I might just be overcomplicating it, but I struggled to read and fully understand Chapter 5. I understand that the author is trying to explain the different roles tattoos have taken in various societies and cultures, but it felt more like an amalgamation of various ideas than a single coherent thought. This, I’d say, is because of the organization of the essay. Fleming jumps around going from region to region and it’s easy to lose track of their argument as you try to follow along with what it is they’re trying to tell you. I mean, I understand that Fleming is trying to share how tattoos have different meanings, that for some cultures they are honorific marks while others see them as having fate-altering capabilities and that this contrasts the current meaning of tattoos as a way of bringing what’s on the inside to the outside, but this could’ve been explained in a way that’s less confusing for the reader.
After Chapter 5, I appreciated that Harriet Guest split Chapter 6 into sections. Although I wouldn’t say any chapter in this book is easy to comprehend on the first read, having the sections helped me greatly in digesting the information because it split the focuses up for me. From my understanding, Guest is exploring how the perceptions of British people in the Eighteenth-century were influenced by tattoos. It started off with the idea that I believe is most familiar to the typical reader, that tattoos were seen as a way to mark the other, to “signal an exoticism” (Guest 85). When I say typical reader, I am including myself because when I think about it, the only opinion I believed Eighteenth-century Europeans to have on tattoos were that they were a mark of exoticism. And while this is the dominant idea that existed, the following sections of this chapter quickly goes on to prove how easily that idea can get complicated. Something I liked about this chapter was that it defamiliarized something that I thought was so familiar to me. For example, the influence of appearance on the perception of one as civilized or uncivilized was an idea I knew of but this was expanded upon by talking about the importance of general and gender association which, looking at it now, seems so obvious but was something I had not considered.
Chapter 7 was an interesting read, primarily because I had never stopped to consider whether or not tattooing was prevalent in South Asia. I think this was because of my preconceived notions on religions generally condemning tattoos. I realize now that that is not the case, but my general understanding of the most common religions nowadays had led me to believe that religious culture are, and have always been, against tattoos, disregarding that religious beliefs can also change with time. Getting back to the chapter, I thought it was interesting how, among some caste Hindus, tattooing was primarily for women. This contrasts the representation of tattoos that is explored in Chapter 6 where tattoos being used to mark people as exotic and barbaric seemed to be reserved more for men. The chapter also states that tattoos were sometimes used to mark rites of passage (Anderson 104). This made me think of henna and how many cultures in South Asia have a tradition of bridal henna in which these designs on the skin are viewed as an important part of the garb of the bride.
Reading Chapter 8 made me realize again how complicated the relationship between convicts and tattoos are. Nowadays when people relate convicts to tattoos, it is with a negative connotation. However, Chapter 8 shares some of the intentions behind the tattoos that some convicts had. For instance, in one of the sections in this Chapter the authors describe how some tattooed symbols of hope onto themselves. They write, “convicts stubbornly located hope elsewhere. Love tokens and tattoos richly inform us about this” (125). However, this chapter also tells us about how tattoos were used to brand those they deemed problematic, going as far as to mark a deserter with the letter D. Even so, the convicts mentioned in the chapter make jokes about these tattoos, they turn them into jokes by changing the meaning of the tattoo. This is about ownership, ownership of one’s body, resisting against the state’s claim that they have a the rights over a convict’s body. There is a power in the convicts using what the state has done to confine them as a way to take back ownership of their bodies.
I found Chapter 9’s description of tattooing in Victorian Britain as a transaction of goods interesting. In the greater frame of things, it makes sense why in a culture where amassing one’s wealth was so important that tattoos seemed like a waste since only the tattooer and not the tattooed would seem to get monetary value. I feel like it just goes to show how much perception has changed today because I don’t think most people that are tattooed would consider their tattoo a waste of money or that they hadn’t gotten anything of value in return for their money. I also thought it was nice that Bradley expanded upon the perception of tattoo equals criminal and how it was more than a simple, oh many criminals had tattoos so that’s why we make that relation now. He goes on to really expand upon that perception, not by just writing it off as wrong, but by explaining why that idea exists and the things that are true and the things that are false about it.