For tattooed women their body is a medium of communication and assertion, we imagine ourselves experiencing the world through our “social skin,” the surface of the body representing “a kind of common frontier of society which becomes the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted” (Turner, 1980, p. 112). Elysia’s tattoos are a self-representation, most concretely concerned with the construction of individuality wherein tattoos are her way to create a deeper bond with her body in a physical and a spiritual realm.
Keywords:
Confident
FREE
Feminine
Art
STRONG
Representation of body space might be positing a direct relationship of spatial arrangements and social structure beginning with the symbolism of the body and body boundaries. Brenna’s tattoos enabled her to develop a deeper understanding of life after pain. Her body is a space where motion, intellect and exploration meet. Drawing attention to Richardson’s phenomenological understanding of being-in-the-world by constructing the person (actor) as a truly embodied space in which the body, conceived of as a moving spatial field, makes its own place in the world (Low, 2003, p. 14)
Keywords:
Create
Produce
CONTACT
Wounds
Power to HEAL
Journey
BEAUTY
Johanna described her tattoos as “points of references for stages in her life where she learned from her mistakes and memorialized a new beginning”. Referencing to a strong metaphor to describe her body, she chose a tree metaphor, wherein her body takes agency and acts as a tool to represent qualities, such as personal strength, source of power, balance, growth and connection. Hence, tattoos can be seen as symbols of strength where the body’s perception is heavily rooted in a feminist perspective, which “body ideals serve as mechanisms of social power and control.” (Reischer and Koo, 2004, p. 301).
Keywords:
Learning
Courage
LOVE
Strength / Grounded
BALANCE
Power
Growth / Change
INSPIRED
Amy’s tattoos are intended to record memories, which do not only enable a form of art or decoration over her body, but they signify a memory of those who are important to her. The way Amy followed her body mapping was by conceiving the body as a subject and an object, which draws attention on Merleau-Ponty's insight wherein he states, "the body is our general medium for having a world" (1962, p. 146). Similarly to Bourdieu's (1977) notion that the body structures both how we act and how we perceive, pointing out to the body as a fundamental aspect of the acting self, thus seeking to transcend the dichotomy of self as subject versus body as object, in order to draw attention to the often overlooked role of the body in social action (Reischer and Koo, 2004, p. 307).
Keywords:
Children
FAMILY
Milestone
FRIENDSHIP