David Brooks.
The Way We Live Now
We
now have to work under the assumption that every American has a tattoo. Whether
we are at a formal dinner, at a professional luncheon, at a sales conference or
arguing before the Supreme Court, we have to assume that everyone in the room
is fully tatted up — that under each suit, dress or blouse, there is at
least a set of angel wings, a barbed wire armband, a Chinese character or maybe
even a fully inked body suit. We have to assume that any casual antitattoo remark will cause offense, even to those we
least suspect of self-marking.
Everybody who has been to the
beach this summer has observed that tattoos are now everywhere. There are so
many spider webs, dolphins, Celtic motifs and yin-yang images spread across the
sands, it looks like a New Age symbology conference
with love handles.
A
study in The Journal of the
The
only person without one of those Pacific Northwest Indian tribal graphics
scrawled across his shoulder will be a lone 13-year-old skater scoffing at all
the bourgeois tattoo fogies.
Traditional
religions have generally prohibited tattoos on the grounds they encourage
superficial thinking (what’s on the surface is not what matters). But it
turns out that tattoos are the perfect consumer items. They make people feel
better about themselves. Just as Hummers make some people feel powerful,
tattoo-wearers will talk (and talk and talk and talk) about how their tattoos
make them feel strong, free, wild and unique.
In
a forthcoming essay in The American Interest, David Kirby observes that there
are essentially two types of tattoo narratives, the Record Book and the Canvas.
Record Book tattoos commemorate the rites of passage in a life. Canvas tattoos
are means of artistic expression.
So
some people will have their kids’ faces tattooed across their backs, or
the motorcycle that belonged to a now-dead friend, or a fraternity, brigade or
company logo. In a world of pixelated flux, these
tattoos are expressions of commitment — a way to say that as long as I
live, this thing will matter to me. They don’t always work out — on
the reality show “Miami Ink” a woman tried to have her “I
will succeed thru Him” tattoo altered after she grew sick of religion
— but the longing for permanence is admirable.
Other
people are trying to unveil their wild side. They’re taking advantage of
the fact that tattoos are associated with felons, bikers and gangstas. They’re trying to show that far from being
the dull communications majors they appear to be, they are actually free
spirits — sensual, independent, a little dangerous.
The
problem is that middle-class types have been appropriating the symbols of
marginalized outcasts since at least the 1830’s. This is no longer a way
to express individuality; it’s a way to be part of the mob. Today,
fashion trends may originate on Death Row, but it takes about a week and a half
for baggy jeans, slut styles and tattoos to migrate from Death Row to Wal-Mart.
What
you get is a culture of trompe l’oeil
degeneracy. People adopt socially acceptable transgressions — like
tattoos — to show they are edgy, but inside they are still middle class.
You run into these candy-cane grunge types: people with piercings
and inkings all over their bodies who look like Sid
Vicious but talk like Barry Manilow. They’ve
got the alienated look — just not the anger.
And
that’s the most delightful thing about the whole tattoo fad. A cadre of
fashion-forward types thought they were doing something to separate themselves
from the vanilla middle classes but are now discovering that the signs etched
into their skins are absolutely mainstream. They are
at the beach looking across the acres of similar markings and learning there is
nothing more conformist than displays of individuality, nothing more risk-free
than rebellion, nothing more conservative than youth culture.
Another
generation of hipsters, laid low by the ironies of consumerism.