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Tattoo tales: Authors explore meaning and motivation

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

An elaborately inked arm may evoke an admiring stare or a look of utter dismay. From either point of view, why someone would opt to adorn his or her body with particular vivid and prominent swirls and patterns is a subject several authors attempt to tackle.

Motivations for turning the body into a living canvas are seem to be as varied as the people who do so. Many say being stared at is not among the reasons, and they resent people accosting them to ask about their body-art. Despite choosing not to confine the tattoos to areas only they can see, they don’t consider that justification for others to touch, poke or prod them.

Terisa Green, Ph.D., delves into people’s hearts and souls, as well as their tattoos, in ‘‘The Tattoo Encyclopedia: A Guide to Choosing Your Tattoo.” The book is a lexicon of design and symbolism to assist in assembling elements of personally meaningful art. Green also wrote ‘‘Ink: The Not-Just-Skin-Deep Guide to Getting a Tattoo,” which is heavy on intriguing tattoo trivia and includes healthy-tattooing and after-care tips.

‘‘Classical tattoos,” tattooing with a real and poignant history, are often offered on eBay under the search words ‘‘vintage tattoo” and ‘‘tattoo art.” Up for sale are small, colorful pieces of the past: tattoos done on paper and displayed in a tattoo artist’s shop. Usually a dozen or so are framed together in a parrot-bright attempt to seduce the reluctant and to assure the tempted of the artist’s quality of work.

Spider Webb has been tattooing for many moons. His ‘‘Spider Webb’s Pushing Ink” and ‘‘The Big Book of Tattoo” are packed with photographs of people — now surely grandmothers and grandfathers — who boldly sought out tattoos in eras when such things were just short of a major scandal. There are scores of vintage designs on these now-wrinkled people, and it’s fascinating to see how variations on the classical theme of, for example, the crouching panther, made each individual’s tattoo unique.

Margaret Miffin makes a strong case for elevating women tattoo pioneers to the status of feminists in ‘‘Bodies of Subversion, Second Edition: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo.” Compellingly written, and at times quite sad, she writes evocatively of times long gone. Through her words and fascinating old photos, brings bravely and proudly tattooed women back to life in all their inky glory. The book’s cover model must have been the center of attention wherever she went in her day, as she would be even now. Her 1930s or ’40s peers, though, were no doubt unprepared to see a woman whose tattoos span the width and length of both legs and arms.

Nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Miffin writes eloquently of the plight of the ‘‘Tattooed Ladies,” a traveling carnival sideshow freak act, whose members were ostracized from society. In contrast, some of the elite and well-traveled once included acquiring a tattoo on their must-do list — often while in an exotic location where the cultural norms that inhibited independent action made them looser. Even Winston Churchill’s mother sported a serpent on her wrist.

Exploring tattooing within various socioeconomic classes and ethnicities, Margo Demello’s ‘‘Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community” is not quite the dry academic droning it threatens to be. The author herself is among the permanently pigmented, and is married to a tattoo artist. Her double-insider status allows her to slip easily into the hierarchies and jealously guarded secret chambers of the lore and legends of tattooing.

Steve Gilbert romps through the same general subject, but much more enjoyably, in ‘‘The Tattoo History Source Book.” He seems to have had a great time researching obscure texts for early writings about tattoos by explorers, journalists, physicians, psychiatrists, anthropologists, scholars, novelists, criminologists and tattoo artists. As commentator for each selection, the author places each in historical perspective.