Coloured Ink: Is Body Art Just a “White Thing”?

by Racialicious special correspondent Wendi Muse

I’m an outcast.

I’m a rebel.

I’m an anarchist.

I’m tough.

I sleep in tight vinyl pants.

I set fire to my apartment at least twice a week.

Well . . . not quite.

In actuality, I am a law-abiding citizen who works a 9-to-5 and minds her Ps and Qs. I’m “normal,” but considering the reactions I receive from some, you would think otherwise:

How long did that take?!?!?

Is a greeting.

Oh that must have hurt!

Is a compliment.

Can I see the whole thing?

Is a come-on.

I’m a walking conversation piece, but it’s my own fault. I am the one who chose to have a vine of fuchsia running from the front of my left shoulder down to the middle of the left side of my back, morning glories and tiger lilies blooming up from my right pelvic bone to the top of my ribcage, and my mantra inscribed on the inside of my right wrist. I also happen to have several piercings, and the ones that are exposed to the public sometimes solicit questions regarding my tolerance for pain. I don’t mind the questions about my body art. In fact, I welcome them. Yet I find it humorous and somewhat ironic that my tattoos and piercings, though tasteful and non-threatening, still mark me as an oddity—at least among people who look like me. While whites often ask where I had my work done and by whom, black, brown, and yellow folk often ask me a laundry list of questions, sometimes hold uncomfortably long and awkward conversations with me about their own body modification experiences, or discuss my tattoos with their friends in spite of my standing right in front of them, as if I am a novelty item in a curio chest.

Throughout NYC, especially boroughs like Brooklyn, one of the last strongholds for affordable housing and artsy residents, you will see quite a few men and women with large and visible tattoos, mainly full pieces that cover one or more body parts. Most of those people happen to be young, middle class, and white. While I see a few people of color who are are tattooed and pierced as well, national body modification statistics demonstrate otherwise. In addition, there appear to be fewer who have chosen extravagant displays of their appreciation for body art. Most of the tattoos I have seen on people of color are words, names, or small symbols. Bearing in mind the issue of size and content alone, I understand why the forms of body modification I have undergone evoke curiosity and unusually long conversations with others. In NYC, strangers rarely speak to each other, so maybe other people of color feel more comfortable asking me about my body art because I, like them, am also of color. But what I didn’t have quite a handle on was why fewer people of color I saw tended to go “all out.” Why was extensive body art still relatively taboo among people of color in spite of its increasing popularity (among whites)?

I couldn’t figure it out. Initially, I thought about issues like money. Good tattoos are expensive, and the bigger they are, the more they cost (as tattoos are priced by the hour of work performed). Could the sheer monetary value affixed to large and incredibly detailed tattoos be a deterrent for people of color considering the income gap between them and whites? Piercings also cost quite a bit, especially if one opts to use high quality jewelry (which is better for body piercings in that it decreases the risk of infection and allergic reaction). It doesn’t seem to limit them from buying other things. Why would it be an issue when it comes to body art?

I also considered skin color. The fairer your skin, the more tattoo options you have (as far as colors are concerned). As the tattoo heals, a new layer of skin grows over what is technically an injury to your top epidermal layer. Your new skin serves as a filter for your tattoo. If the filter is dark, the colors in your tattoo will appear muddled and dull by default. Maybe the fact that fewer colors work well on dark skin makes people feel like they are limited in artistic options? But then I thought of the large amount of light-skinned Asian-, African-, and Latino- Americans who had opted to get small tattoos or tattoos with dark ink as opposed to something large and colorful.

Nothing was really adding up.

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