Glenna Stearman Park, Tattoos and Other Body Marking

Cartoon Captured from Facebook

TATTOOS: Thoughts from Grandmother to Granddaughters

A recent discussion on East’s Zoom, hosted by Diane Zinn and Fred Elder, entertained the differences between grandparents’ youthful years and those of our grandchildren.  I noticed that no one discussed tattoos.  Being close to 80, the only tattoos I have are the two dots given to me by a radiation technician so that they could focus the radiation therapy in the same safe location for each cancer treatment.  Not so, my granddaughters, who are beginning to cover their bodies in a variety of designs.  

In the last few years, I had been aware of the eyebrow tattoos that replaced penciling for thin eyebrows.  However, the tattoos seen on today’s youth range from tiny little butterflies on someone’s neck to full Japanese Gangster Yakuza sleeves, a major change in body decoration. Adventuresome young people are designing their own symbolic imagery to represent their wishes, lives, and dreams.  Some have short philosophical statements written in cursive on their arms and legs, and others have various unrelated images scattered in various parts of their bodies. 

Japanese Gangster Yakuza Sleeve from Google

At the same time, the idea of pierced ears has evolved into multiple piercings.  The ring in the nose is a bit hard to take, but I have to admit that one night when my husband was out on Johnston Island for the Air Force, and I was home with the babies sleeping in cribs, I decided to try on a Columbian nose clip that was a piece of museum jewelry.  I was bored, and that’s when my better judgement becomes compromised.  I put on the nose clip that hung like a stylized “mustache” from my nose.  After playing around, I decided I had better take it off.  After all, going into the base ER to have the Columbian nose clip taken off would have earned me a rubber room in the Psych Ward and get my husband home on a psychiatric emergency.  It hurt and my nose was red and swelling.  I used copious amounts of Vaseline on my nose and eventually eased the nose clip off.  I had a sore nose and put the nose clip back in the jewelry box. 

Shortly after that, the boys and I flew home to Kansas to be with grandparents for the rest of Joel’s three-month tour of duty.  With my parents in control, I stayed out of trouble until Joel flew into Kansas.   

As a grandmother, I have voiced my dismay over the extensive tattoos my granddaughters sport.  However, I did discover a source for buying a removable nylon sleeve on Amazon.  The grandchildren were coming down to DC for my 80th birthday in August, and I toyed with the idea of buying a a removable tattoo sleeve to wear for my birthday photo.  I have a lymphedema arm that could use some beauty treatment.

Contemporary Body Sleeve from Google

Sleeve and Full Body Designs by Maori Artists, New Zealand

Instead of continuing to think about tattoos in the tradition of WWII, jail time, and gang indicators, we need to understand the current engagement with body marking in a variety of forms.  I used to tell my art students that we have a long history of body painting among women.  We have been what I call  folk art realist painters, using various paint products on eyebrows and eyelashes, as well as skin-tone makeup and rouge.  

European history has examples of men wearing face paint — also in the realist aesthetic.  Both men and women wanted white skin as a status symbol indicating that they did not work in the fields.  For this they used lead-based white paint that poisoned and eventually contributed to teeth rotting and death. The fashion for rosy cheeks on both men and women was not subtle like modern rouge. Some cultures made a clearly discernible blush, a red circle.  Some observers have said that the blush was desirable because it mirrored the facial blush of sexual arousal.  Of course I remember when a four-year old granddaughter got into her mother’s makeup and managed to enhance her face with a significant gusto of rosy cheeks and lips.

Our European influence focused  on exaggeration of realism.  Symbolic, abstract, or non-objective design  is foreign to our tradition and history, but has been part of cultures in Africa, Native America, and Pacific Islands.  Current body tattoos are clearly adopted from Asian and Pacific Island cultures. 

Tattoo Designs by Maori Artists in New Zealand

Non-realistic body marking in our time started with tattoos from WWII,  jail time and gang membership.  As the art teacher at Bexar County jail, I assisted when Richard Avedon and crew came to photograph the inmates who had Virgin of Guadalupe images on their backs.  All too soon, young people learned to tuck a butterfly on the back of a neck or on a shoulder.  That comfort with making permanent designs on bodies rapidly became a leading aspect of fashion. 

The most commonly accepted form of body and face painting today is makeup for artists and entertainers on stage, but sometimes includes their audiences as well.  I had the good fortune to take some high school students to Los Angeles for an experience with the movie and television world for one week.  We attended the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Hollywood.  Like many members of the audience, my male students were fully made up, thanks to the girls who had more than enough makeup to share.  After the initial start of the movie, I slept until the end.  The students were the age of my current grandchildren and loved the show. 

Europe has a history of men wearing makeup.  The painting is very similar to makeup in our generation.  Sometimes we have been heavy-handed in women’s makeup, but I particularly love drag queens and learned to love public events in San Antonio, especially  doing theater pieces with the JumpStart theater for 10 years. 

Less painful fashion trends happen in hair styles.  Powdered wigs gave way to more natural hair that evolved into complex braids and curls.  The 1920’s featured a short cut called a “bob,” and 1960’s hair styles were puffed up by back-combing. Then, back to very straight hair that was ironed on an ironing board until the the market caught up with heated brushes and chemical hair straighteners.  Now, partially shaved heads are in fashion for both genders, mixed with long braids or even geometrically cut hair. 

Personally, I sported a bald head from chemotherapy and refused a hat or scarf except in snowy cold weather.  It was a very liberating change from years of thinking about style.  Now I have minimal white hair kept very short.  A barber shop is cheaper than a beauty shop!

Another change in body markings to consider is the variety of hair coloring, which used to focus on hiding gray or embellishing blonde.  My grand daughters have complicated hair dying jobs that call for  pulling strands through a plastic cap and “painting” various related shades from dark brown to golden color.  At the same time, another granddaughter sprays a green color on the underside of a full kinky mop of hair.  Other months the same child sprays hot pink or purple.  Still another sister has gone from years as a platinum blonde, to orange-brown, to dark brown.  The fourth sister seems conservative so far with mostly what I assume is natural.  One of the older brothers has a hair style that is a full Afro at times and a man-bun for work.  I remember taking a black high school  student to New York in the late 1980’s, and being with him when he got a chance to try on an Afro-wig.  He loved it and was determined to show up getting off the plane at home, wearing the wig. 

Playing with hair styles and makeup, like body marking of other kinds, has always created amusement for one generation or another.  We all have an inner-artist to let loose!