Tattoos

Most of know that before tattoos became a 21st-century trend, a medium of artistic and personal expression, and emblematic of cultural individualism that they were used in tribal ceremony and ritual, symbolizing rites of passage, identifying heritage/clanship, and even denoting secular skills of the individual bearing the mark.

Tattoos were also relegated to specific cross-sections of humanity—those which oddly differed: bikers, gangs, prisoners, and military men bore the insignias of pride and penchants...for Betty Paige, booze, broads….

Now, and along the way in the history of the evolution of humans permanently marking themselves or others, tattoos have made an indelible mark on even more disparate groups and individuals.

The Nazis made efficient use of the tattoo, branding (figuratively, for actual branding is another technique altogether) their six million-plus captives with a number that coincided with the meticulous cross-referenced accounting ledgers. The Greeks used tats for underground communication—for spying and for spies to show rank. And the Egyptians used tattoos for indicating nobility and for identification of fertility.

Tattoos feature in literary and filmic media, as well. In Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, for example, a central character is shirted (and pantsed, actually) in tattoos that animate, tattoos that are living and part of the experience that is the science fiction story. Maybe influenced by Bradbury’s work, Christopher Nolan made the movie Memento (2002), wherein the protagonist, Leonard Shelby, searches for his wife’s murderer; but since Shelby has anteriograde amnesia (cannot learn new material) or a combination of this and retrograde amnesia (cannot remember anything pre-incident), he must follow the only clues he has: tattoos he makes on himself as reminders and leads. And more recently, the popular TV series “Prison Break” has also made tattoos a central element—with inmate Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller) decoding the tats on his body as hints for escape strategies.

While tattooing and its many implications have existed, then, since around 12,000 BC, cultures today are finding new and different ways to display and make use of them, whether for identification of artistic purposes. And since trends have downward turns, included in the process is regret and removal…in which numerous rueful tat bearers are now engaging.