Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

207 Notes to Chapter 2
Tattooists and other knowledgeable observers estimate that approximately
10 percent of Americans wear tattoos (see Post, 1968: 519; Webb, 1979:
38), whereas between 3 and 5 percent of institutionalized mental patients
are tattooed (see Pollack and McKenna, 1945; Edgerton and Dingman,
1963)
2. See Scutt and Gotch (1974: 15–88) for an extensive discussion of the
sexual symbolism of tattoos.
3. On the other hand, Mosher et al. (1967) found that tattooed prisoners
had a more positive body image than their unmarked fellows. Tattooed
prisoners also scored high on measures designed to indicate “integrated,
adaptive, and socially acceptable patterns of behavior.”
4. In some cases tattoos are used as a badge commemorating prison
experience. Hispanic males in Los Angeles, for example, have developed a
convention in which a small tear is tattooed at the corner of the eye for
each year spent in prison (cf. Agris, 1977: 28). Tattooing has also been
used by those in power to symbolize negative social status. For example,
by the early seventeenth century Japanese authorities had developed an
elaborate tattoo system that indicated the nature and geographic location
of the criminal’s violation (Richie and Buruma, 1980: 12–13; see also
Brain, 1979: 160–162).
5. The central importance of personal recommendation as the source of
tattoo clients is well known to tattooists. All tattooists have business cards
that they hand out quite freely (one maintained that he had dispensed
over 50,000 cards in the past two years). Listing one’s services in the
Yellow Pages is the other major means employed to draw customers since
it provides location information to those who, for a variety of reasons, do
not have interpersonal sources. A tattooist whose shop was located near
a large naval base stated:
I’m dropping most of my Yellow Page ads. It’s just a waste of money.
I’d rather have that thousand bucks a year and do something else
with it. I’m in every phone book in the state, I’m dropping it in all
but [naval base]. That’s the only one I’ve found that is worthwhile
because it is a transient population that does use the Yellow Pages
for a reference. Most people come here by word of mouth. They see
the work and they come. Or they hear about it. A lot of people come
because it is close and there aren’t a lot of studios around. Cards
are your best investment.
6. Questionnaire respondents were given an open-ended question that
asked them to speculate as to why people get tattooed. Of the 163
respondents, 135 provided some sort of reply to this item. Fourty-four
percent of those responding emphasized that becoming tattooed was
motivated by a desire for self-expression (for example, “vanity,” “it’s a personal
preference,” “a statement of who you are”), 21 percent emphasized
tattooing as a mechanism for asserting uniqueness and individuality (for