Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

108 The Tattooist
This change in the cultural and organizational context has been
paralleled by significant alterations in the careers and occupational
experience of tattooists. An enlarged and diversified client
pool has increased tattooists' occupational opportunities and
enhanced their financial security. As tattooing has begun to enjoy
a modest level of legitimacy within the larger art world. tattooists'
positive self-definitions as creative artists and/or skilled technicians
have been bolstered and enhanced. In turn. the technical and
artistic quality ofthe tattoos being produced has risen significantly.
The previous chapter examined the tattoo experience of the consumer
while this discussion has focused on the career and occupational
experience of the tattoo practioner. We turn now to enter
the tattoo studio. the immediate interactional setting in which
the major actors meet and the tattoo encounter takes place. It is
here that the tattooist employs his or her acquired social skills.
places customers into definitional categories. and attempts to exercise
control over the commercial and creative exchange. In turn.
the tattooee attempts to communicate his or her desires and construct
an understanding of the unfamiliar and often anxiety-producing
situation. Like all social settings in which the collective
action of cultural production is played out in a structure of unequal
power and knowledge. the situated interaction of the tattoo
event displays as much conflict as it does cooperation. This is
what makes it especially interesting and sOCiologically significant.