My Sacred Ink — You Don’t Need to “Get” My Tattoos.
This guy was chatting me up at the pool the other day, and something he said caught my attention.
I noticed you when you came in, with all your cool tattoos, except I don’t know what they mean?
He left a pause here, which I less-than-politely ignored, and eventually the conversation moved on. As a quite visibly tattooed person, I’ve gotten this line more times than I care to recount. Either this, or someone blankly coming up and asking what my tattoos mean.
As if I were duty-bound to explain them. As if it were your right, as passer-by, to know.
According to this fascinating Smithsonian article on the history of tattooing, this wonderful art form has been around for more than five thousand years.
These permanent designs — sometimes plain, sometimes elaborate, always personal — have served as amulets, status symbols, declarations of love, signs of religious beliefs, adornments and even forms of punishment.
Where I come from, tattoos have long been a marker of sailors and prisoners, which only compounded my elders’ horror when I first got inked. Nevertheless, it can be argued that tattoos are no longer the “criminal identifier” of 100 years ago.
As tattoos have pivoted from veritable stigmata marking out criminals and dubious individuals, to an everyday subway sighting, so too should our general regard of them evolve. Yet I can’t help worrying it has devolved, instead.
Why tattoos being commonplace may be a bad thing.
It’s worth pointing out that I adore tattoos, and their inclusion in “polite society”. I love that many workplaces no longer require employees to cover up tattoos, and that visible tattoos have stopped representing a job impediment.
And yet, as our society has become “tolerant” about some people sporting permanent ink, it also seems to have robbed this beautiful art form of all that was once sacred in it.
There seems to be a widespread belief that I’m wearing my tattoos for your benefit. Questions like the above are in line with this belief — after all, it’s perfectly natural to come up and ask me what my markings mean, since they’re public property, isn’t it?
Except that’s just the thing, they’re not. A tattoo is a deeply personal, intimate mark whose meaning and poetry only needs to be known to the wearer.
In some cultures, it’s common for mourners to wear a black armband to signify their loss. Yet imagine walking up to these people, complete strangers, and casually dropping a who died?
Not even a faux-pas, as that would imply you didn’t know asking was crass, but most people, thanks to common sense, know, so they don’t ask. If the question is the result of a misinterpretation or blunder, it might still be pardonable, but asking openly, purposefully for someone to justify their choice to you just shows an intolerable disregard for that person’s privacy.
Just because I choose to wear certain words/numbers/images on my body does not entitle you to them. To even think that suggests that these people, on some subconscious level, believe themselves entitled to my body, which is not an implication I take kindly.
Only I can restore my body’s sacredness
I may not show it in my writing, but I’m quite a polite, agreeable person in my life. So often, in my youthful past, I would indulge such questions, while scrambling to keep some semblance of privacy.
No longer.
Now I either ignore the question, or point out how rude it is, when someone insists. What changed? One could argue I grew up. I’m no longer the small, insecure girl-child who craved acceptance and approval, or if I am, I’ve learned to shield her better.
More importantly, I made the above connection. I’ve come to understand that explaining my tattoos wasn’t just an act of dispelling mysticism. Rather, it was an aggression towards my body, and actively contributed to a skewed sense of self-worth.
My body, inked or inkless, pierced or smooth, is sacred and requires no explaining. I owe no one justification over why I exist, or how I exist, over whether I choose to write words into my skin. And so, I will not speak as to the weight these eternity-inscribed words and images bear to me. That is mine, alone. And my body, and its secrets, history, commemorations, and messages holds a language onto itself.
And only those permitted into the inner sanctum of my trust will learn to speak it.
In other words, I think it’s time we restored the sacred quality of these deeply private markings. Sure, some people get a tattoo as a casual, meaningless adornment, which I’d argue is the wrong reason to get tattooed. But many of us, most of us, really, wear these words and images and special numbers, and the story they tell first and foremost in our soul. Heavily, so heavy they’ve permeated all the way to our skin’s surface.
In this life, I’ve known few things more sacred than the love that typically stands behind most tattoos. How we could ever turn this beautiful, intimate practice into something mundane is beyond me.
Thank you for reading. Guess what. I am actually publishing my first novel this fall. Wild, I know. Meanwhile, I’m gonna be documenting my process/journey/slow descent into madness on here, while also dropping the occasional opinion piece.
So if you’re someone who enjoys that kinda writing, well, why not subscribe? It’s free. And I’m desperate. So there, honesty.
