This post and the below one are for Kim and Ren and Elena (who I found in comments at Kim’s).
Kim wrote about the “tramp stamp” line and how it is, of course, misogynist. Elena made the comment that getting tattooed is a declaration of our strength and as I wrote before, a declaration of our own ownership of our bodies.
She’s absolutely right that every time we lay a claim to our own bodies, to dress them as we want, to shape and sculpt and decorate them, to eat and gain weight or exercise and lose weight, we are ridiculed, mocked, policed. Tattoos are especially frightening to people who don’t have them, as they cannot gauge the pain we’ve gone through to get them. Somewhat like men and pregnancy (or me and pregnancy, for that matter).
The idea of a woman willing to inflict pain on herself is frightening to people. The idea of a woman staking claim to herself is even more so.
Most of my tattoos are in places fairly easily hidden, and fairly easily shown off if I choose to. They’re something I chose to put on my body, and yet somehow there seems to be the perception that if you’ve done something conscious to modify your body, you have given permission to others to touch it.
I’ve had people come up to me and pull my shirt up to look at the tattoo on my lower back. I’ve had them reach for the one on my upper back, run a finger along it, think it was perfectly OK. My ex was nearly covered in tattoos, and strangers would grab at his hand to read the letters across his knuckles.
Strangely, no one ever reaches for the burn scar on my shoulder.
I’ve had pregnant women tell me the same thing, that strangers come up and touch their bellies, as if they have every right. As if their bodies, no longer simply their own, are now the property of all.
Tattooing, pregnancy. Proof that another person, in one case assumed to be male, in another case almost certainly so, has touched us, been there. And we know that once women have been touched once, they’re open to everyone, right?
So, tramp stamp. Proof that you’re sexual. Like visual confirmation of lost virginity. Someone’s hands have been on you, therefore everyone’s hands can be on you.
Well, forget all that, right?
My tattoos are for me. Just as my body, my clothing, sexuality, and everything else.
So, ultimately, are everyone’s. From the tiny wrist tattoo on the sorority girl in the Thai restaurant the other night to my ex’s facial tattoos, they’re all, ultimately, something we have to live with. They’re on our bodies, after all.