The History of Tattoos in the USA - Coursework Example

5 November The History of Tattoos in the USA A tattoo is a pattern that may or may not be permanently imprinted upon the skin using ink. The word tattoo is derived from “tatua” which is a Tahitian term that means “to mark” (“United States Tattoo”). Tattoos have long been an insignia of fashion in numerous cultures and society in the past. Permanent tattoos are carved into the skin using needles whereas temporary tattoos are more like stickers that can be removed by rubbing the tattoo with soapy water. Accordingly, acquiring permanent tattoos is a painful process unlike the process of acquiring temporary tattoos. Using tattoos for decorating the skin has been a practice in many societies in the past. For a long time in the history of the USA, tattoos were considered dangerous. Not many people in the American society accepted the tattoos. However, this mindset has seen a change over the decades. Nowadays, tattoos are equally popular among people of all ages in the USA. Americans have become quite welcoming towards the tattoos. Sportsmen, movie celebrities and TV stars carry their tattoos. This paper reviews the history of tattoos in the USA. Tattoos were an essential element of the culture of the indigenous Americans even before the place was recognized as the United States of America. Natives of the North America have a history of associating tattooing with magic and religion. They used tattoos as an insignia of passage at the rituals of puberty. The Sioux used to believe that after death of the warriors, their spirits rode ghostly horses to the lodges of the world hereafter. On their way to the lodges, an old woman stopped them and asked them to show her their tattoos. Those, that did not have tattoos on their skin, were returned by the old woman to the physical world where they had to wander around like ghosts. Tattooing has also been used as a therapeutic practice by certain tribes in the USA. The Ojibwa believed that people suffering from toothaches and headaches were controlled by malevolent spirits and the only way to rescue them was tattooing their cheeks and foreheads. The tattooing ceremonies of these tribes were incomplete without the songs and performances associated with the demons’ expulsion. Tattooing has also been used in the history of the USA as an honor for warriors that used to fight bravely. “In the Jesuit Relations of 1663, it was reported that an Iroquois chief known to the French as "Nero" bore on this thighs 60 tattooed characters, each of which symbolized an enemy killed with his own hand” (“North America’s First”). Captain James Crook made a voyage to Tahitia in 1769 where he noticed that the local people were skilled in marking their skins. The indigenous people printed symbols on their bodies and tattooing was established as a field of art. The American sailors in the early nineteenth century played a fundamental role in the evolvement of tattooing in the USA. In the ancient America, tattoos were associated with the sailors that used to learn the art of tattooing from their seagoing brethren of the British origin. Sailors in the past used to have faith in the power of tattoos. Sailors would carve their skin to display patterns that they believed had the power to protect them on their sea voyages, “pay homage to sailing traditions and the fraternity of seafarers, memorialize loved ones, and showcase mementos of significant experiences and exotic locales” (“Skin and bones”). Pricking was the term used for the log of the seamen. People began to open their shops near the ports of the ships in order to provide the sailors with access to the tattoos. The designs of tattoos were inspired by the sea-life. There were tattoos of mermaids, anchors and numerous other objects like crosses and hearts. Sailor Jerry Collins is placed amongst the pioneers of the traditional tattooing practice in the USA. He wanted to bring a revolution in the Western style. According to him, the indigenous style of the West was quite abrupt and primitive. In order to revive the Western style, Sailor Jerry Collins retrieved the imagery and color combinations from the Japanese tattooing along with their belief that tattooing can be applied to all parts of the body. He believed that the traditional spiritual and sophisticated style of the Japanese tattoo had the potential to take the American tattoo from its primitive form to a highly plausible form of art. The traditional tattoos of the USA are made adorable by their simplistic yet exotic look. The traditional American tattoos are more classical as compared to those in fashion today because the traditional tattoos made use of plain bright colors and there was very little blending and merging of colors as is done in the contemporary practice. Also, the line weight of the traditional American tattoos is not varied. The traditional tattoos are not very common to be seen nowadays and quite a few tattooists in the contemporary America are skilled in making them. Nowadays, the tattoo art of Sailor Jerry Collins is imprinted on the T-shirts, sneakers and wall prints. Tattoos in the early America were more of a taboo and they continued to remain so until the 1800s when the circus performers knows as “freaks” started to introduce the tattoos to the people in their performances. The first professional tattooist in the USA was Martin Hilderbrandt who had immigrated to the USA from Germany (“United States History”). Chatham Square in the New York City is the birthplace of the tattoo culture in the USA. It has long been a seaport and then a center of entertainment for the rich people belonging to the working class. Samuel O’ Reilly from Boston opened his shop in the Chatham Square and made Charlie Wagner his apprentice. In the start, tattoos in the USA were hand made. This was one of the reasons for the lack of popularity of tattoos in the USA because not many people were skilled in making the tattoos. The introduction of electric tattoo machines brought a revolution in the social acceptability of tattoos in the USA. The first electric tattoo machine was used in the USA in 1891. Samuel O’Reilly was an Irish tattooist who established his own tattoo parlor in the New York City. He got the electric tattoo machine issued at the US Patent Office. Samuel O’Reilly is amongst the pioneers of the tattoo culture in the USA. The electric tattooing machines made the process of tattooing very efficient. The machine production was much more than the number of tattoos produced manually within a given time, and the machine-made designs were intricate and detailed to a higher level than the hand-made tattoos that were more simplistic and lacked the depth of theme. In 1908, Samuel O’Reily died. Thereafter, Charlie Wagner made Lew Alberts his business partner, who knew the art of transferring the prints to the tattoo designs. Lew Alberts was the pioneer of the primitive tattoo flash art. Although tattooing as a practice was seeing a downfall elsewhere in the country, Chatham Square was one place where it continued to flourish. At Chatham Square, husbands displayed their best tattoo designs on the bodies of their wives that thus became the walking advertisements of their husbands’ exemplary tattooing skills. That was a time in which the cosmetic tattooing gained popularity and laid the foundations for the making of eyeliner, lipsticks and blush-on. The flash art images transformed into the icons of wartime with the onset of the World War I. Gradually, tattoos transformed from the taboo to a way of expression that people would adopt to introduce themselves the way they wanted to the society. The immense increase in the social acceptability towards tattoos can be estimated from the fact that tattoos were used by the US military forces in the World War I as well as the World War II as a tool for remembrance and protection. Tattoos were advertised and further promoted in the USA by several magazines and conventions. Young men that had participated in the war between the 1940s and 1950s developed a special liking for tattoos. Soldiers started to use tattoos in order to reflect their patriotism. The tattoos were made in designs of eagles and the American flags. Many soldiers carried tattoos that reflected the names of their military units and their respective divisions. While men increasingly started to accept and adopt the tattoo culture after the World War II, women in the USA continued to see saw the tattoos as a taboo until the late twentieth century. For a major part in the history of the USA after the World War II, tattoos have been associated with violence. Violence in the USA has conventionally been executed by different gangs that have had their own titles, logos and symbols imprinted on their skin with the help of tattoos. This is one reason why the Americans have conventionally cultivated a hatred for the tattoos. The outbreak of hepatitis in 1961 played a major role in aggravating the anger of the critics of tattooing. Although most of the tattoo shops in the USA possessed the sterilization machines, yet not many actually used them. Nevertheless, population of the Americans that were pro-tattooists was also increasing. With the passage of time, more and more Americans started to embrace the tattoo culture. Over the decades, tattoos were released from the hold of just criminals, sailors and soldiers and common people in the USA started to wear the tattoos. Women remained away from the tattoos until the 1960s and 1970s during which, they started to see the tattoos as means of expression of opinion. Both men and women in the USA in the late twentieth century started to express their anti-war beliefs by wearing the tattoos of the symbols of peace. Lyle Tuttle also played a big role in making the practice of tattooing an essential element of the contemporary American culture. It was fundamentally the outcome of Tuttle’s efforts that people’s perceptions of tattoos altered in the late twentieth century. Tuttle supported the enhancement of health regulations and formulating such magazines that addressed the middle class audience. In addition to that, Tuttle created several images which were inspired by the theories of Sailor Jerry Collins and also depicted such social movements as this of women and homosexuals. Tuttle changed the traditional designs of the American tattoos from masculine icons to feminine icons. Traditionally, the American tattoos carried the designs of motorcycles and aggressive animals. Development of the feministic designs in tattoos encouraged women to carry them on their shoulders, breasts and various parts of the body. “In the case of non-native American tattooing, the tradition first came from the islands of Polynesia within the context of colonialism, then was adapted by various subcultures within the working class, and was once more reinvented in the 1980s, primarily by middle-class tattoo artists and wearers” (DeMello 11). Today, people of the USA see tattoos as a means of expression of an individual’s sense of style and taste for art. Presently, tattoos are so common in the American society today that more than 33.33 per cent of the Americans have acquired at least one tattoo (MTV Networks). Tattoos in the contemporary America can not only be seen on the bodies of criminals and celebrities, but also on the bodies of common people who are into such sober professions as judiciary, teaching, medicine and engineering. People use tattoos for different reasons. Some wear tattoos to express their association with a particular music band, others reflect their link with a particular political community. People not only use tattoos to express their style and inclination towards arts, but also employ tattoos as a means to express their religious beliefs. A lot of individuals in the young American generation have made tattoos a necessary part of their identity by acquiring permanent tattoos. They have no specific reason to wear tattoos. They only wear them in order to be in fashion and gain the attention of public wherever they go. While it may seem a fancy idea at a particular age, yet it has immense potential to expose the individuals to numerous challenges as they progress in life. Contrary to the conventional craze of the young American generation for tattoos, a significant population of the aged Americans has a rosy view about tattoos taking over their identity. Children and adolescents are driven by craze and acquire permanent tattoos, but not many realize that its impacts are life-long. People’s preferences and likes and dislikes keep changing over the time. Likewise, people who have had a craze for tattoos at a certain point in time may start to curse them later in life. But once acquired, there is no way to get rid of the tattoos since they have been carved into the skin. There are a lot of unfavorable consequences of obsession with tattoos that show up with time. People having tattoos on such visible surfaces as face, hands, arms or necks are denied recruitment in decent jobs that require a public dealing. Employers tend not to hire such employees because they have the potential to upset the customers even if they don’t intend so. (Houghton and Durkin) studied the discrimination that tattooed people face. In their research, (Houghton and Durkin) found that non-tattooed people have negative perceptions of people with tattoos and the tattooed people are stereotyped as being “bikies” that is supposedly an unwanted social category. Thus, although tattooing has grown as an element of the American culture over the decades, yet it has yielded negative consequences for many Americans. Works Cited: DeMello, Margo. Bodies of inscription: a cultural history of the modern tattoo community. USA: Duke University Press, 2000. Print. Houghton, S., & Durkin, K. “Children’s and adolescent s’ awareness of the physical and mental health risks associated with tattooing: A focus group study. Adolescence. vol. 30. no. 120. (1995): 971-989. MTV Networks. “I hate my tattoos.” 2011. Web. 5 Nov. 2011. . “North America’s First Nations Tattoos.” 2011. Web. 5 Nov. 2011. . “Skin and bones: Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor.” Independence Seaport Museum. 7 Feb. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2011. . “United States Tattoo History.” n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2011. . Read More