Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

85 The Tattooist
me to tattoo the badge of the very forces that are holding them
down. They want me to do Playboy bunnies. Now what does
Playboy Magazine have to do with being a man in our
culture? Nothing! It just manufactures this phoney fucking
concept about life. What does the Rolltng Stones tongue have
to do with your life? Its a marketing image. They package the
concept and they simplify it in the most simple terms and they
pound it into their heads. So every dime that they make in
their empty positions they spend on these products. They are
just void consumers. You are getting caught up in the future
and that doesn't have anything to do with getting Yosemite
Sam tattooed on your body. Yosemite Sam is just a left over
kind of image. If you want an icon let's search for one that has
some meaning for you. So I don't do company logos. I don't do
anarchist kind of social slogans like "fuck the world"-I usually
consider that to be connected to the fascist right-wing bikers
life-style forces which I don't deal with at all. Included in that
business logo stuff is Harley-Davidson signs which I won't do. I
won't tattoo someone, regardless of the choice of the tattoo, if I
feel that that person has totally unrealistic expectations. If they
think that that tattoo is going to make them fly when they
walk out of here I'm not going to do that tattoo. I've been
caught up in situations and I feel that-I don't know if this is
egotistical or not-I feel that I'm really perceptive about people.
I know when a fragile person walks through the door.
Sometimes they don't have to say anything at all but they just
speak loudly about the fragility of their emotional self. So what
I do with them is III sit down and talk. I explain all of the
social problems behind getting a tattoo-what kind of social
ramifications there are, that people will reject you as a result of
the tattoo, people will consider you to be a certain kind of
person because of the tattoo. Then III say to them. "If you
really want the tattoo come back in about three or four days."
They never come back.
Another interviewee whose work largely consisted of standard designs
taken from commercial flash saw selectivity as enViable but
economically unfeasible for someone at his reputational level.