The readings for this class were interesting to read considering how tightly intertwined tattooing and subcultures are. By getting a tattoo, you are immediately categorized into a tattooing/tattooed subculture. I feel like Michael Atkinson’s “Tattoo Enthusiasts” embodies this idea perfectly. They get accounts from people, whether they are tattooed or are tattoo artists, and many of them speak of how the way people reacted to them and interacted with them changed after they got a tattoo. There was this category of other that these people were placed into, regardless of whether or not their reaction was positive or negative. Even when reactions were positive, it was understood as a big deal to get a tattoo and they were met with amazement and questions. I also just thought it was interesting to read about Straightedge tattooing because it was new to me. I knew and understood that subcultures existed within tattooing, but never knew about how deep they could really go. The idea that this tattoo is pretty much a declaration of their lifestyle is insane to me, insane in that I never even considered it. I mean, people always make assumptions about the lifestyles of heavily tattooed people, saying that they are criminals or affiliated with gangs, but I had never considered the possibility of a singular symbol being an indication of a specific lifestyle. Speaking of ideas that were insane to me, in “Legitimating the First Tattoo,” Irwin references journalists who have wrote that tattooing is so “thoroughly middle class.” In a way, I thought this to be really ironic. This is because tattoos are still not seen as acceptable by many people and more importantly, by many professions. They are often deemed unprofessional or an aesthetic and subculture that they do not want to be affiliated with and can lead to being fired and so much of that workforce with these values is made up of the middle class. So it’s this idea that tattoos are a thing of the middle class but in actuality, many can not have tattoos or as many as they want wherever they want because these restrictions within America’s mainstream culture exists.

I also just did a lot of mental comparisons to my research topic because tattooing as a subculture is so important in Korea because there is legitimately no space within the mainstream culture for them to be accepted. Even celebrities are forced to cover their tattoos with clothes or skin colored tape when on tv. Because of this, identifying other tattooed people and finding a community within them is so important in Korea. In America, you could at least say that tattooing is being more accepted by the younger generations, but in Korea, many of the younger generation do no like tattoos either, holding onto the ideas and beliefs that tattooed people are affiliated with gangs, are delinquents, or are going against the word of God by “defiling” their body. It is because these perceptions are still so prominent and there really is no space for them to be prideful about their tattoos that the idea and existence of a subculture is so important in Korea. In fact, from what I have found, it is because of them being forced to seek out one another for positive words about their tattoos that many of the tattoo artists in Korea seem to know each other or are at least familiar of one another.