The American Spectator : Tattoo You!What is Western humanity doing to itself?
What's with this tattoo craze that has taken the world by storm? The body has been projected beyond the personal and intimate, to become a walking canvass. It seems more and more people sport, one, two or twenty-two tattoos. And this is no one-nation, ethnic or religious fad, but cuts across borders and countries: rich, poor, fat or slim, men, women; Germans, Spaniards, Americans -- everywhere, everyone has been branded.
This proud defiling of the body is, to say the least, quite mystifying. Is the body not meant to be a repository of our entire selves? I will not go into what the Bible or main monotheistic religions have to say about them. Still, one would think this practice anathema, for while it conceals one's personality behind this self-made laceration, it also labels and relegates the wearer to a specific class or category of person.
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It is usually the young who are inebriated by this blunt posturing, which at times can be quite defying and provocative in nature -- but almost always rash.
Back in the old days to be tattooed had some significance. It was a mark, a sign that set apart those who bore them. It had to be "earned," like a badge of courage or daring, and it was mostly sailors or convicts who wore them, and usually only one, to symbolize a lost love, the clues to a hidden treasure or for other such fanciful reasons. There was mystery behind them, a story. No more. Nowadays, tattoos are like modern constructions: pêle-mêle, confusing, ugly.
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