Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

176 Epilogue 2008
apprenticeship system, New Skool artists fail to acquire the institutional
memory that had been passed from teacher to apprentice
for decades. Having not received instruction in the ethics of tattooing,
they engage in activities that sow discord in the tattoo
community. Many of them, for example, have no compunction
about copying other artists’ custom designs. This has led artistic
visionaries to stop sending photographs of their work to magazines
in order to protect their, and their clients’, investment of
time and creative energy in designing unique tattoos. They break
agreements with established artists not to open shops in the same
neighborhood, and they derogate the people who provided them
the opportunity to establish themselves. While blatantly unethical
and disrespectful behavior of this type is more the exception
than the rule, its prevalence is increasing and its source in the
decline of the traditional apprenticeship system is clear.
OTHER FORMS OF BODY MODIFICATION
When Customizing the Body was first published, tattoos were
still an effective means of symbolically thumbing one’s nose at
conventional society. Visible tattoos served (however unjustly) as
markers of a person’s willingness or desire to reject accepted behaviors
and expected appearance. However, tattooing’s ability to
shock, inflame, or upset more conventional members of society decreased
as more people received tattoos, the artistic quality of the
work available improved, and heavily tattooed people became increasingly
visible. Piercing, scarification, and other dramatic and
less popular forms of permanent body modification have provided
an outlet for those who wish to arouse “conspicuous outrage.”
So-called “radical” piercing is a shifting category, largely because
“radical” is a relative term. However, there are a few forms
that will likely continue to shock most people for the foreseeable
future. These escalated symbols of outrage include hole stretching,
facial piercing, and genital piercing.
Hole stretching is practiced widely among “modern primitives”
(see Vale and Juno, 2005 [1989]) who use body modification practices
to demonstrate their alienation from contemporary consumer
culture. Modern primitives emulate “primitive” cultures
with “tribal” tattoos, stretched earlobes (and now even stretched
holes in nose piercings), facial piercings (most commonly in the