Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

165 Epilogue 2008
ters, all would likely agree that one’s appearance has significant
impact on how he or she gets along with others. Ethnographers
also may disagree about techniques and writing styles, but all
responsible ethnographers would agree that the goal should be to
come as close as possible to creating a rich description of specific
social worlds and faithfully representing the experiences of people
who live within them.
While the description of the world of tattooing and the experiences
of the people inhabiting it offered in the first edition of
Customizing the Body continues to be of considerable value, significant
changes have occurred. Some of these changes have happened
independently of the book, some of them have happened
because of it, and some have built on its foundation. In this new
Epilogue, we discuss recent developments in the tattoo world and
how changes in technology and the people and institutions that
make up this world have shaped these developments. We also examine
other forms of body alteration that have emerged as tattooing
has moved from being a disvalued practice to being part of the
popular cultural world of fads and fashions. As predicted in the
first edition, this transition has caused tattooing to lose its power
as a “mark of disaffiliation.” Consequently, those who want to
demonstrate their marginality or uniqueness must find different
ways of generating “conspicuous outrage” among members of conventional
society. New modes of body modification have arisen out
the desire of some to symbolize this disaffection and mark their
membership in a distinctive social group.
We also discuss the established scholarship on tattooing that
has emerged in the past fifteen years or so. These works are central
to the burgeoning literature in the sociology of the body, and
it can be argued that the first edition of Customizing the Body provided
an important part of the foundation upon which this literature
is grounded.
TATTOOING TODAY
The late 1980s was an exciting time in the tattoo world. The
full-body aesthetic typified by Japanese tattooing was established
in the United States, and the number of skilled artists capable of
working in that scale was increasing rapidly. Magazines devoted
to tattooing were becoming easily available, and they were pro-