On the last warm Saturday of the year I sat on the terrace of a fashionable café next to a highly fashionable girl. She had large, horn-rimmed glasses, long hair with a fringe, a vintage flowery dress with shoulder pads and cowboy boots. And on her soft, white forearm, which she used now and again to raise her cup, she had a kind of blue-green fantasy bird. A big thing. Freshly made, the edges still red and with considerable swelling underneath. While she quietly gossiped and drank her coffee, her skin offered maximum resistance to the recent bodily harm inflicted by the needle and the anatomically-foreign ink. The bird protruded from her arm as if her body wanted to lift it up and cast it out. In vain. Over the coming two weeks the immune system would withdraw its resistance, incorporate the ink and resign itself to what has happened. From now on there would be a drawing on her arm. A drawing that will be ever-present throughout her life, during sleep, during dinner, during love making, during death, always.
From the terrace on that last warm Saturday of the year I saw once again, on the naked arms and legs of the shoppers as they passed by, the full scale of the epidemic: tattoos. A self-inflicted branding which only ever appeared in a particular realm of society: sailors, Hell’s Angels, criminals, outcasts, the underclass. Tattoos belong in the same class as smoking, drinking, gambling. Hobbies for those with no future. It wouldn’t have mattered much to them if they had any regret; they had little to lose.
Now sociologists no longer need to visit grubby backstreet cafés in order to research their tattooed fellow man. The can simply distribute their questionnaires among their students. Throughout the western world the prevalence of tattoos is increasing and it is now not only the criminals and bikers who choose this type of permanent body modification. In North America and Europe the tattoo has become mainstream, approximately 1 in 4 is tattooed and some believe this number will increase to 40% in the next decade.
Just like big glasses and vintage flowery dresses, tattoos are fashionable. The television is swarming with body-modified celebrities: David Beckham has transformed the once-healthy skin of his back and arms into a sea of pictures names and characters. Rihanna used to be a beautiful woman but is starting to look more and more like a walking sketchpad, having drawn words (“thug life” on her knuckles), flowers and symbols on her body, like a self-inflicted skin disease.
Don’t get me wrong. I find many tattoos charming; for instance the Hebrew text dropping vertically down the back of Victoria Beckham. The sentence starts at the hairline of her neck as if the thoughts were dripping directly from her brain. But it is a strange kind of art, the tattoo. Body art is an art form in the same way suicide is a choice; it is an expression which makes every other expression impossible. You have only one canvas you can use: your skin; a beautiful part of the body, it keeps you warm, and can even cool you down, it is soft and supple so you can move about within in, so ingenious that the best engineers have not managed to replicate it. And yet people decide, en masse, that it is a suitable place to carve the names of their children and pearls of wisdom; that a blue-green fantasy bird not only serves as a pretty picture on a bag or a brooch, but that you can also etch it into that ingenious piece of tissue. Like graffiti on a Caravaggio. The ultimate contempt for the body.
Yet it remains attractive for a growing group of people. The enormous number of tattoos in society raises all kinds of new questions. In the job market for example. Is an employer allowed to reject someone because he has a tattoo? It is a complex debate. The tattoos are an individual choice, much like clothing, and therefore a legitimate ground for rejection. However, from the moment the choice has been made, they are indelibly connected with the body of the applicant, just like a lop-ear or skin colour; he cannot do much about it, rejection should be seen as discrimination. Last week the Dutch “Volkskrant” magazine showed a few examples of people whose tattoos had not been particularly appreciated by their employers. One example is Marloes Tiemersma (22). In all her wisdom she had her nickname daubed in big letters on her upper arm, “RevoLOESzjonaire”, (because she sees herself as a revolutionary). When it was warm, her employer said to her, “Put your jacket back on”. Elmer van Engelenburg (33) did not have it easy either. But then what do you expect when you have a so-called ‘body suit’ tattoo, including sleeves? The photo shows how he has, indeed, allowed about 40% of his torso and arms to be impregnated with all kinds of designs. He no longer has a normal skin colour, his complexion is green. Quite appropriate for when he gets upset: “We’re living in 2011”, he thinks when he sees a vacancy which is specifically looking for people without tattoos. He found it exceptionally unfair that he was not allowed to stand at the counter of the computer business where he worked, but instead had to stay in the back and do the repairs. The prejudice that tattoos are antisocial is archaic, he says.
He is wrong. It’s not about the association, it’s about what a tattoo is. A tattoo says that the owner dares to risk his career for something as futile as body art. A tattoo is direct proof that someone is capable of making particularly questionable, yet irreversible decisions. I fully understand why an employer would reject someone on the basis of that. Those aren’t prejudices, they are judgments.
It remains a bizarre decision to abuse yourself in such a way. Even if you decide to put something on your back or your chest, you will have to compromise for the rest of your life on clothing which either does or does not cover your tattoo. I see tattoos as a tragic consequence of an outrageous form of individualism which clearly thrives among the 18-29 generation. This generation does not believe in God, they believe in themselves. The life events, the successes, the losses, the difficult periods and all the wisdom they have picked up defines them, it is their foundation. And when the identity is so holy for you, it is terribly tedious to have it reside in a body which, when undressed and laid bare, looks almost exactly like everyone else’s body. The human body needs customization in order to be able to serve as a stately residence for your unique self.
The tattoo is the ultimate means to that end. If you wish to express you life’s vision then clothing, make-up, hairstyle or, God forbid, a temporary tattoo is not enough. You do not apply your life’s motto with henna or an airbrush. It’s not about the decoration itself, it’s about the commitment for which it stands, as though you are bound in matrimony with that part of yourself, swearing an oath to your identity “until death do us part”.
Every belief has its dogmas and the dogma of the belief in yourself is that your self is some kind of absolute, immutable entity. That your life motto, your style, your convictions, are elements upon which you can always depend, which will always maintain their value. It is precisely this illusion which one can purchase in the tattoo salon. It is there that the multitudes of people record their identity for eternity, for the sole reason that they cannot comprehend the dynamics of their identity, its variation. They make a decision on how they are going to look for the rest of their lives; if they’re unlucky they do so before their twenties, because they lack the capacity to imagine themselves in the future, and that their older selves might not agree with a tweety bird adorning their left shoulder blade.
The mistake is easily made. My first purchase at an art fair was an etching of a woman swimming, which I though I would want to look at forever. And for a few years I did look at it very intensely because that work of art hung in my small, five-by-five student room. It was there the whole time, as I ate, as I studied, as I read, as I slept. Eventually the impossible proved possible: I’d had enough of the swimming lady and did not want to see the etching again for some time.
Not much is known about the percentage of people who feel regret. The wave of regret will come after the wave of tattoos. Furthermore, not everyone will be able to get the tattoos off again. Such a procedure is, in general, long and extremely expensive, or you have to want to inflict third degree burns on yourself so that the scorched skin falls off with part of the tattoo. However, people who want a tattoo seem not to be affected by such stories. Many are convinced that, should the day come when they no longer find their tattoo attractive, it still serves as a pleasant reminder of their foolhardy youth. I doubt that. I think it is more serious. I think old tattoos which you no longer want make you feel as though you have to live your whole life in a pubescent room with Kill Bill posters on the wall and a lava lamp. I think when the fashionable girl has had enough of her blue-green fantasy bird, it will not be a pleasant reminder, but will make her feel like she has to don the flowery dress with shoulder pads every day.
The wave of regret will come, that is unavoidable. Tattoos are going out of style and the untouched, beautiful pink bodies are coming back in. That’s the way of every hype. Even the trend for permanent decoration is a temporary phenomenon, just like individualism; a phase which indeed will pass. Although a whole generation will bear the scars of that phase for their entire lives.