Essay About Tattoos

Google 's top hit for the words “stick and poke tattoo” is the website instructables and an article (instructicle?) called “DIY Tattoos (stick’ n’ poke)“ by frenzy, in their intro they write “this instructable will cover the art of "Stick 'n ' poke" tattoos that will enable you to safely add your own dermal embellishments.” Two things first, frenzy missed a perfect opportunity to use the word instructicle and second frenzy uses the words art and embellishments; hell DIY is right in the name of the post. Now I don’t think there 's any question that hand poked tattoos are part of the DIY eco system. However I do think that the stick and poke tattoo has become an oddly acceptable type of tattoo, despite itself and, because of the popularity

In Adolf Loos’s essay Ornament and crime he states “ The modern man who tattoos himself is either a criminal or degenerate.” And until quite recently that 's been a widely held belief, but that 's changing. Loos continues “There are prisons in which eighty per cent of the inmates show tattoos. The tattooed who are not in jail are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats.” Loos does not mention in this essay how the tattoos were being applied to the criminals (or degenerate aristocrats) I’m going to assume they were hand poked, and I’m going to go out on a sturdy limb and say that a good portion of that 80% of tattooed prisoners were branded against their will. Being tattooed against one 's will is dehumanising, the tattoo is a brand, it turns the tattooed into property, tattooing oneself or choosing to be tattooed flips that idea on its head; the willingly tattooed becomes an

shows like Miami ink making tattoo artists like Kat Von d wildly successful, now in the eyes of popular culture tattoos are art and theatre practitioners artists, skilled crafts people; one of the only ways to become a tattoo artist is to find one who will take you on as an apprentice, the other is well, by Doing It Yourself. Even then it’s hard to do, self taught tattoo artists are looked down upon, there are rare exceptions but for the most part they are shunned by the industry. The tattoo industry parallels certain areas of craft in this way, hobby crafts are inferior and lack skill or substance, but DIY is somehow a pass. I know of a few tattoo artists who specialise in stick and poke tattoos and who started out tattooing themselves and their friends, but because of their hard work and skill they now do it for a living, no apprenticeship needed (is DIY a back door into