In preparation for this class session, we finished Jane Caplan’s Written on the Body. Chapter 10, written by Caplan herself, discusses data collection and ensuing theories surrounding tattooing in 19th-century Europe. I thought it was interesting that a lot of information about tattooed people was collected by physicians and criminologists with the hope of finding a link between tattooing and atavism. As a side note, I learned that atavism means “a tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral” – I had not heard the term before. One of these 19th-century researchers, Cesare Lombroso of Italy, came to the conclusion that criminals were more similar to “savages” than the average white European, because they could handle the pain of getting many tattoos. My favorite part of Caplan’s chapter was her inclusion of images to demonstrate the types of tattoos Lombroso and other researchers would have seen on the people they wrote about. I especially liked the little skull and crossbones on page 166, which was a German prison tattoo.
In Chapter 11, Abby Schrader discusses convict tattooing in Russia, specifically as it intersects with vagrancy. Apparently, a large number of Russians attempted to flee state control by going to Siberia. At the same time, the Russian state decided to begin exiling criminals to Siberia, depending on their crime. I was really interested in what were termed “seasonal exiles,” or the convicts who would escape during the warmer months and return to prison for the winter (178). Schrader writes that around 1846, the Russian government began consistently branding exiles and vagrants; instead of discouraging these convicts from running away or taking on a new identity, this branding ensured that the vagrants were seen as the most powerful criminals. The more brands a convict had, the more he was respected. The vagrants even tattooed themselves, further separating them from the rest of society and creating a hierarchy within the prison system.
Stephan Oettermann looks at tattooing in the worlds of the German and American fairgrounds in Chapter 12. He discusses the common lie some of the tattooed sideshow characters would tell – that they were abducted by any number of indigenous groups and forcibly tattooed. With the advent of P. T. Barnum’s circus, “the tattooed man or tattooed lady became a profession” (200). I found it interesting, given that before this course I thought tattooing was uncommon in the late 19th century, that the tattooed person sideshow was so normal, and even became boring to some people. Oettermann makes a compelling connection between the tattooed lady’s show and an erotic performance because she has to take off some of her clothing to show her tattoos.
In Chapter 13, Alan Govenar goes through the history of tattooing in the United States from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. Govenar notes that much of the limited research done on tattooing around 1900 was focused on the armed forces; over time, as tattoo designs became more “obscene,” military leadership upheld stricter policies about tattoos. Govenar spends a lot of time talking about Gus Wagner, a heavily tattooed American tattoo artist. Though the electric tattoo machine had been invented by the time Wagner started tattooing, he did not use it. According to Govenar, “the repertory of designs” drastically expanded at the beginning of the 20th century – probably due to the new possibilities of the electric tattoo machine (219). Unlike Oettermann’s erotic sideshow woman, Govenar describes modestly-dressed tattooed circus women, with “highly detailed and modelled” tattoos (225). I was surprised to learn that tattooing became significantly less popular in the 1950s, but it makes sense as a response to the end of World War II. Middle-class America villainized tattooing, and I think the effects of that villainization are still apparent today in the negative way that many people view those who are tattooed.
The final chapter, written by Susan Benson, discusses piercing as well as tattooing. Benson identifies both practices as “statements of the self,” expected to represent the inner self to the best of one’s abilities (244). I was slightly disturbed, however, to read Benson’s assertion that the “vision” of one’s body with piercings “often draws upon an aesthetic of penetration and subjection…reinforces this sense of a body to be mastered” (250). Maybe this is a generational difference, or the result of the normalization of piercings, but as someone with nine piercings, I have never looked at them in the context of subjection or mastery. I just like how I look with shiny things in my nose and ears; the associated pain and the holes are a byproduct of this desire rather than an integral part of my appearance as a pierced person.