A few years ago, at a dinner party, my friend Andrew dropped his pants to show me his two scrotum piercings. Or rather, he showed me one (a t-bar) and some ripped skin where the second had been. He somehow had lost this on a flight from the UK to New Zealand. (I didn't then want much to go into the details, halfway through my salad, of just how this loss could have occurred.) Andrew since has somehow arranged a replacement. He likes to fiddle with his ball jewelry, so he tells me, during long and tedious business meetings at the London architectural firm where he works. A pierced and decorated scrotum, hanging there inside his pinstriped trousers, compensates for the boring businessman's garb he has to wear.
Andrew is less happy with some of his other piercings. He complains, in a recent email message: "I have JUST ABOUT decided to remove my nipple rings as I am fed up with the constant cycle of infections and crusty bits and agony when they get hit during sex, etc. A mobile phone in the top pocket also causes considerable damage when running across the office. No one has ever asked why I suddenly collapse in a heap swearing. Anyway, the nipple rings are about as erogenous as a cattle prod up the arse (yes I know this would be Christmas for some people) so I think they will have to go." He hopes, though, to get himself a tattoo by way of compensation for the sacrifice of his nipple décor.
I am a fan of tattoos myself, so I hope Andrew does decide to undergo the inky needle. No one knows where and when humans first transformed their bodies into works of art. This certainly occurred thousands--perhaps tens of thousands--of years ago. English speakers, in the late 18th century, borrowed the word "tattoo" from the Polynesian tatu. James Cook, and his fellow explorers, came across richly decorated male Polynesian bodies in Tahiti, the Marquesas, Hawai'i, and New Zealand. Eager sailors pulled up their shirts to offer their skin to the bone needles of Polynesian artists. They thus imported Pacific tattoo designs back to Europe. Tattooing quickly became a fad among both urbanites and the avant-garde rich (much as it is today, two centuries later). This actually was a reintroduction of forgotten body art to Europe. Ancient peoples from across Europe once also had decorated themselves by needling dyes under the skin.
Oklahoma was one of only three of the United States that outlaw tattooing (making this legal only in 2009). Here is a challenge for you: Reflect anthropologically on Oklahoma culture and why this should fear tattoos. Nonetheless, some of you may have come across a tattoo establishment that set up shop in the Brady District late last year. Delighted, I took advantage of this local opportunity to have tattooed on me my Japanese inkan--the small, round name stamp that all banks in Japan demand one uses in order to deposit or withdraw any money. Next time I am in Japan, I plan just to pull up my sleeve instead.
No doubt I will horrify the bank ladies. Tattooing in Japan (like Oklahoma) is scandalous. This despite the fact that Japan has an internationally renowned tradition of brilliant full-body tattooing. Japanese tattoos, however, are difficult to find and admire. Many of the public baths I frequented had signs proclaiming "No tattoos allowed." This reflects associations of tattoos with the yakuza--Japanese mafia gangs that control much of the underground economy. One day, though, I had climbed Sakurajima volcano and was making my way down its backside. I ran into a party of well-dressed sightseers sporting black patent leather shoes. They offered me a ride back to the city in their van. Squeezed into the back seat with two of my hosts, I noticed a tattooed wrist just showing from under a shirtsleeve cuff. Soon, my new companions had happily pulled off their clothing to reveal magnificent kaleidoscopic tattoos covering every inch of their bodies, except head, hands, and feet. Bygone yakuza sometimes arranged for themselves, when they died, to be partly skinned, and the skin tanned, in order to preserve their luxuriant tattoos.
Few of us would be so willing to become altogether a body-art canvas. Still, tattooing allows us to remodel our bodies and thereby our sense and presentation of self. I recently wandered around Houston's gay ghetto, the Montrose district. It could have been ancient Tahiti. Many of us, too, will make handsome, decorated corpses. I am suggesting to Andrew that this time he just have a ring tattooed onto his nipple. That way those troublesome cell phones won't get in the way.
