TATTOO YOU*

*When you are a big and financially powerful rock and roll band 'corporation' like The Rolling Stones you can do what you bloody well like.

I spent a few days in Wellington recently and travelled on planes, spending, due to weather disruptions, an inordinate amount of time in airports. This is something that I haven't done for a while - Wellington and airports due to retirement, COVID and basically a desire to stay at home.

I live in Northland which is seen as a Maori influenced area but actually only has 7.5% of total Maori living here. The 50,000 Maori do make up nearly a quarter of total Northland population of 201, 500 though so maybe this is what drives the reputation. This is good and  enriching with much of the positive side of Maori culture in evidence as you'd expect with Waitangi being smack in the middle.

When I go to town (no, not that old expression that's more fitting to my younger days) the people that I see with tattoos are generally Maori whether full-blooded or second, third or more 'cuzzies' and, unless they are a drongo gang member, have tribal tattoos that may mean something important to them and their families. I might be wrong but indiscriminate tattoo wearing by non-Maori people isn't that much in evidence.

Not so in Auckland and Wellington however. On this little trip I made I noticed so many tattoos worn by younger people that seemed to have little cultural meaning - not to their own cultures anyway - and were often ugly, poorly executed and unnecessarily distracting. When there was a 'cultural' symbol it was more an example of cultural theft than anything born of family identity or natural entitlement. I felt like if I was going to see another Maori-motif tattoo on the thin and pasty bicep or shoulder of  a white man or woman I was going to scream.

"I also vape to help me look 'cool'."

I see tattoos, other than the maybe legitimate ones seen in Te Moko (New Zealand), Tatau (Samoa and other Polynesian), Batek (Philippines), Sak Yant (Cambodia), Irezumi (Japan) Ptasan (Taiwan), Mehndi (India) and sailors tattoos over the centuries* as an attempt to project a personality usually by wannabes that don't have much of one anyway.

You know me - The Curmudgeon - who doesn't make outrageous and unhinged statements without due diligence and research - that was just a personal observation. OK?

To balance that I did some detailed and careful research looked up GOOGLE which told me:

Tattooing the skin as a means of personal expression is a ritualized practice that has been around for centuries across many different cultures. Accordingly, the symbolic meaning of tattoos has evolved over time and is highly individualized, from both the internal perspective of the wearer and the external perspective of an observer. Within modern Western societies through the 1970s, tattoos represented a cultural taboo, typically associated with those outside of the mainstream such as soldiers, incarcerated criminals, gang members, and others belonging to marginalized and counter-cultural groups. This paper aims to review the more recent epidemiology of tattoos in Western culture in order to establish that tattooing has become a mainstream phenomenon. We then review psychological and psychiatric aspects of tattoos, with a goal of revising outmoded stigmas about tattooing and helping clinicians working with tattooed patients to facilitate an exploration of the personal meaning of skin art and self-identity. We suggest that as a kind of augmentation of the physical exam, looking at and talking to patients about their tattoos can provide a valuable window into the psyche, informing clinical practice.

Keywords: Tattoos, Military psychiatry, Deviance, Skin art, Psychopathology, Psychology

Yeah right. I bet that reporter has an Irish harp on his or her inner thigh or an Inuit motif on their backside.

 A bit of further research brought this which I like:

Core tip: Although traditionally associated with deviance and psychopathology in modern Western culture, tattoos have evolved into a mainstream phenomenon, especially among younger adults. While there are myriad motivations for obtaining a tattoo, most individuals seek tattoos as a means of personal expression that provides a potential window into the psyche that can be used to facilitate psychiatric treatment. By reviewing the literature on psychological and psychiatric aspects of tattooing, we suggest that tattoos should be viewed not as signs of pathology, but as opportunities to explore core aspects of self-identity that can be valuable in clinical work.

I'll leave you with this that I read today on the NZ Herald news site.

SHAKEY PETE

Caveat Emptor I guess (or for those who didn't make the 'P' classes or study law at university) - 'Buyer Beware!'

To me, anyone going to a tattooist named 'Shakey Pete' was just asking for trouble sexual molestation or not.

* I wonder if Richard and Robert's dad who was a sailor (or an engineer on a ship) had tattoos.