Tattoo Infections
Tattoo infections come in several forms. Because the tattoo process breaches the skin's protective layer, you can be susceptible to to skin reactions and infections. The following risks are associated with the tattoo process.
Blood diseases are a problem if the equipment used for tattooing is contaminated with someone else's blood and they are infected. It is possible in these circumstances to contract a number of serious blood-borne diseases including tetanus, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV.
Skin infections include bacterial infections. Symptoms of these include swelling, redness, warmth and pus leakage. Your tattooist should follow infection controlling procedures and this prevents these skin infections which can lead to bloodstream infections, pneumonia and a flesh destructing condition called necrotizing fasciitis.
Skin disorders include bumps called granulomas that form around the tattoo ink, particularly if red ink is used in the tattoo. Also, keloids can also manifest, a form of excessive scarring.
Another form of tattoo infection is allergic reactions. Tattoo dye itself can lead to allergic reactions, particularly the red pigment. The result is an itchy rash on or close to the tattoo, that can occur years after the tattoo is done.
It should be noted that it is fairly rare to get these tattoo infections from clean, modern tattoo studios. To be sure, shops should be clean and soap and water should be available in the toilet. Tattoo artists must wash their hands often and wear latex gloves. Disinfectant should be used on surfaces and floors should be clean. Sterilising equipment is also an important point to note.
Disclaimer: Please note that the tattoo infections information on this page is not a substitute for medical advice from your doctor..
Thursday, October 3, 2013
75 Radical Facts About . . .Tattoos
75 Radical Facts About . . .Tattoos
In the U.S., more women than men are tattooed (23% vs. 19%), according to a 2012 survey.h
A 2006 survey revealed that 36% of those ages 18-25 and 40% of those ages 26-40 have at least one tattoo.f
The Latin word for “tattoo” is stigma.e
The National Geographic states that in April 2000, 15% of Americans (40 million people) were tattooed.m
There are over 20,000 tattoo parlors in the United States alone. A new establishment is being added in the country every day.Americans spend approximately $1.65 billion on tattoos annually.
An Oxygen Media survey in 2012 revealed that 59% of people with tattoos are women, with the most popular images being hearts and angels.h
A tattoo machine has four parts: 1) the needle, 2) the tube that holds the ink, 3) an electric motor, and 4) a foot pedal to control the movement (like a sewing machine pedal).c
Early tattoo methods included using chisels, rakes, or picks. Soot-covered thread was also used. The thread would be sewn through the skin.i
The word “tattoo” derives from the Polynesian word “ta” (“to strike”), which describes the sound of a tattooing spike being knocked on skin. The first recorded references to the word “tattoo” is in the papers of Joseph Banks (1743-1820), a naturalist aboard Captain Cook’s ship. Before Captain Cook brought the word to Europe, tattoos in the West were known as “prics” or “marks.”a
After the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in 1932, many worried parents had their children tattooed.j
Urine was sometimes used to mix tattoo color.i
Often misspelled “tatoo”, the word tattoo is one of the most misspelled words in the English language.j
Some of the funniest tattoo misspellings include “Beautiful Tradgedy”, “Tradgey/Comedy”, “Fuck the Systsem”, “Chi-tonw”, “I’m Awsome”, “Sweet Pee”, “Tomarrow Never Knows”, “Leave a coment below”, “Your Next”, “Exreme”, and “Eat & Drink Today Fore We Die Tomorrow”.n
Not all skin on the body is the same and, therefore, will not take tattoo pigment the same. For example, tattoos on elbows, knuckles, knees, and feet are infamous for fading.d
The top 10 most popular spots for tattoos are 1) lower back, 2) wrist, 3) foot, 4) ankle, 5) armband, 6) back-piece, 7) arm, 8) chest, 9) breast, and 10) neck.j
Women are twice as likely to get their tattoos removed than men.h
After Social Security cards were issued in 1936, men and women tattooed their numbers on their arms.g
In 2013, just 24 hours after tattoo artist Rouslan Toumaniantz met his girlfriend Lesya in Moscow, he had, with her consent, tattooed an alternate spelling of his name all over her face. It runs cheek-to-cheek in gothic-style, five-inch, bold lettering.b
The first professional tattoo artist in the U.S. was a German immigrant, Martin Hildebrandt, who arrived in Boston in 1846.g
In 1955, the assistant secretary of defense suggested that citizens tattoo their blood type on their arms in case there was an attack against the U.S.j
To get a tattoo, the skin is pierced between 50 and 3,000 times a minute by a tattoo machine.a
A tattoo is actually in the dermis, which is the second layer of skin. The cells of the dermis are significantly more stable that the cells in the epidermis, with minor fading and dispersion for a person’s entire life.j
From the mid-1960s to late-1980s, the Soviet Union imprisoned as many as 35 million people in prison camps. Of that number, between 20 million and 30 million received tattoos while serving their time. Inmates caught wearing a tattoo they didn’t earn or deserve might be punished by death.j
The area where the color of a tattoo has lifted out during the healing or the artist missed a section is known as a “holiday.”
Tattoo artist Vinnie Myers creates 3D nipple tattoos for breast cancer survivors.a
Modern ink may contain pigments from ground plastics, such as Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), which creates extremely vivid tattooing with clearer, longer-lasting lines that are resistant to the fading and blurring of traditional inks.a
UV tattoos are created with ink that is completely invisible in normal daylight but glows brightly under ultraviolet light.a
A particularly famous tattoo was the naked hula girl who, positioned properly on a bicep, could swing her hips and jiggle her breasts as the owner moved his arm.j
The second most tattooed person in the world is Tom Leppard (1934) from the Isle of Sky, Scotland. Also known as the “Leopard Man,” his body is 99.9% covered in the tattoos. The only parts of his body not tattooed are between his toes and the insides of his ears.a
The most tattooed man in the world is Gregory Paul McLaren (1971), also known as Lucky Diamond Rich. He is 100% tattooed, including the inside of his foreskin, mouth, and ears.a
Laser surgery is the most effective way to remove a tattoo. The laser penetrates the skin and breaks up the tattoo pigments so that they can be carried away naturally by the body’s immune system. Black is the easiest color to remove because it absorbs more laser waves. Green and yellow are more difficult to remove.e
Some people have compared laser surgery to remove tattoos as little dots of hot grease being applied to the skin. Some treatments cost thousands of dollars. Other methods of tattoo removal include dermabrasion (sanding the skin), cryosurgery (freezing the skin), and excision (cutting away the tattoo with a scalpel and stitching up the wound). Traces of a tattoo almost always linger after tattoo “removal.”e
Some descendants of Holocaust survivors are having their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms to memorialize their family history.l
Tattooing was introduced at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1941 and at Birkenau the next March. These two camps were the only two camps to tattoo prisoners. Prisoners were tattooed on the chest and, more commonly, on the arms. Only those fit to work were tattooed.
The oldest physical body in existence, the Iceman (3300-3200 B.C.) has the oldest tattoos that have ever been preserved. He has a black cross tattooed on the inside of his left knee six straight lines on his lower back, and parallel lines on his ankles, leg, and wrists. When scientists X-rayed his body, they discovered joint disease under each tattoo, which suggests the tattoos were meant to relieve pain.g
Archeologists have discovered tools in France, Portugal, and Scandinavia that were probably used for tattooing. These are at least 12,000 years old, or from the time of the last Ice Age.a
The earliest known tattoo that represents something other than an abstract pattern is of the god Bes, the Egyptian god of revelry. These tattoos have been found on female Nubian mummies dating from 400 B.C.d
The Greeks learned tattooing from the Persians and used tattoos to mark slaves and criminals so they could be identified if they tried to escape. The Romans learned it from the Greeks and would tattoo “fug” on the foreheads of slaves for “fugitive.”d
Stone sculptures in China from the 3rd century B.C. depict men wearing tattoos on their faces. A few hundred years later, the philosopher Confucius discouraged tattooing because he believed that the human body was a gift from one’s parents and ancestors.a
The oldest known description of tattoo technique with a formula for tattoo ink is found in Medicae artis principes (1567). The formula for ink included Egyptian pine wood (especially the bark), corroded bronze, gall, vitriol, vinegar, and leek juice.a
Ancient methods for tattoo removal include using scum on the bottom of chamber pot mixed with “very strong vinegar” or pigeon feces mixed with vinegar and applied as poultice “for a long time. Other formulas include dried beetle mixed as a powder with sulfur, wax, and oil.a
Plato thought that individuals guilty of sacrilege should be forcibly tattooed and banished from the Republic.g
The sadistic Roman Emperor Caligula amused himself by capriciously ordering members of his court to be tattooed.j
Greek emperor Theophilus took revenge on two monks who had publicly criticized him by having 11 verses of obscene iambic pentameter tattooed on their foreheads.j
St. Isidore of Seville (~A.D. 560-636) reported that the Picts were so named because of the “absurd marks produced on their bodies by craftsmen with tiny pinpricks and juice extracted from their local grasses.” The Picts’ tattoos were blue designs made from a plant called woad.j
In A.D. 787, Pope Hadrian I banned tattooing of any kind, even on criminals or gladiators. From then on, tattooing was virtually unknown in the Christian world until the 19th century. Judaism and Islam also discouraged tattooing.g
Animals are the most frequent subject matter of tattooing in many cultures and are traditionally associated with magic, totems, and the desire of the person to become identified with the sprit of the animal.j
Polynesian tattooing as it existed before the arrival of Europeans in the South Pacific was the most intricate and skillful tattooing in the ancient world.
While designs that apparently represent tattoos are seen on paintings of both men and women in Egyptian art and statues, all the tattooed Egyptian mummies discovered to date are female. Egyptologists believe that these designs are symbols of fertility and rejuvenation.k
Pamela Anderson’s barbed wire armband tattoo was so instantly famous that it was largely responsible for the huge rise in popularity of tattoo armbands through the late 90s.j
The FDA recently warned that temporary tattoos made with “black henna” ink containing para-phenylenediamie (PDD), a coal-tar product used in hair dyes, can cause permanent scarring.a
The most famous of all criminal tattoos are worn by the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza. They wear intricate and traditional designs in a full body suit that can be hidden entirely from view by clothes as an inescapable sign of their commitment to their gang.k
Across the world, even the smallest tattoos can have significance to the prison population. For example, in the U.K. a single dot on the cheek indicates the wearer as a “borstal boy.” Three dots between the thumb and forefinger prove gang membership among the Latino population of U.S. prisons.k
Samuel O’Reilly invited tattoo machines around the late 19th century. He based his design on the autographic printer, an engraving machine invented by Thomas Edison. They have not changed much since then.d
Though tattooing is prohibited in prisons, prisoners still manage to make tattoo machines out of electric shavers, needles, and guitar strings and ink reservoirs from the barrels of ballpoint pens. The marijuana leaf, the number 13, the 13th letter of the alphabet (M for marijuana) are popular as are birds (freedom or power), skulls, and other symbols of death, spiders, roses, snakes, and religious images. Teardrops at the corners of the eyes represent time spent in prison, murders committed, or deaths of fellow gang members.k
The existing tattoo designs displayed in a tattoo shop are known as “flash.” Clients can chose from flash or request a customized design.d
Receiving a tattoo has been described as similar to getting stung by a bee or getting a sunburn.j
While HIV could hypothetically be spread by tattoo practices, there are no reported cases of the disease being transmitted via tattoo application. Other diseases such as syphilis and hepatitis B and C can also be spread.a
Rarely, some tattoo ink can contain metal. These tattoos may cause pain during an MRI or even affect the MRI results. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not regulate or approve tattoo ink.a
Because some white supremacist groups sometimes mark themselves with Celtic tattoos, some people who choose to receive a Celtic tattoo unintentionally get an image with connections to prison life.a
In Japan, tattooing is called irezumi (“to insert”). Japanese tattoo artists have inspired diverse Western tattoo artists, including British “King of the Tattooists” George Burchett, Sailor Jerry Collins, and Don Ed Hardy.c
While Popeye and Betty Boop were popular in the early 20th century among sailors, a popular image in the military is now the Warner Brothers cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil, or Taz. Other popular tattoos include Batman, Winnie the Pooh characters, and more adult images of artists R. Crumb, Coop, and fantasy comics and illustrations.c
Copying someone’s tattoo custom design is considered unethical in the body art world. Some tattoo artists won’t even duplicate a mummy’s tattoos because they say the tattoo belongs to the person who wore it. An exception to the taboo is children and grandchildren reproducing tattoos of parents and grandparents so that the tattoo will “live on.”c
While the amount of pain experienced while receiving at tattoo depends on the individual, typically the most painful areas to tattoo are over the bone such as the ankle, collarbone, chest, ribs, and spine.a
Choosing a tattoo from flash is similar to buying clothing “off the rack.” However, a good tattoo artist can alter the design to make it more personal.e
Rocker Tommy Lee was entered in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records when he became the first man to be tattooed in mid air during a private flight to Miami.a
Winston Churchill’s mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had a tattoo of a snake around her wrists, which she covered with a diamond bracelet at formal occasions. Churchill himself had an anchor on his foreman.j
“Old school” tattoos are those typically inspired by Sailor Jerry. They are usually humorous, brightly colored, and nautically inspired. Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins was indeed a sailor before he was an artist and he sailed the world. He was inspired by the art and imagery of the Orient. He regarded his tattoos as the ultimate rebellion against “the Squares.”c
Johnny Depp once said “My body is my journal and my tattoos are my story.”
Research shows that adults with tattoos are more sexually active than those without tattoos. Additionally, research shows that adults who have tattoos are more likely to engage in riskier behavior.m
King Harold II of England had several tattoos. His tattoos were used to identify his body after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.a
George C. Reiger Jr. has over 1,000 Disney tattoos, including all 101 Dalmatians. He had to receive special permission from Disney because the images are copyrighted.a
During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries tattoos were popular with English and Russian royalties. They were so expensive that common people could not afford them. When tattoos became affordable to the lower classes, they started to be deemed “trashy” until the tattoo renaissance in the mid 20th century.d
In a study of first impressions, online avatars that had tattoos (and other body modifications) were more likely to be viewed as adventure seekers, to have a higher number of previous sexual partners, to be less inhibited, and more likely to be thrill or adventure seekers than avatars without tattoos.
In the U.S., more women than men are tattooed (23% vs. 19%), according to a 2012 survey.h
A 2006 survey revealed that 36% of those ages 18-25 and 40% of those ages 26-40 have at least one tattoo.f
The Latin word for “tattoo” is stigma.e
The National Geographic states that in April 2000, 15% of Americans (40 million people) were tattooed.m
There are over 20,000 tattoo parlors in the United States alone. A new establishment is being added in the country every day.Americans spend approximately $1.65 billion on tattoos annually.
An Oxygen Media survey in 2012 revealed that 59% of people with tattoos are women, with the most popular images being hearts and angels.h
A tattoo machine has four parts: 1) the needle, 2) the tube that holds the ink, 3) an electric motor, and 4) a foot pedal to control the movement (like a sewing machine pedal).c
Early tattoo methods included using chisels, rakes, or picks. Soot-covered thread was also used. The thread would be sewn through the skin.i
The word “tattoo” derives from the Polynesian word “ta” (“to strike”), which describes the sound of a tattooing spike being knocked on skin. The first recorded references to the word “tattoo” is in the papers of Joseph Banks (1743-1820), a naturalist aboard Captain Cook’s ship. Before Captain Cook brought the word to Europe, tattoos in the West were known as “prics” or “marks.”a
After the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in 1932, many worried parents had their children tattooed.j
Urine was sometimes used to mix tattoo color.i
Often misspelled “tatoo”, the word tattoo is one of the most misspelled words in the English language.j
Some of the funniest tattoo misspellings include “Beautiful Tradgedy”, “Tradgey/Comedy”, “Fuck the Systsem”, “Chi-tonw”, “I’m Awsome”, “Sweet Pee”, “Tomarrow Never Knows”, “Leave a coment below”, “Your Next”, “Exreme”, and “Eat & Drink Today Fore We Die Tomorrow”.n
Not all skin on the body is the same and, therefore, will not take tattoo pigment the same. For example, tattoos on elbows, knuckles, knees, and feet are infamous for fading.d
The top 10 most popular spots for tattoos are 1) lower back, 2) wrist, 3) foot, 4) ankle, 5) armband, 6) back-piece, 7) arm, 8) chest, 9) breast, and 10) neck.j
Women are twice as likely to get their tattoos removed than men.h
After Social Security cards were issued in 1936, men and women tattooed their numbers on their arms.g
In 2013, just 24 hours after tattoo artist Rouslan Toumaniantz met his girlfriend Lesya in Moscow, he had, with her consent, tattooed an alternate spelling of his name all over her face. It runs cheek-to-cheek in gothic-style, five-inch, bold lettering.b
The first professional tattoo artist in the U.S. was a German immigrant, Martin Hildebrandt, who arrived in Boston in 1846.g
In 1955, the assistant secretary of defense suggested that citizens tattoo their blood type on their arms in case there was an attack against the U.S.j
To get a tattoo, the skin is pierced between 50 and 3,000 times a minute by a tattoo machine.a
A tattoo is actually in the dermis, which is the second layer of skin. The cells of the dermis are significantly more stable that the cells in the epidermis, with minor fading and dispersion for a person’s entire life.j
From the mid-1960s to late-1980s, the Soviet Union imprisoned as many as 35 million people in prison camps. Of that number, between 20 million and 30 million received tattoos while serving their time. Inmates caught wearing a tattoo they didn’t earn or deserve might be punished by death.j
The area where the color of a tattoo has lifted out during the healing or the artist missed a section is known as a “holiday.”
Tattoo artist Vinnie Myers creates 3D nipple tattoos for breast cancer survivors.a
Modern ink may contain pigments from ground plastics, such as Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), which creates extremely vivid tattooing with clearer, longer-lasting lines that are resistant to the fading and blurring of traditional inks.a
UV tattoos are created with ink that is completely invisible in normal daylight but glows brightly under ultraviolet light.a
A particularly famous tattoo was the naked hula girl who, positioned properly on a bicep, could swing her hips and jiggle her breasts as the owner moved his arm.j
The second most tattooed person in the world is Tom Leppard (1934) from the Isle of Sky, Scotland. Also known as the “Leopard Man,” his body is 99.9% covered in the tattoos. The only parts of his body not tattooed are between his toes and the insides of his ears.a
The most tattooed man in the world is Gregory Paul McLaren (1971), also known as Lucky Diamond Rich. He is 100% tattooed, including the inside of his foreskin, mouth, and ears.a
Laser surgery is the most effective way to remove a tattoo. The laser penetrates the skin and breaks up the tattoo pigments so that they can be carried away naturally by the body’s immune system. Black is the easiest color to remove because it absorbs more laser waves. Green and yellow are more difficult to remove.e
Some people have compared laser surgery to remove tattoos as little dots of hot grease being applied to the skin. Some treatments cost thousands of dollars. Other methods of tattoo removal include dermabrasion (sanding the skin), cryosurgery (freezing the skin), and excision (cutting away the tattoo with a scalpel and stitching up the wound). Traces of a tattoo almost always linger after tattoo “removal.”e
Some descendants of Holocaust survivors are having their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms to memorialize their family history.l
Tattooing was introduced at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1941 and at Birkenau the next March. These two camps were the only two camps to tattoo prisoners. Prisoners were tattooed on the chest and, more commonly, on the arms. Only those fit to work were tattooed.
The oldest physical body in existence, the Iceman (3300-3200 B.C.) has the oldest tattoos that have ever been preserved. He has a black cross tattooed on the inside of his left knee six straight lines on his lower back, and parallel lines on his ankles, leg, and wrists. When scientists X-rayed his body, they discovered joint disease under each tattoo, which suggests the tattoos were meant to relieve pain.g
Archeologists have discovered tools in France, Portugal, and Scandinavia that were probably used for tattooing. These are at least 12,000 years old, or from the time of the last Ice Age.a
The earliest known tattoo that represents something other than an abstract pattern is of the god Bes, the Egyptian god of revelry. These tattoos have been found on female Nubian mummies dating from 400 B.C.d
The Greeks learned tattooing from the Persians and used tattoos to mark slaves and criminals so they could be identified if they tried to escape. The Romans learned it from the Greeks and would tattoo “fug” on the foreheads of slaves for “fugitive.”d
Stone sculptures in China from the 3rd century B.C. depict men wearing tattoos on their faces. A few hundred years later, the philosopher Confucius discouraged tattooing because he believed that the human body was a gift from one’s parents and ancestors.a
The oldest known description of tattoo technique with a formula for tattoo ink is found in Medicae artis principes (1567). The formula for ink included Egyptian pine wood (especially the bark), corroded bronze, gall, vitriol, vinegar, and leek juice.a
Ancient methods for tattoo removal include using scum on the bottom of chamber pot mixed with “very strong vinegar” or pigeon feces mixed with vinegar and applied as poultice “for a long time. Other formulas include dried beetle mixed as a powder with sulfur, wax, and oil.a
Plato thought that individuals guilty of sacrilege should be forcibly tattooed and banished from the Republic.g
The sadistic Roman Emperor Caligula amused himself by capriciously ordering members of his court to be tattooed.j
Greek emperor Theophilus took revenge on two monks who had publicly criticized him by having 11 verses of obscene iambic pentameter tattooed on their foreheads.j
St. Isidore of Seville (~A.D. 560-636) reported that the Picts were so named because of the “absurd marks produced on their bodies by craftsmen with tiny pinpricks and juice extracted from their local grasses.” The Picts’ tattoos were blue designs made from a plant called woad.j
In A.D. 787, Pope Hadrian I banned tattooing of any kind, even on criminals or gladiators. From then on, tattooing was virtually unknown in the Christian world until the 19th century. Judaism and Islam also discouraged tattooing.g
Animals are the most frequent subject matter of tattooing in many cultures and are traditionally associated with magic, totems, and the desire of the person to become identified with the sprit of the animal.j
Polynesian tattooing as it existed before the arrival of Europeans in the South Pacific was the most intricate and skillful tattooing in the ancient world.
While designs that apparently represent tattoos are seen on paintings of both men and women in Egyptian art and statues, all the tattooed Egyptian mummies discovered to date are female. Egyptologists believe that these designs are symbols of fertility and rejuvenation.k
Pamela Anderson’s barbed wire armband tattoo was so instantly famous that it was largely responsible for the huge rise in popularity of tattoo armbands through the late 90s.j
The FDA recently warned that temporary tattoos made with “black henna” ink containing para-phenylenediamie (PDD), a coal-tar product used in hair dyes, can cause permanent scarring.a
The most famous of all criminal tattoos are worn by the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza. They wear intricate and traditional designs in a full body suit that can be hidden entirely from view by clothes as an inescapable sign of their commitment to their gang.k
Across the world, even the smallest tattoos can have significance to the prison population. For example, in the U.K. a single dot on the cheek indicates the wearer as a “borstal boy.” Three dots between the thumb and forefinger prove gang membership among the Latino population of U.S. prisons.k
Samuel O’Reilly invited tattoo machines around the late 19th century. He based his design on the autographic printer, an engraving machine invented by Thomas Edison. They have not changed much since then.d
Though tattooing is prohibited in prisons, prisoners still manage to make tattoo machines out of electric shavers, needles, and guitar strings and ink reservoirs from the barrels of ballpoint pens. The marijuana leaf, the number 13, the 13th letter of the alphabet (M for marijuana) are popular as are birds (freedom or power), skulls, and other symbols of death, spiders, roses, snakes, and religious images. Teardrops at the corners of the eyes represent time spent in prison, murders committed, or deaths of fellow gang members.k
The existing tattoo designs displayed in a tattoo shop are known as “flash.” Clients can chose from flash or request a customized design.d
Receiving a tattoo has been described as similar to getting stung by a bee or getting a sunburn.j
While HIV could hypothetically be spread by tattoo practices, there are no reported cases of the disease being transmitted via tattoo application. Other diseases such as syphilis and hepatitis B and C can also be spread.a
Rarely, some tattoo ink can contain metal. These tattoos may cause pain during an MRI or even affect the MRI results. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not regulate or approve tattoo ink.a
Because some white supremacist groups sometimes mark themselves with Celtic tattoos, some people who choose to receive a Celtic tattoo unintentionally get an image with connections to prison life.a
In Japan, tattooing is called irezumi (“to insert”). Japanese tattoo artists have inspired diverse Western tattoo artists, including British “King of the Tattooists” George Burchett, Sailor Jerry Collins, and Don Ed Hardy.c
While Popeye and Betty Boop were popular in the early 20th century among sailors, a popular image in the military is now the Warner Brothers cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil, or Taz. Other popular tattoos include Batman, Winnie the Pooh characters, and more adult images of artists R. Crumb, Coop, and fantasy comics and illustrations.c
Copying someone’s tattoo custom design is considered unethical in the body art world. Some tattoo artists won’t even duplicate a mummy’s tattoos because they say the tattoo belongs to the person who wore it. An exception to the taboo is children and grandchildren reproducing tattoos of parents and grandparents so that the tattoo will “live on.”c
While the amount of pain experienced while receiving at tattoo depends on the individual, typically the most painful areas to tattoo are over the bone such as the ankle, collarbone, chest, ribs, and spine.a
Choosing a tattoo from flash is similar to buying clothing “off the rack.” However, a good tattoo artist can alter the design to make it more personal.e
Rocker Tommy Lee was entered in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records when he became the first man to be tattooed in mid air during a private flight to Miami.a
Winston Churchill’s mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had a tattoo of a snake around her wrists, which she covered with a diamond bracelet at formal occasions. Churchill himself had an anchor on his foreman.j
“Old school” tattoos are those typically inspired by Sailor Jerry. They are usually humorous, brightly colored, and nautically inspired. Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins was indeed a sailor before he was an artist and he sailed the world. He was inspired by the art and imagery of the Orient. He regarded his tattoos as the ultimate rebellion against “the Squares.”c
Johnny Depp once said “My body is my journal and my tattoos are my story.”
Research shows that adults with tattoos are more sexually active than those without tattoos. Additionally, research shows that adults who have tattoos are more likely to engage in riskier behavior.m
King Harold II of England had several tattoos. His tattoos were used to identify his body after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.a
George C. Reiger Jr. has over 1,000 Disney tattoos, including all 101 Dalmatians. He had to receive special permission from Disney because the images are copyrighted.a
During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries tattoos were popular with English and Russian royalties. They were so expensive that common people could not afford them. When tattoos became affordable to the lower classes, they started to be deemed “trashy” until the tattoo renaissance in the mid 20th century.d
In a study of first impressions, online avatars that had tattoos (and other body modifications) were more likely to be viewed as adventure seekers, to have a higher number of previous sexual partners, to be less inhibited, and more likely to be thrill or adventure seekers than avatars without tattoos.
10 Fascinating Facts About Tattoos
10 Fascinating Facts About Tattoos
Fifty years ago, tattoos were the watermark of rebels and social outcasts—bikers, sailors, carnival freaks. But today, your average sorority girl probably has a unicorn on her ankle or a butterfly fluttering above her butt crack. Tattoos have been a part of the human experience since the Stone Age and were present in nearly every culture across the globe, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to Africans, Native Americans, and Polynesians. Below are 10 facts about tattoos, from tramp stamps to gangsters to mummies and back again.
Today, the streets of cities like Boston and New York swarm with tattoo parlors, but few realize these are extremely recent developments. Many states took the extreme measure of banning tattoos entirely during the 1960s, when the hysteria of hepatitis outbreaks reached critical mass. It was illegal to get a tattoo in New York City between 1961 and 1997, forcing artists to operate on an underground basis. In Massachusetts, tattooing was illegal all the way up until 2000, with severe penalties including possible jail sentences. Today, all states allow tattooing, although the rules for minors vary from state to state—some allow kids to get inked with parental permission while others require waiting until 18, no exceptions.
Leaving the social connotations of the so-called “tramp stamps” well alone, there is at least one possible unforeseen drawback for women wishing to get a tattoo on their lower back. Some anesthesiologists have expressed concern that giving epidurals to pregnant women with tattoos may expose them to the potential complication of ink fragments entering the spinal cord. The risk would seem very minor, especially for a tattoo more than a few months old, but the possibility remains. Of greater concern, it has been reported that the iron oxide in tattoo ink sometimes reacts during MRIs and may cause burns.
For those not bold enough to commit to permanent inking, there are alternatives. Small children adore the temporary tattoos that come in the machines in supermarkets, and at carnivals, boardwalks, and the like, you can often encounter booths providing henna tattoos. Derived from a plant, henna dye has been used for thousands of years, both to color the hair and to draw intricate designs on the skin. Natural henna goes on with a light orange color and darkens to a rust red over a few days. As the skin exfoliates, the patterns gently fade away. However, the commonly used “black henna,” contains synthetic ingredients, most notably p-phenylenediamine (PPD). PPD is found in coal tar and has been known to cause horrifying reactions and permanent scars. Worse still, some black henna contains carcinogens which might cause life-threatening issues down the line such as leukemia.
Macy’s was founded in New York City in 1858 and quickly grew into an empire. It has long since worked its way into the American public consciousness with its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade and 4th of July fireworks spectacular. The department store’s logo is simple and classic: a red star. Few realize that the star was actually taken from a tattoo that founder R.H. Macy wore on his forearm. In his youth, Macy found employment on whaling vessels, where he acquired the tattoo among other rough-and-tumble sailors. Although a fictionalization of R.H. Macy was featured in the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street, the tattooed retailer had actually died some 70 years earlier.
Any part of culture as pervasive and controversial as tattoos is sure to spawn its own collection of rumors, tall tales, and urban legends. Some are so absurd they are almost believable, like the yarn that childrens’ show host Mr. Rogers was a deadly Navy SEAL sniper who wore cardigans to hide his heavily tattooed forearms (he was actually among the most likable people ever, and the sweaters were knitted by his mother). Other stories are more horrific: tales of demented parents tattooing infants and vengeful boyfriends tattooing piles of excrement on the backs of cheating girlfriends. Like most urban legends, these turned out to be unnerving works of fiction
With some people willing to do almost anything to make a buck, and advertisers perpetually desperate to reach an audience, it is somewhat surprising that sponsorship tattoos took as long as they did to reach their stride. In 2013, New York real estate company Rapid Realty made an offer to their employees that many couldn’t refuse: get a company logo tattooed on your body, and receive a 15 percent pay raise. Dozens accepted the offer. Alaskan amateur boxer Billy Gibby, known as “Billy the Human Billboard,” pays his bills with corporate tattoos, sporting more than two dozen, including some on his face. His work includes the logos of Liberty Tax Service, Host Gator, and several porn sites.Some sponsorship tattoos have actually been inked in the spirit of altruism. In 2012, a British man named Dave Ryder had multiple logos tattooed on his body to raise money for the son of a friend. The boy, who suffered from meningitis, had already had his legs and The life of a dedicated vegan can be quite difficult. Outside of large, cosmopolitan cities, their menu options can be extremely limited. Some, called “ethical vegans,” take it a step further, not only eliminating animal products from their diet, but refusing any product or lifestyle choice that stems from the exploitation of animals. This includes the wearing of leather, for instance, or the use of shampoo or cosmetics that have been tested on laboratory animals. It also means they would need to be very, very careful about where they get their tattoos. Although there are indeed vegan tattoo parlors, they are few and far between. Unfortunately, a lot of tattoo ink is made using bone char (burnt animal bones) and sometimes the resin of shellac beetles. Even if a vegan-friendly ink is secured, the soaps and ointments used to clean and treat the finished tattoo often contain animal by-products.fingers amputated at the age of two
Prison And Gang Tattoos
While many people get tattoos based entirely on drunken whimsy, others are deadly serious about it, their body art fraught with meaning and symbolism. This is especially true of gang members, including those behind bars. One group particularly well known for their ink is the Japanese Yakuza, an organized crime group dating back hundreds of years. Yakuza members are known for their vast, full-body tattoos, called “irezumi.” Unlike Western tattoos, which are typically applied with an electric gun, Yakuza tattoos are applied with a single needle in the traditional fashion, an expensive, painful, and time-consuming process. In American prisons, tattooing is strictly prohibited, but it has been a common practice for years. The equipment is makeshift, utilizing everything from ballpoint pens to guitar strings to paper clips. Prison tattoos have an extremely complex symbology, with different designs depicting the prisoner’s gang affiliation or significant life events. The number “13″ indicates membership in Mara Salvatrucha 13, a brutal gang with primarily Central American members, known for human trafficking. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood are often found with shamrocks or spider webs.
Cosmetic Tattoos
Not all tattoos are garishly designed to call attention to themselves: some are subtle marks of beauty. There has been an huge upsurge in the trade of cosmetic tattoos, or permanent make-up. Such procedures include shading in brows, tracing the lips, and administering eyeliner. Of course, there are certain things that need to be taken into account. While you may save a boatload of money on cosmetics, your style can never change. And while they are “permanent,” touch-ups are required every few years to keep the tattoos looking their best. Should you eventually decide to reverse the procedure, removal can be an extremely delicate endeavor. It’s one thing to laser a badly drawn tiger from a bicep and another thing entirely to remove ink from an eyelid.Some cultures have been practicing facial tattoos for generations. The women of a Malian tribe tattoo their gums to show their age and marital status.
Mummy
In 1991, a body was found frozen in glacial ice in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Italy and Austria. Though initially believed to be the corpse of some hapless mountaineer, the body was actually found to be ancient, dating back to approximately 3255 B.C. The mummy was dubbed Ötzi after the place of his discovery. Ötzi died around 700 years before construction even began on the Great Pyramid of Giza. Analysis of the body produced a vast range of information, from his last meals to his ancestry to his cause of death—he’d been the victim of violence, an arrowhead lodged in his shoulders, his upper body and head slashed and bruised. But the most intriguing part of Ötzi’s legacy may well be the series of tattoos he wore on his body. The dozens of marks and lines are etched over areas normally associated with acupressure, like the joints and the spine, leading researchers to believe that they were not performed in the name of ornamentation, but were a primitive form of medicine.
Fifty years ago, tattoos were the watermark of rebels and social outcasts—bikers, sailors, carnival freaks. But today, your average sorority girl probably has a unicorn on her ankle or a butterfly fluttering above her butt crack. Tattoos have been a part of the human experience since the Stone Age and were present in nearly every culture across the globe, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to Africans, Native Americans, and Polynesians. Below are 10 facts about tattoos, from tramp stamps to gangsters to mummies and back again.
Today, the streets of cities like Boston and New York swarm with tattoo parlors, but few realize these are extremely recent developments. Many states took the extreme measure of banning tattoos entirely during the 1960s, when the hysteria of hepatitis outbreaks reached critical mass. It was illegal to get a tattoo in New York City between 1961 and 1997, forcing artists to operate on an underground basis. In Massachusetts, tattooing was illegal all the way up until 2000, with severe penalties including possible jail sentences. Today, all states allow tattooing, although the rules for minors vary from state to state—some allow kids to get inked with parental permission while others require waiting until 18, no exceptions.
Leaving the social connotations of the so-called “tramp stamps” well alone, there is at least one possible unforeseen drawback for women wishing to get a tattoo on their lower back. Some anesthesiologists have expressed concern that giving epidurals to pregnant women with tattoos may expose them to the potential complication of ink fragments entering the spinal cord. The risk would seem very minor, especially for a tattoo more than a few months old, but the possibility remains. Of greater concern, it has been reported that the iron oxide in tattoo ink sometimes reacts during MRIs and may cause burns.
For those not bold enough to commit to permanent inking, there are alternatives. Small children adore the temporary tattoos that come in the machines in supermarkets, and at carnivals, boardwalks, and the like, you can often encounter booths providing henna tattoos. Derived from a plant, henna dye has been used for thousands of years, both to color the hair and to draw intricate designs on the skin. Natural henna goes on with a light orange color and darkens to a rust red over a few days. As the skin exfoliates, the patterns gently fade away. However, the commonly used “black henna,” contains synthetic ingredients, most notably p-phenylenediamine (PPD). PPD is found in coal tar and has been known to cause horrifying reactions and permanent scars. Worse still, some black henna contains carcinogens which might cause life-threatening issues down the line such as leukemia.
Macy’s was founded in New York City in 1858 and quickly grew into an empire. It has long since worked its way into the American public consciousness with its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade and 4th of July fireworks spectacular. The department store’s logo is simple and classic: a red star. Few realize that the star was actually taken from a tattoo that founder R.H. Macy wore on his forearm. In his youth, Macy found employment on whaling vessels, where he acquired the tattoo among other rough-and-tumble sailors. Although a fictionalization of R.H. Macy was featured in the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street, the tattooed retailer had actually died some 70 years earlier.
Any part of culture as pervasive and controversial as tattoos is sure to spawn its own collection of rumors, tall tales, and urban legends. Some are so absurd they are almost believable, like the yarn that childrens’ show host Mr. Rogers was a deadly Navy SEAL sniper who wore cardigans to hide his heavily tattooed forearms (he was actually among the most likable people ever, and the sweaters were knitted by his mother). Other stories are more horrific: tales of demented parents tattooing infants and vengeful boyfriends tattooing piles of excrement on the backs of cheating girlfriends. Like most urban legends, these turned out to be unnerving works of fiction
With some people willing to do almost anything to make a buck, and advertisers perpetually desperate to reach an audience, it is somewhat surprising that sponsorship tattoos took as long as they did to reach their stride. In 2013, New York real estate company Rapid Realty made an offer to their employees that many couldn’t refuse: get a company logo tattooed on your body, and receive a 15 percent pay raise. Dozens accepted the offer. Alaskan amateur boxer Billy Gibby, known as “Billy the Human Billboard,” pays his bills with corporate tattoos, sporting more than two dozen, including some on his face. His work includes the logos of Liberty Tax Service, Host Gator, and several porn sites.Some sponsorship tattoos have actually been inked in the spirit of altruism. In 2012, a British man named Dave Ryder had multiple logos tattooed on his body to raise money for the son of a friend. The boy, who suffered from meningitis, had already had his legs and The life of a dedicated vegan can be quite difficult. Outside of large, cosmopolitan cities, their menu options can be extremely limited. Some, called “ethical vegans,” take it a step further, not only eliminating animal products from their diet, but refusing any product or lifestyle choice that stems from the exploitation of animals. This includes the wearing of leather, for instance, or the use of shampoo or cosmetics that have been tested on laboratory animals. It also means they would need to be very, very careful about where they get their tattoos. Although there are indeed vegan tattoo parlors, they are few and far between. Unfortunately, a lot of tattoo ink is made using bone char (burnt animal bones) and sometimes the resin of shellac beetles. Even if a vegan-friendly ink is secured, the soaps and ointments used to clean and treat the finished tattoo often contain animal by-products.fingers amputated at the age of two
Prison And Gang Tattoos
While many people get tattoos based entirely on drunken whimsy, others are deadly serious about it, their body art fraught with meaning and symbolism. This is especially true of gang members, including those behind bars. One group particularly well known for their ink is the Japanese Yakuza, an organized crime group dating back hundreds of years. Yakuza members are known for their vast, full-body tattoos, called “irezumi.” Unlike Western tattoos, which are typically applied with an electric gun, Yakuza tattoos are applied with a single needle in the traditional fashion, an expensive, painful, and time-consuming process. In American prisons, tattooing is strictly prohibited, but it has been a common practice for years. The equipment is makeshift, utilizing everything from ballpoint pens to guitar strings to paper clips. Prison tattoos have an extremely complex symbology, with different designs depicting the prisoner’s gang affiliation or significant life events. The number “13″ indicates membership in Mara Salvatrucha 13, a brutal gang with primarily Central American members, known for human trafficking. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood are often found with shamrocks or spider webs.
Cosmetic Tattoos
Not all tattoos are garishly designed to call attention to themselves: some are subtle marks of beauty. There has been an huge upsurge in the trade of cosmetic tattoos, or permanent make-up. Such procedures include shading in brows, tracing the lips, and administering eyeliner. Of course, there are certain things that need to be taken into account. While you may save a boatload of money on cosmetics, your style can never change. And while they are “permanent,” touch-ups are required every few years to keep the tattoos looking their best. Should you eventually decide to reverse the procedure, removal can be an extremely delicate endeavor. It’s one thing to laser a badly drawn tiger from a bicep and another thing entirely to remove ink from an eyelid.Some cultures have been practicing facial tattoos for generations. The women of a Malian tribe tattoo their gums to show their age and marital status.
Mummy
In 1991, a body was found frozen in glacial ice in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Italy and Austria. Though initially believed to be the corpse of some hapless mountaineer, the body was actually found to be ancient, dating back to approximately 3255 B.C. The mummy was dubbed Ötzi after the place of his discovery. Ötzi died around 700 years before construction even began on the Great Pyramid of Giza. Analysis of the body produced a vast range of information, from his last meals to his ancestry to his cause of death—he’d been the victim of violence, an arrowhead lodged in his shoulders, his upper body and head slashed and bruised. But the most intriguing part of Ötzi’s legacy may well be the series of tattoos he wore on his body. The dozens of marks and lines are etched over areas normally associated with acupressure, like the joints and the spine, leading researchers to believe that they were not performed in the name of ornamentation, but were a primitive form of medicine.
The woman with an R-Tatz obsession: Supermarket worker has tattoos of Robert Pattinson drawn all over her body
Cathy Ward, 52, from Reading has spent £8,500 on tattoos to date
She expects to have spent £25,000 by the time her inkings are complete
Says discovering Twilight helped her focus on losing weight
Now more confident, says tattoos are a permanent reminder and reward
Favourite character is Edward and she is a Robert Pattinson fan too
With a perfect copy of the New Moon film poster emblazoned across her back, portraits of Edward Cullen on both ribs and the Cullen crest splashed across her breastbone, describing Cathy Ward, 52, as a Twilight fan is a bit of an understatement.
But there's more to the Twihard's tattoos than a penchant for Robert Pattison, although the self-confessed member of Team Edward admits that it does play a part.
For Cathy, her etchings are also an important reminder of how far she's come since Christmas 2009, when she weighed six stone more and was an unhappy size 24 - and a reward.
She expects to have spent £25,000 by the time her inkings are complete
Says discovering Twilight helped her focus on losing weight
Now more confident, says tattoos are a permanent reminder and reward
Favourite character is Edward and she is a Robert Pattinson fan too
With a perfect copy of the New Moon film poster emblazoned across her back, portraits of Edward Cullen on both ribs and the Cullen crest splashed across her breastbone, describing Cathy Ward, 52, as a Twilight fan is a bit of an understatement.
But there's more to the Twihard's tattoos than a penchant for Robert Pattison, although the self-confessed member of Team Edward admits that it does play a part.
For Cathy, her etchings are also an important reminder of how far she's come since Christmas 2009, when she weighed six stone more and was an unhappy size 24 - and a reward.
Yet trading comfort eating for Twilight tattoos hasn't come cheap, as she happily admits. So far, she has spent just under £8,500 on getting inked but expects to have spent £25,000 by the time her 'body suit' is complete.
'I've had about 91 hours of tattooing now and it's costing a small fortune,' explains Cathy, who works as a baker for the Morrisons supermarket chain in her hometown of Reading.
'I've forked out just under £8,500 and by the time I'm finished, when [my] body's completely covered, we're looking at between £17,000 and £25,000.'
Cathy's passion for ink began after a friend handed her a copy of the first Twilight book at the end of 2009.
Hooked, she quickly devoured the first novel and sped through the remaining three before buying the DVDs and soundtracks of the accompanying films.
Her first tattoo, an elaborate recreation of the film poster for New Moon, followed with more etchings added two weeks later.
'We've got the book covers, we've got the ribbon, we've got the family crest, we've got the hairpiece, we've got the chessboard from Breaking Dawn, we've got the wolf tribal symbol,' she reveals.
'I've had five wolves done and one of the last things Jacob says to [Bella] when he realises he's lost her. He said: "It would be as easy as breathing with me".'
But despite her love for the Wolf Pack - the subject of an inking currently underway on her left leg - it's Edward, played in the films by Robert Pattinson, who interests her the most.
'Obviously, I'm Team Edward so most of my tattoos are of Edward,' she explains. 'I'm definitely a Robert Pattinson fan.
'It's because he's not classically good looking - he's different,' she adds. 'I'm not what I'd call good looking, I'm average and he's similar. Plenty of other guys in the film are better looking but he's striking in different way.'
Since discovering Twilight, Cathy has lost an incredible six stone and says that having the tattoos is a permanent reminder of just how far she's come since 1999 when the shock of losing her mother resulted in an unhealthy obsession with food.
'That's when I started going really hell for leather doing what I wanted and abusing my body,' remembers Cathy.
'I was sitting down, overeating, just vegetating all the time. I was ashamed of myself and what I looked like.
'When my friend gave me the first book and I got well and truly hooked on it, it kind of focused me. Of course, then I got the music, the soundtracks to all of the movies, so I got them out, I'd exercise to them and I'd be watching a DVD and I'd just be exercising in front of them.
And then I'd get another tattoo and it'd just give me something to focus on. I've lost six stone and that's what did it.
'It's a permanent reminder and a reward to me for getting my life back on track to what it should be.'
But not everyone is as supportive of Cathy's decision to get inked. Although her husband Colin, to whom she's been married for 21 years, tolerates her tattoos, not everyone in her family agrees.
'My father, at first he was very resistant,' she says. 'He wouldn't be seen out with me. My brother, I haven't spoken to in five years. He's quite embarrassed by me.
'My sisters... they're just quite glad to see me come out of my shell and be who I should be. I used to be very quiet, sort of hide in the background, be a bit of a wallflower.'
She certainly isn't anymore and revels in the stir she caused when she was invited onto the red carpet at the Breaking Dawn part one premiere in 2011.
'I got sent tickets to the premiere, which was brilliant although security wouldn't let me near the main characters,' remembers Cathy with a chuckle.
'But the fans reaction was brilliant - it was an hour and a half of mayhem because they all wanted pictures with me.'
Her tattoos also got her the attention of Taylor Lautner, the 21-year-old American who plays Jacob, who, to her delight, even mentioned her in an interview.
about Tattoos
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of tattoo as, "In 18th c. tattaow, tattow. From Polynesian tatau. In Tahitian, tatu." The word tatau was introduced as a loan word into English; its pronunciation was changed to conform to English phonology as "tattoo".[1] Sailors on later voyages both introduced the word and reintroduced the concept of tattooing to Europe.[2]
The first written reference to the word, "tattoo" (or Samoan "Tatau") appears in the journal of Joseph Banks (24 February 1743 – 19 June 1820), the naturalist aboard Captain Cook's ship the HMS Endeavour: "I shall now mention the way they mark themselves indelibly, each of them is so marked by their humor or disposition".
The word "tattoo" was brought to Europe by the explorer James Cook, when he returned in 1771 from his first voyage to Tahiti and New Zealand. In his narrative of the voyage, he refers to an operation called "tattaw". Before this it had been described as scarring, painting, or staining.[3]
Tattoo enthusiasts may refer to tattoos as "ink", "pieces", "skin art", "tattoo art", "tats", or "work"; to the creators as "tattoo artists", "tattooers", or "tattooists"; and to places where they work as "tattoo shops", "tattoo studios", or "tattoo parlors".
Usage of the terms "skin art", "tattoo art", "pieces", and work" is gaining greater support[citation needed], with mainstream art galleries holding exhibitions of both conventional and custom tattoo designs. Beyond Skin, at the Museum of Croydon, is an example of this as it challenges the stereotypical view of tattoos and who has them. Copyrighted tattoo designs that are mass-produced and sent to tattoo artists are known as "flash", a notable instance of industrial design. Flash sheets are prominently displayed in many tattoo parlors for the purpose of providing both inspiration and ready-made tattoo images to customers.
The Japanese word irezumi means "insertion of ink" and can mean tattoos using tebori, the traditional Japanese hand method, a Western-style machine, or for that matter, any method of tattooing using insertion of ink. The most common word used for traditional Japanese tattoo designs is Horimono. Japanese may use the word "tattoo" to mean non-Japanese styles of tattooing.
Anthropologist Ling Roth in 1900 described four methods of skin marking and suggested they be differentiated under the names "tatu", "moko", "cicatrix", and "keloid".[4]
Types of tattoos
The American Academy of Dermatology distinguishes five types of tattoos:[5] traumatic tattoos, also called "natural tattoos", that result from injuries, especially asphalt from road injuries or pencil lead; amateur tattoos; professional tattoos, both via traditional methods and modern tattoo machines; cosmetic tattoos, also known as "permanent makeup"; and medical tattoos.
Traumatic tattoos
According to George Orwell, coal miners could develop characteristic tattoos owing to coal dust getting into wounds.[6] This can also occur with substances like gunpowder. Similarly, a traumatic tattoo occurs when a substance such as asphalt is rubbed into a wound as the result of some kind of accident or trauma. These are particularly difficult to remove as they tend to be spread across several different layers of skin, and scarring or permanent discoloration is almost unavoidable depending on the location. In addition, tattooing of the gingiva from implantation of amalgam particles during dental filling placement and removal is possible and not uncommon. Another example of such accidental tattoos is the result of a deliberate or accidental stabbing with a pencil or pen, leaving graphite or ink beneath the skin.
Amateur and professional tattoos
Many tattoos serve as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and convicts. The symbolism and impact of tattoos varies in different places and cultures. Tattoos may show how a person feels about a relative (commonly mother/father or daughter/son) or about an unrelated person.[7] Today, people choose to be tattooed for artistic, cosmetic, sentimental/memorial, religious, and magical reasons, and to symbolize their belonging to or identification with particular groups, including criminal gangs (see criminal tattoos) or a particular ethnic group or law-abiding subculture. Some Māori still choose to wear intricate moko on their faces. In Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, the yantra tattoo is used for protection against evil and to increase luck.[citation needed]
In the Philippines certain tribal groups believe tattoos have magical qualities, and help to protect their bearers. Most traditional tattooing in the Philippines is related to the bearer's accomplishments in life or rank in the tribe.[citation needed]
Extensive decorative tattooing is common among members of traditional freak shows and by performance artists who follow in their tradition
Identification
People have also been forcibly tattooed. A well-known example is the identification system for inmates in Nazi concentration camps during The Holocaust. The Nazis introduced the practice of tattooing at Auschwitz in 1941 in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners in the concentration camps. During registration, they would pierce the outlines of the serial-number digits onto the prisoners' arms. Tattoos have also been used for identification in other ways. As early as the Zhou, Chinese authorities would employ facial tattoos as a punishment for certain crimes or to mark prisoners or slaves. During the Roman Empire, Roman soldiers were required by law to have identifying tattoos on their hands in order to make desertion difficult. Gladiators and slaves were likewise tattooed: exported slaves were tattooed with the words "tax paid", and it was a common practice to tattoo "Stop me, I'm a runaway" on their foreheads.[citation needed] Owing in part to Biblical strictures against the practice, Emperor Constantine I banned tattooing the face around AD 330 and the Second Council of Nicaea banned all body markings as a pagan practice in AD 787.[8]
In the period of early contact between the Māori and Europeans, the Maori people hunted and decapitated each other for their moko tattoos, which they traded for European items including axes and firearms.[9] Moko tattoos were facial designs worn by women and men to indicate their lineage, social position, and status within the tribe. The tattoo art was a sacred marker of identity among the Maori and also referred to as a vehicle for storing one's tapu, or spiritual being, in the afterlife.Tattoos are sometimes used by forensic pathologists to help them identify burned, putrefied, or mutilated bodies. As tattoo pigment lies encapsulated deep in the skin, tattoos are not easily destroyed even when the skin is burned.[citation needed]
Tattoos are also placed on animals, though rarely for decorative reasons. Pets, show animals, thoroughbred horses, and livestock are sometimes tattooed with identification and other marks. Pet dogs and cats are often tattooed with a serial number (usually in the ear, or on the inner thigh) via which their owners can be identified.
Also, animals are occasionally tattooed to prevent sunburn (on the nose, for example). Such tattoos are often performed by a veterinarian, and in most cases the animals are anesthetized during the process. Branding is used for similar reasons and is often performed without anesthesia, but is different from tattooing as no ink or dye is inserted during the process.
Cosmetic
The cosmetic surgery industry continues to see a trend of increased popularity for both surgical and noninvasive procedures (Gimlin 2002; Sullivan 2001).
Main article: Permanent makeup
When used as a form of cosmetics, tattooing includes permanent makeup and hiding or neutralizing skin discolorations. Permanent makeup is the use of tattoos to enhance eyebrows, lips (liner and/or lipstick), eyes (liner), and even moles, usually with natural colors, as the designs are intended to resemble makeup.[citation needed]
A growing trend in the US and UK is to place artistic tattoos over the surgical scars of a mastectomy. "More women are choosing not to reconstruct after a mastectomy and tattoo over the scar tissue instead.... The mastectomy tattoo will become just another option for post cancer patients and a truly personal way of regaining control over post cancer bodies and proving once and for all that breast cancer is not just a pink ribbon
Medical
Tattooing has been practiced for centuries in many cultures and spread throughout the world.[citation needed] The Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan, traditionally had facial tattoos, as did the Austroasians. Today, one can find Atayal, Seediq, Truku, and Saisiyat of Taiwan, Berbers of Tamazgha (North Africa), Yoruba, Fulani and Hausa people of Nigeria, and Māori of New Zealand with facial tattoos.[citation needed]
Tattooing was popular among certain ethnic groups in southern China, Polynesia, Africa, Borneo, Cambodia, Europe, Japan, the Mentawai Islands, MesoAmerica, New Zealand, North America and South America, the Philippines, and Taiwan.[citation needed] The modern revival in tattooing stems from the voyage of Captain James Cook in the late 1700s. Cook's Science Officer and Expedition Botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, returned to England with a tattoo. Banks was a highly regarded member of the English aristocracy and had acquired his position with Cook by putting up what was at the time the princely sum of some ten thousand pounds in the expedition. In turn, Cook brought back with him a tattooed Raiatean man, Omai, whom he presented to King George and the English Court. Many of Cook's men, ordinary seamen and sailors, came back with tattoos, a tradition that would soon become associated with men of the sea in the public's mind and the press of the day. In the process sailors and seamen re-introduced the practice of tattooing in Europe and it spread rapidly to seaports around the globe.
As many tattoos were stimulated by Polynesian and Japanese examples, amateur tattoo artists[13] were in great demand in port cities all over the world, especially by European and American sailors. The first documented professional tattoo artist in the US was Martin Hildebrandt, a German immigrant who arrived in Boston in 1846. Between 1861 and 1865, he tattooed soldiers on both sides in the American Civil War.[14] The first documented professional tattooist in Britain was established in the port of Liverpool in the 1870s. In Britain tattooing was still largely associated with sailors[15] and the lower or even criminal class,[16] but by the 1870s had become fashionable among some members of the upper classes, including royalty,[3][17] and in its upmarket form it could be an expensive[18] and sometimes painful[19]process. A marked class division on the acceptability of the practice continued for some time in Britain.[20]
Since the 1970s, tattoos have become a mainstream part of Western fashion, common among both sexes, to all economic classes, and to age groups from the later teen years to middle age. For many young Americans, the tattoo has taken on a decidedly different meaning than for previous generations. The tattoo has "undergone dramatic redefinition" and has shifted from a form of deviance to an acceptable form of expression.[21] In 2010, 25% of Australians under age 30 had tattoos.
Legal Status
In recent years, various lawsuits have arisen in the United States regarding the status of tattoos as a copyrightable art form. However, these cases have either been settled out of court or are currently being disputed, and therefore no legal precedent exists directly on point
Process
Tattooing involves the placement of pigment into the skin's dermis, the layer of dermal tissue underlying the epidermis. After initial injection, pigment is dispersed throughout a homogenized damaged layer down through the epidermis and upper dermis, in both of which the presence of foreign material activates the immune system's phagocytes to engulf the pigment particles. As healing proceeds, the damaged epidermis flakes away (eliminating surface pigment) while deeper in the skin granulation tissue forms, which is later converted to connective tissue by collagen growth. This mends the upper dermis, where pigment remains trapped within fibroblasts, ultimately concentrating in a layer just below the dermis/epidermis boundary. Its presence there is stable, but in the long term (decades) the pigment tends to migrate deeper into the dermis, accounting for the degraded detail of old tattoos.[24]
Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles.
The most common method of tattooing in modern times is the electric tattoo machine, which inserts ink into the skin via a single needle or a group of needles that are soldered onto a bar, which is attached to an oscillating unit. The unit rapidly and repeatedly drives the needles in and out of the skin, usually 80 to 150 times a second. This modern procedure is ordinarily sanitary. The needles are single-use needles that come packaged individually. The tattoo artist must wash his or her hands and must also wash the area that will be tattooed. Gloves must be worn at all times and the wound must be wiped frequently with a wet disposable towel of some kind. The equipment must be sterilized in a certified autoclave before and after every use.
Associations
The Government of Meiji Japan had outlawed tattoos in the 19th century, a prohibition that stood for 70 years before being repealed in 1948.[25] As of June 6, 2012 all new tattoos are forbidden for employees of the city of Osaka. Existing tattoos are required to be covered with proper clothing. The regulations were added to Osaka's ethical codes, and employees with tattoos were encouraged to have them removed. This was done because the strong connection of tattoos with the yakuza, or Japanese organized crime, after an Osaka official in February 2012 threatened a schoolchild by showing his tattoo.
Tattoos had negative connotations in historical China, where criminals oftentimes had been marked by tattooing.[26][27] The association of tattoos with criminals was transmitted from China to influence Japan.[26] Today, tattoos has remained a taboo in Chinese society.[28]
Current cultural understandings of tattoos in Europe and North America have been greatly influenced by long-standing stereotypes based on deviant social groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particularly in North America tattoos have been associated with stereotypes, folklore, and racism.[10] Not until the 1960s and 1970s did people associate tattoos with such societal outcasts as bikers and prisoners.[29] Today, in the United States many prisoners and criminal gangs use distinctive tattoos to indicate facts about their criminal behavior, prison sentences, and organizational affiliation.[30] A teardrop tattoo, for example, can be symbolic of murder, or each tear represents the death of a friend. At the same time, members of the U.S. military have an equally well-established and longstanding history of tattooing to indicate military units, battles, kills, etc., an association that remains widespread among older Americans. Tattooing is also common in the British Armed Forces. A study conducted in 2004 among 500 adults between ages 18 and 50 found an explicit link between tattooing and criminality. 72 percent of respondents with face, neck, hands, or fingers tattoos have spent more than three days in jail, compared to 6 percent of the non-tattooed population.[31][32] Depending on vocation tattoos are accepted in a number of professions in America. Although companies across many fields are increasingly focused on diversity and inclusion, tattoo flaunting is still probably best reserved for post-work hours.[33]
The Romans tattooed criminals and slaves, and in the 19th century released US convicts and British army deserters were identified by tattoos. Prisoners in Siberian and Nazi concentration camps were tattooed with an identification number. Today, many prison inmates still tattoo themselves as an indication of time spent in prison.[3]
Native Americans also used tattoos to represent their tribe.Insofar as this cultural or subcultural use of tattoos predates the widespread popularity of tattoos in the general population, tattoos are still associated with criminality. Tattoos on the face in the shape of teardrops are usually associated with how many people a person has murdered. Although the general acceptance of tattoos is on the rise in Western society, they still carry a heavy stigma among certain social groups. Tattoos are generally considered an important part of the culture of the Russian mafia.
The prevalence of women in the tattoo industry, along with larger numbers of women bearing tattoos, appears to be changing negative perceptions. A study of "at-risk" (as defined by school absenteeism and truancy) adolescent girls showed a positive correlation between body modification and negative feelings towards the body and low self-esteem; however, the study also demonstrated that a strong motive for body modification is the search for "self and attempts to attain mastery and control over the body in an age of increasing alienation".[34]
Many studies have been done of the tattooed population and society's view of tattoos. In June 2006, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology published the results of a telephone survey of 2004. It found that 36% of Americans ages 18–29, 24% of those 30–40, and 15% of those 41–51 had a tattoo.[31] In September 2006, the Pew Research Center conducted a telephone survey that found that 36% of Americans ages 18–25, 40% of those 26–40 and 10% of those 41–64 had a tattoo. They concluded that Generation X and Generation Y are not afraid to express themselves through their appearance, and tattoos are the most popular form of self-expression.[35] In January 2008, a survey conducted online by Harris Interactive estimated that 14% of all adults in the United States have a tattoo, slightly down from 2003, when 16% had a tattoo. Among age groups, 9% of those ages 18–24, 32% of those 25–29, 25% of those 30–39 and 12% of those 40–49 have tattoos, as do 8% of those 50–64. Men are slightly more likely to have a tattoo than women.
Health risks
Because it requires breaking the skin barrier tattooing carries health risks including infection and allergic reactions. Modern tattooists reduce risks by following universal precautions working with single-use items and sterilizing their equipment after each use. Many jurisdictions require that tattooists have blood-borne pathogen training such as that provided through the Red Cross and OSHA. As of 2009 (in the United States) there have been no reported cases of HIV contracted from tattoos.[36]
In amateur tattooing, such as that practiced in prisons, however, there is an elevated risk of infection. Infections that can theoretically be transmitted by the use of unsterilized tattoo equipment or contaminated ink include surface infections of the skin, fungal infections, some forms of hepatitis, herpes simplex virus, HIV, staph, tetanus, and tuberculosis.[37]
Tattoo inks have been described as "remarkably nonreactive histologically".[24] However, cases of allergic reactions to tattoo inks, particularly certain colors, have been medically documented. This is sometimes due to the presence of nickel in an ink pigment, which triggers a common metal allergy. Occasionally, when a blood vessel is punctured during the tattooing procedure, a bruise/hematoma may appear.
Tattoo removal
While tattoos are considered permanent, it is sometimes possible to remove them, fully or partially, with laser treatments. Typically, black and some colored inks can be removed more completely than inks of other colors. The expense and pain associated with removing tattoos are typically greater than the expense and pain associated with applying them. Pre-laser tattoo removal methods include dermabrasion, salabrasion (scrubbing the skin with salt), cryosurgery, and excision—which is sometimes still used along, with skin grafts for larger tattoos. These older methods, however, have been nearly completely replaced by laser removal treatment options.
Temporary tattoos
Ink or coloring applied to the surface of skin is sometimes referred to as a "tattoo". Mehndi, also known as a henna, is a traditionally Hindu method of staining the skin. Modern techniques include ink transfers on sheets of paper and tattoos drawn on skin with ballpoint pen.
The first written reference to the word, "tattoo" (or Samoan "Tatau") appears in the journal of Joseph Banks (24 February 1743 – 19 June 1820), the naturalist aboard Captain Cook's ship the HMS Endeavour: "I shall now mention the way they mark themselves indelibly, each of them is so marked by their humor or disposition".
The word "tattoo" was brought to Europe by the explorer James Cook, when he returned in 1771 from his first voyage to Tahiti and New Zealand. In his narrative of the voyage, he refers to an operation called "tattaw". Before this it had been described as scarring, painting, or staining.[3]
Tattoo enthusiasts may refer to tattoos as "ink", "pieces", "skin art", "tattoo art", "tats", or "work"; to the creators as "tattoo artists", "tattooers", or "tattooists"; and to places where they work as "tattoo shops", "tattoo studios", or "tattoo parlors".
Usage of the terms "skin art", "tattoo art", "pieces", and work" is gaining greater support[citation needed], with mainstream art galleries holding exhibitions of both conventional and custom tattoo designs. Beyond Skin, at the Museum of Croydon, is an example of this as it challenges the stereotypical view of tattoos and who has them. Copyrighted tattoo designs that are mass-produced and sent to tattoo artists are known as "flash", a notable instance of industrial design. Flash sheets are prominently displayed in many tattoo parlors for the purpose of providing both inspiration and ready-made tattoo images to customers.
The Japanese word irezumi means "insertion of ink" and can mean tattoos using tebori, the traditional Japanese hand method, a Western-style machine, or for that matter, any method of tattooing using insertion of ink. The most common word used for traditional Japanese tattoo designs is Horimono. Japanese may use the word "tattoo" to mean non-Japanese styles of tattooing.
Anthropologist Ling Roth in 1900 described four methods of skin marking and suggested they be differentiated under the names "tatu", "moko", "cicatrix", and "keloid".[4]
Types of tattoos
The American Academy of Dermatology distinguishes five types of tattoos:[5] traumatic tattoos, also called "natural tattoos", that result from injuries, especially asphalt from road injuries or pencil lead; amateur tattoos; professional tattoos, both via traditional methods and modern tattoo machines; cosmetic tattoos, also known as "permanent makeup"; and medical tattoos.
Traumatic tattoos
According to George Orwell, coal miners could develop characteristic tattoos owing to coal dust getting into wounds.[6] This can also occur with substances like gunpowder. Similarly, a traumatic tattoo occurs when a substance such as asphalt is rubbed into a wound as the result of some kind of accident or trauma. These are particularly difficult to remove as they tend to be spread across several different layers of skin, and scarring or permanent discoloration is almost unavoidable depending on the location. In addition, tattooing of the gingiva from implantation of amalgam particles during dental filling placement and removal is possible and not uncommon. Another example of such accidental tattoos is the result of a deliberate or accidental stabbing with a pencil or pen, leaving graphite or ink beneath the skin.
Amateur and professional tattoos
Many tattoos serve as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and convicts. The symbolism and impact of tattoos varies in different places and cultures. Tattoos may show how a person feels about a relative (commonly mother/father or daughter/son) or about an unrelated person.[7] Today, people choose to be tattooed for artistic, cosmetic, sentimental/memorial, religious, and magical reasons, and to symbolize their belonging to or identification with particular groups, including criminal gangs (see criminal tattoos) or a particular ethnic group or law-abiding subculture. Some Māori still choose to wear intricate moko on their faces. In Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, the yantra tattoo is used for protection against evil and to increase luck.[citation needed]
In the Philippines certain tribal groups believe tattoos have magical qualities, and help to protect their bearers. Most traditional tattooing in the Philippines is related to the bearer's accomplishments in life or rank in the tribe.[citation needed]
Extensive decorative tattooing is common among members of traditional freak shows and by performance artists who follow in their tradition
Identification
People have also been forcibly tattooed. A well-known example is the identification system for inmates in Nazi concentration camps during The Holocaust. The Nazis introduced the practice of tattooing at Auschwitz in 1941 in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners in the concentration camps. During registration, they would pierce the outlines of the serial-number digits onto the prisoners' arms. Tattoos have also been used for identification in other ways. As early as the Zhou, Chinese authorities would employ facial tattoos as a punishment for certain crimes or to mark prisoners or slaves. During the Roman Empire, Roman soldiers were required by law to have identifying tattoos on their hands in order to make desertion difficult. Gladiators and slaves were likewise tattooed: exported slaves were tattooed with the words "tax paid", and it was a common practice to tattoo "Stop me, I'm a runaway" on their foreheads.[citation needed] Owing in part to Biblical strictures against the practice, Emperor Constantine I banned tattooing the face around AD 330 and the Second Council of Nicaea banned all body markings as a pagan practice in AD 787.[8]
In the period of early contact between the Māori and Europeans, the Maori people hunted and decapitated each other for their moko tattoos, which they traded for European items including axes and firearms.[9] Moko tattoos were facial designs worn by women and men to indicate their lineage, social position, and status within the tribe. The tattoo art was a sacred marker of identity among the Maori and also referred to as a vehicle for storing one's tapu, or spiritual being, in the afterlife.Tattoos are sometimes used by forensic pathologists to help them identify burned, putrefied, or mutilated bodies. As tattoo pigment lies encapsulated deep in the skin, tattoos are not easily destroyed even when the skin is burned.[citation needed]
Tattoos are also placed on animals, though rarely for decorative reasons. Pets, show animals, thoroughbred horses, and livestock are sometimes tattooed with identification and other marks. Pet dogs and cats are often tattooed with a serial number (usually in the ear, or on the inner thigh) via which their owners can be identified.
Also, animals are occasionally tattooed to prevent sunburn (on the nose, for example). Such tattoos are often performed by a veterinarian, and in most cases the animals are anesthetized during the process. Branding is used for similar reasons and is often performed without anesthesia, but is different from tattooing as no ink or dye is inserted during the process.
Cosmetic
The cosmetic surgery industry continues to see a trend of increased popularity for both surgical and noninvasive procedures (Gimlin 2002; Sullivan 2001).
Main article: Permanent makeup
When used as a form of cosmetics, tattooing includes permanent makeup and hiding or neutralizing skin discolorations. Permanent makeup is the use of tattoos to enhance eyebrows, lips (liner and/or lipstick), eyes (liner), and even moles, usually with natural colors, as the designs are intended to resemble makeup.[citation needed]
A growing trend in the US and UK is to place artistic tattoos over the surgical scars of a mastectomy. "More women are choosing not to reconstruct after a mastectomy and tattoo over the scar tissue instead.... The mastectomy tattoo will become just another option for post cancer patients and a truly personal way of regaining control over post cancer bodies and proving once and for all that breast cancer is not just a pink ribbon
Medical
Tattooing has been practiced for centuries in many cultures and spread throughout the world.[citation needed] The Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan, traditionally had facial tattoos, as did the Austroasians. Today, one can find Atayal, Seediq, Truku, and Saisiyat of Taiwan, Berbers of Tamazgha (North Africa), Yoruba, Fulani and Hausa people of Nigeria, and Māori of New Zealand with facial tattoos.[citation needed]
Tattooing was popular among certain ethnic groups in southern China, Polynesia, Africa, Borneo, Cambodia, Europe, Japan, the Mentawai Islands, MesoAmerica, New Zealand, North America and South America, the Philippines, and Taiwan.[citation needed] The modern revival in tattooing stems from the voyage of Captain James Cook in the late 1700s. Cook's Science Officer and Expedition Botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, returned to England with a tattoo. Banks was a highly regarded member of the English aristocracy and had acquired his position with Cook by putting up what was at the time the princely sum of some ten thousand pounds in the expedition. In turn, Cook brought back with him a tattooed Raiatean man, Omai, whom he presented to King George and the English Court. Many of Cook's men, ordinary seamen and sailors, came back with tattoos, a tradition that would soon become associated with men of the sea in the public's mind and the press of the day. In the process sailors and seamen re-introduced the practice of tattooing in Europe and it spread rapidly to seaports around the globe.
As many tattoos were stimulated by Polynesian and Japanese examples, amateur tattoo artists[13] were in great demand in port cities all over the world, especially by European and American sailors. The first documented professional tattoo artist in the US was Martin Hildebrandt, a German immigrant who arrived in Boston in 1846. Between 1861 and 1865, he tattooed soldiers on both sides in the American Civil War.[14] The first documented professional tattooist in Britain was established in the port of Liverpool in the 1870s. In Britain tattooing was still largely associated with sailors[15] and the lower or even criminal class,[16] but by the 1870s had become fashionable among some members of the upper classes, including royalty,[3][17] and in its upmarket form it could be an expensive[18] and sometimes painful[19]process. A marked class division on the acceptability of the practice continued for some time in Britain.[20]
Since the 1970s, tattoos have become a mainstream part of Western fashion, common among both sexes, to all economic classes, and to age groups from the later teen years to middle age. For many young Americans, the tattoo has taken on a decidedly different meaning than for previous generations. The tattoo has "undergone dramatic redefinition" and has shifted from a form of deviance to an acceptable form of expression.[21] In 2010, 25% of Australians under age 30 had tattoos.
Legal Status
In recent years, various lawsuits have arisen in the United States regarding the status of tattoos as a copyrightable art form. However, these cases have either been settled out of court or are currently being disputed, and therefore no legal precedent exists directly on point
Process
Tattooing involves the placement of pigment into the skin's dermis, the layer of dermal tissue underlying the epidermis. After initial injection, pigment is dispersed throughout a homogenized damaged layer down through the epidermis and upper dermis, in both of which the presence of foreign material activates the immune system's phagocytes to engulf the pigment particles. As healing proceeds, the damaged epidermis flakes away (eliminating surface pigment) while deeper in the skin granulation tissue forms, which is later converted to connective tissue by collagen growth. This mends the upper dermis, where pigment remains trapped within fibroblasts, ultimately concentrating in a layer just below the dermis/epidermis boundary. Its presence there is stable, but in the long term (decades) the pigment tends to migrate deeper into the dermis, accounting for the degraded detail of old tattoos.[24]
Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles.
The most common method of tattooing in modern times is the electric tattoo machine, which inserts ink into the skin via a single needle or a group of needles that are soldered onto a bar, which is attached to an oscillating unit. The unit rapidly and repeatedly drives the needles in and out of the skin, usually 80 to 150 times a second. This modern procedure is ordinarily sanitary. The needles are single-use needles that come packaged individually. The tattoo artist must wash his or her hands and must also wash the area that will be tattooed. Gloves must be worn at all times and the wound must be wiped frequently with a wet disposable towel of some kind. The equipment must be sterilized in a certified autoclave before and after every use.
Associations
The Government of Meiji Japan had outlawed tattoos in the 19th century, a prohibition that stood for 70 years before being repealed in 1948.[25] As of June 6, 2012 all new tattoos are forbidden for employees of the city of Osaka. Existing tattoos are required to be covered with proper clothing. The regulations were added to Osaka's ethical codes, and employees with tattoos were encouraged to have them removed. This was done because the strong connection of tattoos with the yakuza, or Japanese organized crime, after an Osaka official in February 2012 threatened a schoolchild by showing his tattoo.
Tattoos had negative connotations in historical China, where criminals oftentimes had been marked by tattooing.[26][27] The association of tattoos with criminals was transmitted from China to influence Japan.[26] Today, tattoos has remained a taboo in Chinese society.[28]
Current cultural understandings of tattoos in Europe and North America have been greatly influenced by long-standing stereotypes based on deviant social groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particularly in North America tattoos have been associated with stereotypes, folklore, and racism.[10] Not until the 1960s and 1970s did people associate tattoos with such societal outcasts as bikers and prisoners.[29] Today, in the United States many prisoners and criminal gangs use distinctive tattoos to indicate facts about their criminal behavior, prison sentences, and organizational affiliation.[30] A teardrop tattoo, for example, can be symbolic of murder, or each tear represents the death of a friend. At the same time, members of the U.S. military have an equally well-established and longstanding history of tattooing to indicate military units, battles, kills, etc., an association that remains widespread among older Americans. Tattooing is also common in the British Armed Forces. A study conducted in 2004 among 500 adults between ages 18 and 50 found an explicit link between tattooing and criminality. 72 percent of respondents with face, neck, hands, or fingers tattoos have spent more than three days in jail, compared to 6 percent of the non-tattooed population.[31][32] Depending on vocation tattoos are accepted in a number of professions in America. Although companies across many fields are increasingly focused on diversity and inclusion, tattoo flaunting is still probably best reserved for post-work hours.[33]
The Romans tattooed criminals and slaves, and in the 19th century released US convicts and British army deserters were identified by tattoos. Prisoners in Siberian and Nazi concentration camps were tattooed with an identification number. Today, many prison inmates still tattoo themselves as an indication of time spent in prison.[3]
Native Americans also used tattoos to represent their tribe.Insofar as this cultural or subcultural use of tattoos predates the widespread popularity of tattoos in the general population, tattoos are still associated with criminality. Tattoos on the face in the shape of teardrops are usually associated with how many people a person has murdered. Although the general acceptance of tattoos is on the rise in Western society, they still carry a heavy stigma among certain social groups. Tattoos are generally considered an important part of the culture of the Russian mafia.
The prevalence of women in the tattoo industry, along with larger numbers of women bearing tattoos, appears to be changing negative perceptions. A study of "at-risk" (as defined by school absenteeism and truancy) adolescent girls showed a positive correlation between body modification and negative feelings towards the body and low self-esteem; however, the study also demonstrated that a strong motive for body modification is the search for "self and attempts to attain mastery and control over the body in an age of increasing alienation".[34]
Many studies have been done of the tattooed population and society's view of tattoos. In June 2006, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology published the results of a telephone survey of 2004. It found that 36% of Americans ages 18–29, 24% of those 30–40, and 15% of those 41–51 had a tattoo.[31] In September 2006, the Pew Research Center conducted a telephone survey that found that 36% of Americans ages 18–25, 40% of those 26–40 and 10% of those 41–64 had a tattoo. They concluded that Generation X and Generation Y are not afraid to express themselves through their appearance, and tattoos are the most popular form of self-expression.[35] In January 2008, a survey conducted online by Harris Interactive estimated that 14% of all adults in the United States have a tattoo, slightly down from 2003, when 16% had a tattoo. Among age groups, 9% of those ages 18–24, 32% of those 25–29, 25% of those 30–39 and 12% of those 40–49 have tattoos, as do 8% of those 50–64. Men are slightly more likely to have a tattoo than women.
Health risks
Because it requires breaking the skin barrier tattooing carries health risks including infection and allergic reactions. Modern tattooists reduce risks by following universal precautions working with single-use items and sterilizing their equipment after each use. Many jurisdictions require that tattooists have blood-borne pathogen training such as that provided through the Red Cross and OSHA. As of 2009 (in the United States) there have been no reported cases of HIV contracted from tattoos.[36]
In amateur tattooing, such as that practiced in prisons, however, there is an elevated risk of infection. Infections that can theoretically be transmitted by the use of unsterilized tattoo equipment or contaminated ink include surface infections of the skin, fungal infections, some forms of hepatitis, herpes simplex virus, HIV, staph, tetanus, and tuberculosis.[37]
Tattoo inks have been described as "remarkably nonreactive histologically".[24] However, cases of allergic reactions to tattoo inks, particularly certain colors, have been medically documented. This is sometimes due to the presence of nickel in an ink pigment, which triggers a common metal allergy. Occasionally, when a blood vessel is punctured during the tattooing procedure, a bruise/hematoma may appear.
Tattoo removal
While tattoos are considered permanent, it is sometimes possible to remove them, fully or partially, with laser treatments. Typically, black and some colored inks can be removed more completely than inks of other colors. The expense and pain associated with removing tattoos are typically greater than the expense and pain associated with applying them. Pre-laser tattoo removal methods include dermabrasion, salabrasion (scrubbing the skin with salt), cryosurgery, and excision—which is sometimes still used along, with skin grafts for larger tattoos. These older methods, however, have been nearly completely replaced by laser removal treatment options.
Temporary tattoos
Ink or coloring applied to the surface of skin is sometimes referred to as a "tattoo". Mehndi, also known as a henna, is a traditionally Hindu method of staining the skin. Modern techniques include ink transfers on sheets of paper and tattoos drawn on skin with ballpoint pen.
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