled by yearning, emotional investment, and the desire for connections, rather than a fixed and taken-for-granted condition. Probyn (1996) writes:

the desire for some sort of attachment, be it to other people, places or modes of being, and the ways in which individuals and groups are caught within wanting to belong, wanting to become, a process that is fuelled by yearning rather than the positing of identity as a stable state. (1996, 19)

As explained by Probyn, there is much to learn about our sense of self and place from conceiving belonging as yearning for connections. For Probyn, belonging is an emotional imperative that is felt in and through the emotional and affective force from rubbing up against the coming together of socio-material relations that comprise everyday social life. Following Probyn’s perspective, femininity is constantly evolving, shaped by the ongoing situated socio-material relational processes of belonging, longing to belong, becoming, and being. This approach does not fix femininity in normative terms associated with heterosexual, white, middle-class status and unties gender identity from gender presentation. Probyn’s notion of ‘embodied belongings’ views bodies, places, and one’s sense of self as an ongoing emplaced process of relational change (Antonsich 2010).

In turning to embodied belongings, I build on feminist geographical scholarship that has engaged with processes by which different social groups belong, or not, in different places; including islanders (Mackenzie 2004), disabled people (Parr 2006; Morrison et al. 2021; Waitt and Harada 2023), public housing tenants (Mee 2009), lesbians, and gays (Oswin 2008). In feminist geography, Parr (2006) draws on Probyn’s work to illustrates how the desire for and creation of belonging occurs through the artistic practices and experiences produced by the coming together of socio-material relationships that comprise the spaces of community-arts-projects for mental health in Dundee and Glasgow, UK. Parr (2006) argues that embodied belonging is conceived as a desire to become something, or to aspire. Parr (2006) underscores that embodied belongings are made and unmade in relation to broader power relations and axes of privilege and exclusion, including discourse and practices that constitute ability, gender, faith, and class.

Likewise, Morrison et al. (2021) illustrate how embodied (non-) belongings are felt through how bodies, things and ideas come together in various shifting ways to produce exclusionary or enabling arrangements. They demonstrate how the emotions and affective intensities that are sensed through the coming together of socio-material arrangements that comprise disability spaces in Aotearoa New Zealand, have the potential to reconfigure or resist the ablest forces that configure disability. Omitted is an embodied analysis of people with tattooed bodies.

I argue that the concept of embodied belongings enhances a spatial understanding of heavily tattooed white-skinned women’s bodies by examining the felt force of passings or encounters; that is the moment-to-moment unfolding relations between ideas, things, and bodies (tattooed and not tattooed) that produce places as socially inclusive and/or exclusive. Probyn argues that embodied belonging is related to ‘what is possible at this time, in this place, with these people, things, and ideas’ (1996, 156). Embodied belonging is therefore conceived as situated, dynamic, unstable, and contingent but also fundamentally social and material. What is required is not only a representational analysis of bodily difference, but also an embodied analysis of bodily sensations. Importantly for this article, following Probyn (1996), the sense and sensibilities of situated tattooed bodies’ belonging, or not, is a process. Each passing generates emotional and affective forces as part of the ongoing coming together of social and material relationships in either inclusionary, or exclusionary arrangements. Embodied belongings provide a way of thinking about how the affective and emotional forces of socio-material relations that comprise a sense of self are contingent on a social order or inclusionary assemblage, that is felt as safe or comfortable. Whereas social-material arrangements that violate the social order and generate discomfort are felt as exclusionary and operate against possibilities to belong, calling into question one’s sense of self.

Following Probyn (1996), the sense and sensibility of belonging requires a geographical analysis of the emotional and affective forces generated by social-material relations, felt as inclusive and/or exclusive. Attention thus turns to questions of what a body does, who it connects with, and how different spatial arrangements are negotiated. The sense, and sensibilities of white-skinned bodies having highly visible tattooed skin in different contexts may generate either pleasure and pride, or discomfort and pain. Attention turns to the confirmation, or violation, of established social orders and prevailing dominant discourses about tattooing (religious obedience, criminality and masculinity), and what tattooing achieves (diminished white feminine beauty, impurity, empowerment). In some work and familial contexts, the affective forces of discomfort from proximity to colleagues or loved ones may operate to categorise, stigmatize, and spatially segregate women’s tattooed bodies as out of place. In these moments, some heavily tattooed white skinned women may opt to wear clothes to cover up tattoos, reconfiguring the masculine/feminine and professional/unprofessional binaries. Longing for connections and places of belonging not associated with patriarchal femininity, pride, and pleasure sensed from chance encounters with other tattooed bodies through the socio-material arrangements of some pubs and online sites. These place provide possibilities to unite and identify within a wider tattooed body community’s aesthetics and practices.

Methods

The qualitative design and application of biographical narratives builds on previous ethnographic work on tattoos (see Sanders and Angus Vail 1989; DeMello 2000; Atkinson 2003; Pitts 2003; Garot 2010; Thompson 2015). Tattoo biographical narratives were conducted by myself, a mature-aged non-tattooed white able-bodied man of British ancestry and a research team of 10 twenty-something (6 tattooed, 4 non-tattooed) white able-bodied human geography students enrolled in a qualitative methods course. Biographical narratives are particularly helpful in enhancing understanding of the relational and situated attributes of participants’ experiences, meanings, and identities (Crang 2005; Pink 2008). Following Valentine and Sadgrove (2014, 1982) the strength of a biographical narrative is ‘the dynamism of memory in making temporal connections. It is the biographical pasts – memories, associations, histories, experiences – that contribute to orientating bodies in the present’. To share tattoo biographical narratives underscores the significance of the subject; the importance of collective histories and personal pasts; the ability to make decisions around the self-discipline over identifications and emotions; and the importance of the reflective judgements made by passing individuals about tattooed bodies.

Thus, the semi-structured interview schedule combined with sketch was designed to help participants narrate the role of tattoos in their lives: (1) Learning about tattoos; (2) Why tattoos?; (3) Current tattoos and future plans; (4) Bodily limits; (5) People, places and tattoos; and, (5) Emotional responses to being tattooed; family, friends, strangers and employers. Interviews employed sketching following the advice of Veal and Hawkins (2020) that creative practices can reveal the emotional dimensions of socio-material relationships. Before commencing research, approval was received from the Human Ethics Research Committee. Participants were interviewed individually in their homes or in a public place where they felt comfortable. All participants chose their pseudonym. Tattoo biographical narratives lasted between 60 and 90 min and were transcribed in full from audio-recordings.

Participants were recruited through personal networks in Wollongong. In total, 42 interviews were completed and, where relevant accredited to the students’ assessment criteria. Reflecting the research team’s demographic attributes, the study was not inclusive along lines of ancestry, with no Asian-Australians and Indigenous Australians participating. All participants identified as ‘white’ (in various ways, European Australian, Aussie, Australian, Caucasian, White). Furthermore, the study was skewed towards younger tattooed women. From a total of forty-four, twenty-one identified as straight/hetero(sexual) females. Two identified as bisexual female, another two as ‘exploring’ and another one as ‘fluid’. Eighteen identified as straight/hetero(sexual)males and one as a bi male. Thirty-nine were aged under 30 years of age, representing a demographic that were born after the ‘Tattoo Renaissance’.

The six 20-something-years-of-age heavily tattooed women discussed here were not mothers. None lived in their parental home. All had completed either a secondary or tertiary education. They all understood tattooed skin as transformative and permanent using terms like ‘empowerment’, ‘self-expression’, ‘self-identity’, ‘standing out’, ‘being a bit different’, ‘cool’, ‘not so plain’, ‘hot’, ‘comfortable’ and ‘stronger’. Each tattoo biography underscored how the visible heavily tattooed bodies brings to the fore questions about faithed, gendered and racialized ‘truths’. Their narratives highlight the importance of place in how participants negotiate the coding of heavily tattooing practices as transgressive. More specifically, they point to the lack of ‘LGBTQIA+’ places in Wollongong, due to the politics of sexuality, and lack of queer politicization. In what follows, I interpret how women’s heavily tattooed white skin acts as an affective and emotional force that takes on different meanings and forms through encounters with others in public, familial and work places. Pseudonyms are used in the text.

Non-belongings: public places, domestic places, and the workplace

Public places: the affective force of stares and unwanted touch

This section discusses how moments of non-belonging are felt through the affective and emotional force from the ongoing coming together of socio-material arrangements that comprise streets and pubs. Moments of non-belonging were articulated as discomforting, generated by discriminatory encounters. In these places, participants’ heavily tattooed bodies are reminded of their difference by gendered judgments, questions, stares, and unwanted touch. Whether well-intended or purposely antagonistic, these differentiating acts made heavily tattooed women feel on display. Participants continued to experience stereotyping in ways that lightly or non-tattooed white women may rarely encounter.

For example, Karen and Marlene described their tattooed bodies becoming hyper-visible in Wollongong city centre. Each reflected on the dominant public discourses behind the stares and a loss of privileges accrued by white patriarchal femininity. Such regulation of feminine transgressions as they relate to whiteness and class as described by Hoskin (2020) is termed femmephobia.

Karen is 25 years of age, single, secondary-educated, grew up in Canberra, employed full-time as a barista, and described her sexuality as ‘fluid’. Over her life course, she has spent over $1,000 on tattoos that are on her arms, hands, legs, shoulder, collar bone, upper thighs, back and stomach. Karen explained her desire for tattoos as twofold;

when I get bored of the way I look I just [clicks fingers] add something or just change something and for a while it was like, adding tattoos. And I think it was a “I wanna look cooler” cos I don’t feel very cool.

Karen opted to get tattoos in response to the issue of communicating a fashionable identity and as a strategy of belonging to queer communities.

Karen spoke of her tattooed body being judged as ‘scum’ when shopping in Wollongong city centre.

Like the stereotype does get put on us, and (we’re) viewed in different ways and treated in different ways. …. I definitely get a lot more dirty looks when I, walk around, old people don’t like me as much [laughs]. I get talked to by strangers about them a lot. I feel like I seem less approachable sometimes. But by like a certain group of people. It has happened so many times, even going to cafes or going shopping or something. And like really small, simple, day to day things and people just will look at the girly polite person next to me and just be like: “Oh yeah I’ll talk to her” and just look at me like: “Look at this scum bag”. It honestly happens all the time and it’s really hard to narrow down. We’re knocked down a step if were covered in tattoos especially females.

Karen illustrates femmephobia in the regulation of feminine subjectivity through stares and negative judgements by older people directed towards her heavily tattooed bodies. Karen feels the stereotypes behind the stares. Being tattooed becomes a disruptive force to patriarchal femininity within Wollongong city centre. Furthermore, Karen goes on to explain that for those she categorises as ‘middle-aged men’, their gaze is informed by ideas of heavily tattooed women’s bodies signify sexual promiscuity.

I get approached by like middle-aged, men, bogans all the time. It’s always to have a chat about how much they love my tattoos. They just stare at me for a while. It’s always very uncomfortable. There’s harassment by those middle-aged men. It seems as if you are tattooed, they think you’re open to sex. I don’t know we [pause] do become a bit of an easy target.

Karen is ‘very uncomfortable’ with the praise and stares of middle-aged men, which are informed by assumptions that she is sexually promiscuous. Harassment practices within public place may be enabled by the presence of heavily tattooed women.

Marlene is 23 years of age, female, tertiary-educated, single, bisexual. She grew-up in Southwest Sydney and the Sutherland Shire. She estimated having spent $6–8000 over her life course on tattoos that are on her arms, back and legs. For Marlene, her desire for tattoos stemmed from the desire for self-expression and as a signifier of sexual attractiveness. In her words:

it’s [tattoos] a form of expression that I have … if a male or a female has tattoos, they are 100% more attractive than non-tattooed people. They have like a bit of an edge and they’re not like basic.

Marlene reflected on how femmephobia played out through judgements of criminality and heightened security surveillance in Wollongong city centre from those she categorised as ‘elderly’, alongside the police.

You get like elderly people sometimes looking at you like you’re a bikey or something and there were definitely times where we got approached by police and stuff when we were out in the city on a night out, and like [pause] I wouldn’t have anything (illegal) on me.

In this example, Marlene illustrates that dominant discourses guiding some stares are at odds with inclusion, aligning and interpellating women’s tattooed bodies in the city centre with criminality.

On many occasions, attention directed to tattooed bodies in public places is well intentioned and sociable. Nevertheless, as Janet explains, the questioning and touching of tattooed bodies in public places serve as a reminder that they break bodily and spatial boundaries associated with feminine subjectivities. Janet is 24 years of age, single, heterosexual, tertiary educated, and employed full-time as an educator. Jane has spent more than $10,000 over her life course on tattoos to fulfill her desire for body art that cover her arms, fingers, back ribs, chest, and left buttock.

I get asked about them [tattoos] constantly. Not so much negative and less older people. But, when I'm out people, point them out. Even the other night I went out into the city and like everyone thinks they can like come up and like touch your arm. Most of the comments are good but some people like especially if they’ve had something the drink will like come up and grab you. … like random strangers. I was out the other night; I was just with my friend and then all of a sudden someone came up behind me and was like: “Wow! Your tattoos;” and like grab me by the arms. I wasn’t even looking. They came up from behind me, I just had no idea what’s going on. People tend to think that it’s okay to do that.

In the context of a night out socializing with friends Janet illustrate how femmephobia operates through questioning and unsolicited touch. She explains how questions and unsolicited touch is common, but often unwanted, and hurtful. Janet illustrates how being touched by strangers may happen in the context of play in pubs. However, the touch is mobilized by a desire to confirm a particular embodied truth, responding to the way in which women’s heavily tattooed bodies challenge western femininity. Heavily tattooed bodies are understood as open to touch, creating a place where gender can be explored by strangers. As Johnston (2012) asserted, being touched by strangers may reassert boundaries between self and other. Janet points out how, for some heavily tattooed women, unsolicited touch may prompt feelings of exclusion and alienation in pubs.

Familial places: the affective force of love/hate and unblemished white skin

Tattoos take on increased resonances in familial places when loved ones are concerned, as Ahmed (2004, 124) argues love is profoundly linked ‘to the anxiety of boundary formation, whereby what is ‘not me’ is also part of me’. Specifically, I analyze (grand)parents’ expressions of femmephobia, especially their hate and disgust at their (grand)daughter’s tattooed bodies that produce exclusionary effects in familial places. I argue that Ahmed’s (2004) work on the politics of love is helpful here for understanding the ways in which (grand)parents’ love is aligned within a matrix of Christian ideals, whiteness, and patriarchal femininity. Tattooed skin then becomes defined as the origin of hate. Exclusions and belongings are expressed spatially through the affective force of love/hate bonds. Those (grand)parents who are disgusted at, or hateful of their (grand)daughter’s choices consider them at odds with normative ideals of social inclusion configured by discourses of purity and white feminine beauty. For these (grand)parents, in familial places, tattooed bodies are judged as morally wrong, bad, and inappropriate. My analysis illustrates how all participants felt that covering-up tattooed bodies was the right thing to do to enable meaningful connections with loved (grand)parents, and to feel comfortable in familial places.

For example, Sue draws attention to how parental love produces a feminine ideal that demands a non-tattooed body aesthetic to form a familial collective. Sue is 22 years of age, bisexual, partnered, grew-up in Dapto, is a full-time university student and part-time sales assistant. Sue estimated that she has spent more than $4000 on tattoos over her life course that cover her arms, back and legs. Tattoos had the felt effect of making Sue ‘feel more comfortable in’ her ‘skin’. Sue talked about her father’s emotive response to her tattoos.

In my immediate family I was the first one to get a tattoo and I think my dad internally died a little bit because he was like: “This is so horrible I hate it’. But, he was also like: “It’s your body you can do whatever you want, just don’t do anything silly or just don’t jeopardise yourself because they still can be perceived as quite [disapproving sound].” So, he set the boundary of no forearms!

Sue’s father hates tattoos. He illustrates the ways in which social inclusion occurs for people who align themselves with patriarchal femininity through unblemished white skin, and the possible exclusion of those who fail to live up to this ideal. Sue is warned by her father that visible tattoos potentially threaten to take away future job security through femmephobia and not reproducing the normative feminine ideal. Yet, her father acknowledged why tattooed skin matters to his daughter in striving for self-expression and individuality.

Furthermore, participants’ tattoo biographical narratives suggest that parental love of unblemished white skin may be morally mapped onto Christian familial places and subjectivities. In Sue’s words:

Like, mum grew up in a completely Christian household and that definitely didn’t leave her. She still follows it [Catholicism], and so I think she just has this idea that along with other things, that tattoos are bad, and you shouldn’t do them. And if you get them you’re not the same person. If that makes sense, she’s like: “Oh they’re so bad, how could you do that? Why would you do that?” So, I can cover them quite easily, so she doesn’t know about most of them.

Sue illustrates how, in the socio-material arrangements that comprise Christian familial homes, tattooing is judged normatively by her mother as wrong, inappropriate, and transgressive. Sensitive to her mother’s discomfort, disapproval and regret, Sue covers up her tattoos.

Likewise, Emilie offers an account in which covering-up tattoos in Christian familial places is felt as the right thing to do. Emilie is 20 years of age, partnered, identified as ‘straight’, has a TAFE qualification, and works as a baker and barista. For Emilie, her tattoos speak to feelings of confidence by covering skin blemishes:

I feel like the big ones on my back they cover up skin and they cover up my self-consciousness and stuff. I feel like when I go out, if I have them out, I almost feel like I’m more confident about myself.

Despite elevated risk of negative judgements for violating gender norms, Emilie has spent more than $2,500 over her lifetime on tattoos that cover her arms, back and legs. Collecting tattoos did not align with Emilie’s mothers preconceived Christian notions of propriety and purity.

My mum is super religious, when she comes, I wear long sleeves and now I don’t know how I’ll hide my fingers; my mum is like: ‘You know what to do’ [meaning cover them up] when she comes. My mum hates, like hates my tattoos. I got one for Luke [ex-boyfriend who passed away] the one on my wrist. Well, I mean I really copped it from my mum. Oh my god, she went just overboard. I think the way she was brought up and stuff the first thing she thought was: ‘You aren’t gonna get a job and people will think of you differently’. For this small thing on my wrist. This started causing a divide between us.

For Emilie’s mothers, tattooed bodies transform understandings of her identity as a daughter and future employee in ways that are understood as ‘bad’.

Similarly, attuned to the implications of visible difference, Rachel (who is 22 years old, single, ‘straight’, police officer, grew up in Wollongong, and spent over $3000 dollars over her lifetime on tattoos as body art—whole back, face, neck, left leg, stomach, ribs, and shoulders) spoke of covering up her tattoos as important in maintaining relationships that comprise familial places.

I still have to cover them [tattoos] from my mum and family. I don’t really care what people think of me. But obviously my family I do. I am respectful of that. And I know that they’re not gonna like it. I just cover them around them. It really has probably just more so around my mum more. I’m just too scared to show her. It’s been a couple years and she still hasn’t seen them but that’s just a mum thing we both avoid it. She knows I have them. But we both try and avoid the topic. She’ll get upset. I know she will get upset. I just don’t talk about. I cover them when I’m around her and that’s it.

Rachel felt the effects of her tattooed skin not meeting the normative aesthetic requirements of being a daughter configured by patriarchal femininity. Uncomfortable with the lack of acceptance in meetings with her mother, to belong, Rachel, like Emilie and Sue, routinely covers up her tattoos to prevent hurt and restore their mother’s love within familial places.

Likewise, in the context of familial places, covering-up tattoos felt like the right thing to do in the company of grandparents (see Thompson 2015). For example, Sue explained that:

When I go visit my nan or my umar I will try and cover most of them up, just so they’re not consciously thinking about it. I went and visited my umar a couple of weeks ago. I know she means well, but I had shorts or something on. I had all my legs out. She was like: “God they’re disgusting!” I was like: “Ok, like if you’re thinking about them, you’re gonna think they’re horrible, but if I can just cover them up, she won’t say a word about them.” So, if I’m going to visit older relatives or relatives that are a little bit older, I will try and cover them up sometimes.

How Sue covers-up her tattoos demonstrates an embodied capacity to make her older relatives feel comfortable shaped by normative horizons (Miller 2010). Sue reflected that her grandmother is disgusted by the sight of tattoos. Disgust illustrate how femmephobia raises moral questions about the type of person who would tattoo their skin. Furthermore, following Ahmed (2004) the speech act: ‘That’s disgusting’ is a way of Sue’s grandmother aligning herself with familial places and subjectivities underpinned by the legacies of white patriarchal femininity that makes tattoos ‘horrible’. For Sue’s grandmother, the affective force of disgust sighting tattooed skin must be cast out and distanced because they trouble the socio-material connections that comprise familial subjectivities and places. To reconfigure the boundary of who belongs and does not belong in her older relatives’ familial places, Sue articulates her preference for covering tattoos. This alienating experience of having a body that is transgressive and not acceptable to some loved (grand)parents that govern familial places was often repeated by participants.

Workplaces: the affective force of discriminatory judgement, discomfort, and fear

Here, I discuss experiences of non-belongings in the workplace across two femmephobic moments. First, some of our interviewees, as prospective employees, strategically covered-up their tattooed status in job interviews, fearing discrimination that they perceive might otherwise adhere to them as unprofessional. Under the Fair Work Act, there is no law which prohibits an employer from rejecting a job applicant due to physical appearance, including visible tattoos. The Anti-Discrimination Act only applies when employers require employees to cover-up tattoos that are an expression of their ancestry or religion. Second, in the service sector, including social work, teaching and nursing, participants described choosing to cover-up tattoos after confronting deeply uncomfortable assumptions and or judgements from some customers, clients. parents. colleagues, or management.

Some of our interviewees described voluntarily covering-up their visible tattoos for a job interview. For example, Marlene explained that:

I’ve been to job interviews where I will wear a full-length blouse that will like cover up my whole arm. Not that I think they wouldn’t hire me, but I would hate for that to be a reason. I would hate to give them a reason not to hire me because like I just feel like it’s just easier to cover them. Then once I have the job I don’t care because then they can’t discriminate then. But you don’t really know what you’re walking into. You don’t really know what their culture norms are. You don’t know what background they’re coming from. I also think it’s just a form of respect and I’m going to cover this and not have to worry about that.

Similarly, Karen told:

When I go for job interviews or um like house inspections, anything that’s kind of a big deal, I definitely cover them up. Not completely but just enough. You can see that I have tattoos, but you can’t see how many I have [laughs].

Marlene’s and Karen’s narratives testify to the normative gendered dimensions of the social-material arrangements that comprise job interview places, which are implicated in covering up their tattoos. Concealing their tattoos for a job interview feels like the right thing to do. Marlene illustrates in the context of the intersection between embodied identities, materiality, and discursive meanings that comprise the interview place; covering-up her tattoos is to make potential employers comfortable. This practical action is so that tattoos will not generate exclusionary effects and to prevent the interview panel from discriminating against her.

Some participants spoke of the discomfort and exclusion from the workplace due to the judgement of their tattooed bodies by managers, colleagues, clients, or pupils. To belong in these workplaces, choosing to cover-up tattoos operates as an embodied practice of accountability, evaluation, and justification. For example, Cathy is 24 years of age, single, grew up in Albion Park and now lives in the City of Wollongong. She identified as ‘heterosexual’, is tertiary educated and works as an aged care nurse. For Cathy, tattoos are a source of empowerment. In her words: ‘things that I needed to remind myself to be stronger’. Cathy estimated that she had spent over $1400 on tattoos over her life course on her thumb, back, calf, hip, and collarbone. Cathy spoke of voluntarily covering up her tattooed forearm when working in a takeaway shop to prevent judgement from her boss’s discomfort. In her words:

When I got my tattoo on my forearm, I was working in a takeaway shop. My judgmental boss. In summer I was wearing a long sleeve shirt just to cover up the tattoo for so long. I did not want to have the drama, or have the negativity, or have to explain it. I don’t think they understand the meanings behind certain tattoos. Or why people get it. That was a bit of a negative time for me.

While her tattoos were intended to assist her sense of self and independence, they also marked her tattooed body as ‘different’ and not belonging as an employee in this takeaway shop. For Cathy, covering up her tattoos to appease her boss felt like the responsible thing to do to prevent her workplace becoming a site where she felt excluded through drama, negativity, or questions.

Likewise, Emilie spoke of the surveillance and judgement she experienced from student nurses and patients while on placement in a regional hospital. Emilie chose to cover up her tattoos.

When I went for placement for two weeks in Cooma, I was staying with two other students, and I really liked the girls. But the whole time I had this sense that they thought differently of me because of the tattoos. And in the hospital, some of the patients looked at me differently. It was like; why am I covering up for people I don’t care about?

For Emilie, the pervasive stares of other nursing students and patients at her tattooed body brought into-being moments of intense felt difference. Even for non-loved ones, moments of intensive affective judgement that Emilie experienced in relation to her heavily tattooed body in the hospital made her so uncomfortable she chose to cover them up.

To prevent offence and unwanted questions from pupils, Justine spoke of how covering up a tattoo depicting breasts felt like the right thing to do in the context of a primary school classroom.

The thing I do have to be mindful that like here (on forearm), for example, is boobs. I work with kids. I’ve got to be mindful that the kids I work with range from kindergarten to year 10. You’ve got the whole year 3’s, for example, going: ‘Why do you have boobs on you’. What I do is get a black marker and put a crop top on her (tattoo with boobs).

Within the socio-material relationships that comprise school places, Justine illustrates her capacity to be sensitive to the affective intensities of discomfort and offence that a naked breast tattoo may generate in the classroom. Justine takes responsibility with the stroke of her black marker pen. Justine illustrates the embodied and learned skills in response to situated contexts in which tattooed bodies are felt as inappropriate or wrong.

Finally, some interviews point to how tattooed bodies broke the (unwritten) rules of professional bodily conduct and respectable workplaces. For instance, Sue conveyed how, in her workplace, she no longer feels respected when in the presence of regional managers.

I guess professional situations at work, if higher-ups come down or if regional managers want to talk to us or come visit us, I feel like that can sometimes feel quite excluding. You’re in such an inclusive workplace but then you’re talking to these people who have this idea of tattoos not being professional. You can kind of start to feel excluded then. Sometimes in very professional situations I will try and cover up my tattoos as best I can just so I don’t have that negative connotation. It shouldn’t be a big deal. But, if people are going to make a big deal out of that, I can just eliminate that completely by covering them.

In moments of contact with regional managers, her workplace no longer feels inclusive and unsettles her sense of self as professional. Being with managers, Sue is very conscious of her heavily tattooed body and stereotyping. Professional subjectivities tend to rely on bodily conduct and presentation that reproduce the social and spatial boundaries of respectability in the workplace, including the absence of visible tattoos (Longhurst 2001). In ‘very professional situations’, Sue covered-up her tattoos to avoid the discomfort from managers’ censure and to ensure she would be interpellated in ways that aligned with her professional identity.

Likewise, Marlene conveys that, as a social worker, she presumes that her heavily tattooed body transgresses the social boundaries of respectable comportment in her workplace due to excessive inking.

I started a new job recently. You feel very bare when you have your tattoos out for the first time. You’re not sure what people are going to think of you. Are they going to have a presumption about who you are and like what kind of person you are because you have tattoos and the stigma that has existed … I dress quite conservatively for my job. I will try. I will wear longer sleeved t-shirts and things that will cover my tattoos if possible. People at work will wear like shorter skirts. If I was to wear that, you would see them. I would cover them at work. Because I have tattoos there. I just don’t want people to think: ‘There she is. She’s got all her tattoos out. And she’s dressing like inappropriately”. It’s a conscious thing I do every day when I dress for work.

In this account, starting a new job, Marlene’s actions are shaped by her capacity to be sensitive to what makes her colleagues feel uncomfortable. Marlene reveals normative expectations in her workplace that likely result in her heavily tattooed body being judged by colleagues as inappropriate and not belonging. Marlene explains that as a new employee she covers up her tattoos in her workplace. In doing so, she prevents her heavily tattooed body producing negative affective and emotional forces that she senses as feeling ‘very bare’ from the stigmatized subjectivities that might adhere to her from colleagues.

Belonging and community building in public places

Chance encounters in public places with other tattooed individuals can, for women with heavily tattooed bodies, create opportunities for belonging, connection, community. and happiness. Examples include online dating applications, tattoo parlours, and some bars. Away from discriminatory situated socio-material arrangements participants were able to come together, generating happiness around shared experiences of difference, alongside perspectives and insights of tattoo artists and tattooed bodies. In these inclusive places, participants sensed happiness, safety, and acceptance, which is paramount to belonging. Inclusive places can be public settings that resist faithed, gendered, and racialized norms of patriarchal femininity. For example, Marlene talked about finding a sense of belonging through shared experiences, connecting through pariah femininity when on an online dating application or socialising in a bar.

They [tattoos] are a point of conversation a lot of the time, being asked about tattoos, especially by other tattooed people, like: “Oh you’ve got a tattoo, who’s it by?” Or they’ll be like: “Oh I know that artist.” I can tell that work. Being able to have those conversations with people about tattoos. That’s a sense of inclusion. And having that connection of like: “Oh I know who that tattoo artist is”, or “Oh I’ve been tattooed by them” or “I know somebody”. That is a sense of connection, and you are included in that situation and people will ask about tattoos. If I’m on a dating site like Tinder or something and they will be like… that could be a point for them to start a conversation: “I like your tattoos” or if I’m out at a bar. Not that it’s like the most important thing of why I have a tattoo. But it’s definitely something that can spark a conversation and that would definitely be classified as an inclusive kind of way.

Marlene explained that, as a heavily tattooed woman, connections she made with other tattooed people were important for creating opportunities to generate a sense of belonging. Chance encounters with tattooed bodies gave rise to opportunities to share experiences of tattoo artists, the pain of becoming tattooed and tattoo meanings. Rachel and Justine, similarly, explain the sense of belonging and inclusive place generated by chance meetings with other tattooed people. Rachel explained:

It’s [tattoos] something people automatically connect to, if somebody else has tattoos and you have tattoos and you literally just walk up to each other and say: “Hey I love your work” and you just start talking about it straight away.

Similarly, Justine said:

When I meet people for the first time and you instantly look at their tattoos and it’s kind of like almost like a topic starter it’s definitely a topic starter. If you have similar tattoos or similar designs, then it’s like a topic starter of a similar interest. And even if it’s not, if you have really different tattoos and you’re interested in different styles then you can like learn from that. Any tattoo has some sort of story whether it is the tattoo itself having a meaning or the story behind getting the tattoo. It’s just nice to listen but it’s also nice to share, you have the ability to share and listen. In terms of emotions, it brings a smile to my face to learn about what people go through with the tattoo stories. It’s happiness, feeling like I’ve got some way to talk to people, especially it can be very socially awkward. Having that sort of sense of self, that feeling of accomplishment. I’ve done this. I’ve sat for the pain. I’ve sat through the care of getting it done. Just to be able to talk about it and have that talking point and make new friends. It sort of makes me more included.

Here, Rachel and Justine highlight the shared subjective value of tattoos between tattooed bodies, enabling connections, new friendship circles, and a sense of belonging. Rachel and Justine’s sense of self is validated through a sense of achievement and through shared stories that create opportunities for them to belong.

Conclusion: embodied (non-) belongings, familial, public and workplaces

The article aim has been to consider the felt dimensions of how ideas, things and bodies combine in various ways to produce shifting inclusionary and/or exclusionary places. To do so, I have drawn upon the narratives of six heavily tattooed white women living in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. There has been limited geographical attention to the embodied, emotional, and affectual places created by heavily tattooed white women’s skin. Drawing on Probyn’s (1996) concept of embodied belongings I have interpreted femmephobic moments of (non-) belonging through the emotional and affective force of the coming together of socio-material arrangements that comprise familial, public, and work places. In each, I have highlighted heavily tattooed white women’s yearning for inclusion. As interviewees negotiate the social and material relations that comprise each place and their sense of self, I argue that their tattooed bodies are likely to be judged within normative matrix of Christian faith, patriarchal femininity, and whiteness, as right or wrong, appropriate, or inappropriate, proper or transgressive, good or bad.

The ways in which embodied (non-) belongings took shape varied according to who interviewees encountered and where they were. Overall, connections with some people interviewees judged as ‘middle-aged men’ and ‘older people’ produced public places that were not welcoming nor safe for heavily tattooed white women because of unsolicited touch, unwanted questions, and judgemental stares. Interviewees conveyed moments of belonging in public places only when they encountered another tattooed body and no longer had to confront stereotypes. I illustrate how the practice of covering-up tattoos is central for some interviewees to create opportunities for belonging in familial and work places. This practice acknowledges the ways interviewees are sensitive to how their heavily tattooed bodies challenge white patriarchal femininity, generating discomfort amongst (grand)parents, clients, customers, and managers. The corollary is that reducing affective moments of discomfort may resolve being interpellated in ways that did not match their understanding of themselves as a family member or professional.

A focus on the emotional and affectual forces produced by heavily tattooed white women’s skin offers an entry point in which to explore the influence of several social norms, including religious purity, whiteness, and patriarchal femininity. I have illustrated how heavily tattooed skin is felt and these social norms come to matter in the socio-material relations that are implicated in their desire to belong, identities and ways of life in different spatial contexts. Through covering-up tattoo practices in familial and work places, I have shown for interviewees how faithed, gendered, and racialized normative feminine rationales still underpin what is of value and worth striving for, including relations with loved (grand)parents and being interpellated as professional. There is an opportunity for further embodied geographical analysis of tattooed skin that understands the spatial aspects of expectations, evaluations, and difference.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all participants who shared their tattooing experiences and meanings. Thank you to the team of research students for their enthusiasm and dedication. Thank you to Theresa Harada who provided constructive comments on earlier drafts. The study received ethics approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee, University of Wollongong, Protocol No. 2020/427.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gordon Waitt

Gordon Waitt is senior professor of the Australian Centre of Culture, Environment and Society, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Gordon’s research is focussed on everyday experiences as a lens through which to better understand inequalities.