A Tattoo’s Worth a Thousand Words

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

Take a look at this photo. What are your initial thoughts on this tattoo?

After being tipped by reader pinkyloveswhisky, I headed on over to the BMEZine blog to check out what all the fuss was about, and I tried to do the exercise I recommended above. What were my initial thoughts on this tattoo? First I thought, wow, this is beautiful and very well done. The colors and detailing are perfect. The necklaces are so realistically portrayed I feel like I could reach out and touch them. I thought of documentaries I had seen on television about people living in remote villages and where the origins of many of the forms of body modification we participate in today can be traced.

Then I read the statement made by the man who had requested this piece:

I, like so many of our community members, have been totally fascinated with tribal cultures and their ideas of body art and beauty. In all simplicity this tattoo is my way of paying homage and showing people what body modification means to me and showing where my roots in this industry lay.

He notes that the piece is not a reference to anyone in particular or any one specific person, but for him the piece represents a means of paying homage to the peoples to whom we owe the popularity of body modification.

I think his tattoo is beautiful and personally take no issue with it. It’s all the same if any other person got a portrait piece done of a famous entertainer or public figure. However, on the blog itself, many people took issue with Dave’s statement and his use of the word “tribal.”

Here are some excerpts:

max on June 13th, 2009 at 4:23 pm:

it’s a great piece! however, i don’t understand why people refer to body modifications as tribal. all that is doing is perpetuating racial stereotypes. take any african studies course (or any minority group for that matter) and open your eyes to the implications (direct or indirect) such terms can endorse. it simply does not do any justice for the ethnic groups it’s meant to portray.

Jon P on June 13th, 2009 at 5:53 pm:

I, too, don’t think referring to this type of imagery as “tribal” or the body modification they practice as “tribal” either. Describing an indigenous culture as “tribal” merely denotes the way they organise socially, it’s not a way of describing cultures.

It’s fine and dandy to pay homage to a particular influence you’ve had. But if you only know the culture through textbooks and National Geographic documentaries, then you can’t really know the culture at all. Seeing an indigenous person’s stretched earlobes might have sparked your interest in body manipulation and what not, but that’s not what a culture is about. An having a portrait of an indigenous person on your body just smacks of the antiquated “noble savage” concept which all of us trained anthropologists cringe at.

The tattoo itself is cringe-worthy. It’s like a piece of tourist art you’d buy on your way through Africa or something.

VOMIT on June 13th, 2009 at 6:25 pm:

I’m totally diggin it.

Max: MANY cultures participated in body modification, some just little things, others a lot. But in no way would I say that a small minority participated in body modification. I don’t see how referring to body modification as being tribal in origin is not beneficial. Why does it have to be either? It’s good to know the history of something you love and enjoy. If that thing is body modification then it makes sense to look back at past cultures and see how it all started and what form it took. I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with understanding your own identity, not unless you are of tribal decent. Also I think the fact that you think saying something is of tribal origin will some how hurt the modified community or alienate us even more is a bit sickening. If anything, I would think proving that body modification goes back a long way in history would make people see it less as a thing just for freaks or weirdos.

The comments continued on like this for another few days, ending with the usual “you are being overly sensitive” meme:

Jon P on June 17th, 2009 at 4:46 am:

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