Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

185 Epilogue 2008
and perceptions of the body arise out of social interaction. Atkinson
develops a “figurational” sociology that offers a picture of tattooing
as shaped both by social structure and the creative
personal decisions of those who choose to acquire tattoos. Imbedded
within a matrix of complex relationships and interdependencies,
people, Atkinson maintains, use tattooing as a life-long body
project that allows them to define, negotiate, and maintain definitions
of self, identity, and social position.
Finally, Angus Vail’s (1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2001) research on
fine-art tattoo collectors and artists builds on and moves beyond
some of the themes introduced in Customizing the Body. Based on
interviews, fieldwork, and his experiences participating in the fine
art-tattoo world, Vail emphasizes the process through which
people convince one another that their own consumption or production
of art is legitimate, valuable, and important.
Taken as a body of research, Vail’s work is an explicit extension
of the themes laid out in the original edition of Customizing the
Body. For instance, in his treatment of the process through which
people become tattoo collectors, Vail (1999b) extends the discussion
in Chapter 2 of Customizing the Body to show how collectors
undergo processes of self definition as they learn how to treat their
bodies as explicit sites of artistic activity (“canvases”). In charting
the process through which collectors come to enlarge their collections
and thereby come to incorporate their tattoos as a central
feature of their identities, Vail makes the key distinction between
those who have tattoos and those who are tattooed. As he puts it:
[The] tattoos [of the person who merely has tattoos] are no
different than the car she or he drives or the hair style she or
he sports on any given day. Like these adornments, tattoos
represent possessions that can be considered with or without
the individual who wears them. ...Tothecollector [in
contrast], tattoos are not something one owns. Rather, they
are part of him or her, no less important than the color of his
or her hair or skin and no more easily removed from his or
her identity than his or her deepest beliefs, most profound
concerns, or idiosyncratic sense of humor (p. 270).
In a similar vein, Vail’s (2000) article on the socialization of
tattoo artists builds on the discussions of apprenticeship and