Stigmas, Stereotypes of Tattooing: Why the Medical Community is to Blame

I am pretty sure that we don't live in the dark ages but to hear people talk sometimes I am not so sure. Here it is 2007 and the stigmas from years past are still alive and thriving. What makes it worse is that they are perpetrated by professionals who should know better than to stereotype people.

When you consider that the 20^th century ended on December 31, 2000, it doesn't seem like it was all that long ago. Consider also that it started on January 1, 1901. That was a long time ago and many things have changed since then. We have seen two world wars, Viet Nam, the sexual revolution and a number of other events that have both good and bad impacts on history and have changed our culture. It's true, what they say, as much as things change, the more they stay the same.

That has never been more constant than where tattoos are concerned. When they were originally introduced into British society it was a long painful process and only the rich could afford to have it done. At the time small tattoos were a fad and used much like a status symbol, the way fur coats, fancy cars and small dogs in purses are today.

In 1891 things started to change with the invention of the electric tattooing machine based on Edison's electric pen. This made the tattoo procedure much faster and more affordable making tattoos accessible to everyone. Since anyone could readily get a tattoo, the upper class turned away from them and they lost credibility and the tattoo artists moved to the sleazier sections of towns. To this day, they have never seemed to gain back that credibility.

Heavily tattooed people traveled with the circus and were labeled freaks. In 1898 Barnum had a nearly nude tattooed lady in the circus that was quite popular because of the number of tattoos she had. This kind of nudity was considered taboo yet she was considered erotic because of the amount of skin she showed and the fact that she was portrayed as docile and chaste.

American tattooing moved to Chatham Square in New York. At the time it was a seaport and entertainment center and tattooing flourished here. Men would tattoo their wives with their best work and the women would be walking advertisements and portfolios. In the 1920's Prohibition and the Depression forced tattooing to move to Coney Island and during the Suffragist movement it became vogue again for the upper class to have tattoos again although not necessarily endorsed by society. A single butterfly tattoo even played the part of overturning a rape conviction because the judge said it had a sexual connotation, therefore the woman who was raped mislead the man who raped her making him innocent.

And it gets worse. Despite the fact that there is always going to be a group of people out there who enjoy tattoo art, and see it as an alternate form of art, a larger group is going to see it as something else. Something they don't understand, something barbaric, something religion preaches against, something that if you have done makes you an outcast or rebel.

Every time I look at the ink work that I have had done on my skin I am reminded of my tattoo artist. There is nothing even slightly barbaric in his tattooing procedure. I have met medical personal who were more savage drawing blood and inserting IV's than my tattoo artist and his tattoo gun. Personally, I trust my tattoo guy with his needles more than I trust nurses with their needles. He is also a lot kinder and genuinely concerned if for some reason if he causes me pain unlike medical personal that just want to hurry up and get things over with and could care less. When finished with a tattoo he has always, with great care and loving touch, cleaned the spare ink off my skin, applied aftercare cream and a bandage. It's really sad when a tattoo artist cares more for your well being than someone in the medical field. Yet, it's the tattoo artist that is considered the barbarian. Ironic.

My thoughts on what constitutes barbarism aside, it was once observed that certain members of society were more likely to sport tattoos, the sailors (often called "travel stamps"), criminals, drunkards, drug addicts, and psychiatric patients. However, the latter, one has to wonder about. Was that something that was assumed, or something that was actually noted?

Psychiatrists and psychologists of the early twentieth century tried to read meaning into tattoos, that a deck of cards would signify fate and would be found on psychopathic deviants. They would often try to diagnose people based on their tattoos.

It was also noted later that tattoos were an expression of sexuality and became associated with homosexuality, sexual sadomasochism and the bondage community. It was only a matter of time before a number of psychiatric disorders relating to having tattoos would make it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders including antisocial personality disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, sexual fetishism, bipolar, and schizotypal personality disorder. It would be the third edition in 1985. There has been no change in the fourth edition that was published in 1995 even though tattooing has become more accepted. Doctors are taught to screen any patient that comes in with a tattoo to make sure they do not have any mental disorders.

Those with tattoos are seen to be compulsive and lack self control, have low self esteem, come from broken homes, are rebellious and erratic, emotional and/or practice self-injury. Not only do those in the tattoo community have older generations finding our taste in body adornment distasteful, not only do we have religious zealots telling use we are going to hell for not following biblical law, but we also have medical personal feeding a stereotype that should have died long ago that people with tattoos are crazy and not to be trusted, that we are drunkards with mental issues and damaged egos who engage in deviant behavior. These are educated people with degrees who are perpetrating these stereotypes when they should know better. With between 16% and 20% of the population having one or more tattoos these doctors have to be coming across more and more educated, articulate, middle to upper middle class, professional people with skin art.

When will an end be put to the stereotypes? When will medical psychiatric science be based in fact instead of hypocrisy, dogma and bad hypotheses? Is it any wonder that 1 in 10 Americans are on antidepressants when the doctors that are supposed to be helping them are making them feel worse about who they really are?