Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

181 Epilogue 2008
distinguish among tattooing, piercing, self-cutting, and other
forms of body alteration.
Typically, academic discussions of body modification are
premised on the conventional, but often unstated, assumption
that body modification is pathological. Guided by this initial assumption,
researchers often fail to collect data that would provide
the basis for a discussion of the phenomenon as the consequence
of choices “normal” people make for a variety of understandable,
eminently social, and usually quite ordinary reasons.
This tendency to pathologize body alteration is not limited to
any particular academic discipline. Quantitative studies conducted
by sociologists also try to demonstrate what is wrong with
people who choose to modify or adorn their bodies in fairly permanent
ways. Carol and Anderson’s (2002) study of girls in a residential
program for at-risk youth correlates tattoos and body
piercings with “trait anger.” Koch and his associates (2005) applied
the “Health Belief Model” to the decision-making process of
young adults in order to discover the social and psychological influences
that could prevent a person from engaging in such
“risky” behavior as getting a tattoo. Hawkes, Senn, and Thorn’s
(2004) experimental study was designed to test whether the size
and visibility of women’s tattoos have negative impact on how
other people see them. Though somewhat less judgmental, Jacobson
and Luzzatto (2004) use data drawn from participant observation
to support their claims that tattoos and other body
adornments are faddish affectations and help provide adolescents
with a sense of individuality.
The anthropological treatment of tattooing has followed several
distinct paths. The most traditionally “anthropological” of these
approaches focuses on tattooing as it is practiced in tribal societies.
A notable example of this approach is Alfred Gell’s (1993)
Wrapping in Images. This book offers a rich analysis of Polynesian
tattooing that connects the decorative activity to the mythology,
cosmology, and identity practices in six Polynesian cultures and
traditions. Gell’s work is especially notable in that it offers careful
and complete documentation of cultural practices in cultures
that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exist.
A second form of anthropological analysis extends traditional
attention to relatively simple cultures by focusing on the co-optation
of cultural meanings of “tribal” and “primitive” tattooing and