In my hazy maternity-leave brain fog, I was going to write a response to the Guardian article published this week. I whole heartedly agree with this response and am sure it reflects many others’ feelings too….
Juggling is Difficult
I’m now in the writing-up stage of my part-time PhD. I’m struggling, I’m really struggling. I found the empirical research process really rewarding, easy to pick up, easy to put down – it’s the practical side of doing a PhD and because of that, I found it easier to dip in and out of. I conducted my interviews via email, and looked forward to receiving responses, and in turn sending out more questions and conversation. Writing is not like that, you need to immerse yourself in it, your head needs to be 100% focused and if you haven’t looked at it for a day or two, it takes a loooooong time to get back into it.
I juggle my PhD with working 3 days a week in the voluntary sector, as a domestic abuse outreach worker. Something far, far removed from my PhD topic – which is good, because my academic life is a welcome distraction from what is quite a draining, emotionally charged job. But making that switch at the end of a Wednesday, from outreach worker, to PhD student, is extremely difficult and something that I find even harder now I’m writing up.
My job is tiring, and sometimes distressing. Because I have worked in the voluntary sector for over 10 years in various roles, I have learnt to ‘switch off’ at the end of the day – but it still uses up a lot of physical and emotional energy. After a day thinking about safety plans, risk assessments and child protection, I would love to come home and contemplate Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, however I really do lack the brain power.
So Thursday comes around and I’m excited and relieved that it’s PhD day. I know that I have until school-run time to get some significant work done. However, it takes a while to get back into the swing of things – especially now I’m writing-up, I’m sure this didn’t happen when I was actually conducting the research. And because time is so limited, the pressure to be productive is at times over-whelming, and sometimes a really negative and unhelpful force.
The other really prevalent issue for me is language. When I’m conversing with my clients, or social workers, police officers, health workers – I am professional, passionate, empathic, determined, knowledgeable – but not academic. I write endless case notes, supporting letters, conference reports – they are well written, but not academic. Converting back to thesis writing and academic language is therefore something I am finding increasingly difficult. I’m finding it a struggle to find my voice within my thesis – probably because my voice is so deeply entrenched and well versed within my working life. I feel like I’ve lost my academic brain to the voluntary sector. And I really wish I hadn’t.
The Freedom Tattoos Project
www.tatuazewolnosci.pedagogium.pl/freedom-tattoos/
This project caught my eye this week. A positive, forward-thinking, empowering project for ex-prisoners, enabling them to gain those extra steps to finding employment and a fresh start. How refreshing!
The Project offers cover-ups of old prison tattoos – not removal of the tattoos – but cover-ups; developing the old tattoo into something bigger, beautiful and positive. I like that the project isn’t insisting that to find employment, these tattoos (or any tattoo) needs to be removed, or out of site to the general public/employer. I like that the project offers to turn unwanted prison tattoos into “professional, socially well-perceived artistic tattoos” – it unashamedly and without doubt, tells us that tattoos can and should be socially acceptable works of art. I like that the project acknowledges that prison tattoos, however badly executed, were at the time, done for a reason. Like any tattoo that we later regret; at the time, we thought it was a good idea – it meant something, it marked something, we thought it’d be funny. Whatever the reason, there was one. By covering the tattoo rather than removing it, the project encourages the wearer to think of the transformation as progressive rather than an erasing of the past. This is how the tattoo was, this is how the tattoo is now. This is how you were, this is how you are now.
Talk and Read, Read and Talk.
What I am about to say is going to sound like the most obvious piece of advice given in the history of giving advice. Sometimes though, it’s the most obvious pieces of advice that we need reminding of, maybe the most easy to forget, but often the most useful.
I have emerged from a recent PhD slump, and am glad to say I feel reinvigorated, re-motivated and pretty excited by my research again. I put this down to two things:
- Talking to fellow academics about my research, and
- Reading other PhD theses.
See, obvious when I say it, hey? But I had completely forgotten how important these two things are when you’re studying for your PhD.
The PhD process can be a very isolating experience – I live about an hours drive away from campus, which isn’t a lot, but I have to factor in the school run and part-time work and therefore I rarely get on to campus – even less so now teaching has finished for the year. So I very rarely have any contact with the people in my department.
Conversations with your supervisor can be at times, unequally balanced in terms of the power dynamic, and often I find myself listening, nodding, agreeing – but not asking any questions, and not answering any either.
I am lucky enough to have had two really useful invaluable conversations recently – one with an academic friend and ex-colleague and one with a very close friend who has recently made it (very successfully) through the PhD process. These conversations meant that I was answering questions about my research, the what’s, where’s, why’s and sometimes “so what’s”. It meant that I was thinking critically about my work, was able to ‘bounce’ ideas off somebody who knows me, who knows how I work and is not afraid to be honest with me (I think!). It meant I was moving beyond the descriptive stage – the stage where somebody outside of academia asks what your PhD is about and you mumble a sentence that doesn’t really encompass what your research is about, but it’ll do.
At first, both of these conversations threw me into some kind of “I can’t do this” panic – I doubted the stage I was at, doubted my research and doubted my capabilities. However, since having these conversations, my motivation has rocketed and because of this, my work output has increased and improved and I have a much, much clearer idea of where my research is going.
Talking allows your thoughts to move from an isolated space into a conversational space, and eventually, into a much clearer textual space.
So what about reading? Whilst doing your PhD, you spend most of your ‘spare’ time reading and I have this awful problem where I spent my (procrastination) time searching for and downloading ALL the journal articles that I probably won’t ever have time to read. Yesterday however, I thought I would browse some sociology theses in the Uni archives as I thought, it may help me in the writing up process. How right I was, really right, more right than I ever imagined. It was really inspiring.
The thesis could be from your department – not necessarily a completely related topic, but the structure and possibly the theoretical framework may mirror your own work; it could be from a different department/discipline but have a similar focus, and therefore maybe the literature might be something you can relate to, or it could be written by somebody who writes in a similar style to you, or has used similar research methods and methodology.
Often with so many other texts to digest, reading other theses may be pushed aside for more ‘important’ reading, but it really is as important as any other texts in your pile.
During reading the thesis yesterday, I was not only enthralled and excited by the research subject, but it also triggered a lot of reflexive thought, which I was able to scribble down to be used in my methodology chapter. I also found the bibliography really helpful, and the overall structure of the work – I could finally see how my own work would look. Again, with the PhD process being so isolated, it’s imperative to utilize this outside inspiration.
So, two very obvious pieces of advice, but two tasks most likely to be pushed to the bottom of a very extensive PhD priority list.
Prioritize them! Especially if like me, you need a helping hand out of what seems like a very steep slump.
Regrets, I’ve had a few…
… but then again, too few to mention.
Anybody who follows tattoo-related news will have by now seen Bidisha’s Guardian article – a self-confessional opinion piece expressing the regret she feels over her choice of sleeve she acquired in the 90s.
This article annoyed me more than most anti-tattoo articles. Offensive Daily Mail pieces written by non-tattooed journalists are so common now that we have come to expect them; it’s no surprise that the same people who hate anything other than white, middle class mainstream are going to take a dislike to tattoos. Even the comments from readers, albeit incredibly judgemental, are nothing new.
However, to read a piece of confessional journalism by somebody who regrets their tattoos and now thinks that every other tattooed person is an idiot, was at best, disappointing and at worst, offensive.
The article was written with an over-riding air of sarcastic, sanctimonious judgement – a voice that implied she is annoyed at her own bad choices, is annoyed at the increasing popularity of tattoos, and now she’s annoyed that she shares something in common with people she rather she didn’t.
Bidisha ensures through her writing that she distances herself from numerous social groups – she suggests tattoos have become a “hipster habit” and berates anyone who chooses to become tattooed for purely aesthetic reasons. The “hipster” tends to get blamed for many recent misdemeanours and I’m not entirely sure who or what a hipster is, or indeed if “the hipster” really can be considered as one homogenous group.
I am also unclear as to where the “it must mean something” mantra came from, but surely aesthetic value is reason enough?
Then comes the classism. First, footballers:
“Four players have had the mental acuity to pick up on the sleeve trend just five years after it first peaked, inspired by David Beckham”
A scathing comment alluding to footballers and their presumed lack of intelligence. Not many people have many complimentary things to say about footballers (this may be a bad-timed comment after last night’s World Cup performance), but I think we can afford them the autonomy to make their own decisions about their own bodies. They are young men with huge amounts of disposable income, with access to the best artists in the world and employers who don’t discriminate against body art – why wouldn’t they become heavily tattooed?
Footballers are often rolled out as examples to illustrate the rise in tattoo popularity and just how awful this is. We are never presented with photos of heavily tattooed athletes (of which there are many). Footballers are easy targets for class-related prejudices – unlike our heroic, middle class (tattooed) athletes, providing positive role-modeling for our children; footballers are seen as tasteless ‘chavs’ of the lower classes – and certainly somebody Bidisha wants to dissociate from it seems.
Next, people who holiday in Magaluf:
“You can stumble into a Magaluf tat parlour in a drunken stupor and have Snoopy inked on your minge”.
And herein lies another reason why Bidisha doesn’t like tattoos anymore – because the awful people who holiday in awful Magaluf have easy access to awful tattoo studios, willing to tattoo snoopy on their lady bits, without much prior thought or consideration.
So really, aren’t they only doing what Bidisha did in the 90s, only on an easier-to-hide body part?
Also, who the hell calls it a “Tat Parlour”?!
Bidisha demonstrates an out-dated knowledge of the industry – with comments such “unartistic body art” and “a postmodern mash-up of badly translated Chinese words, bungled Latin quotes, dolphins, roses, anchors, faces of favoured children or pets, and Japanese wallpaper designs”, again, condemning anyone who chooses to have any of these designs but also refusing to acknowledge the artistic talent and aesthetic quality of much of the tattoo work we see today – and much of it, ironically, in the “hipster sleeves” she loathes so much.
Her comparison of how heavily tattooed women are perceived by society now, and in the 90s, is also problematic;
“Women with full sleeves are common now, as in plentiful. In my day we were common as in trashy”
To me, this suggests that Bidisha might sympathise with the “women with tattoos are trashy” camp – very unhelpful coming from a tattooed woman. Tattooed women are still hugely stigmatised in society (as Bidisha will know from experience) and comments such as this merely serve to reinforce and legitimise this negative attitude.
She is distancing herself from a subculture that she once, I presume, wanted to be a part of. And rather than quietly sliding away from the it, (like we may all do at some point in our lives, with whatever subculture we dabbled in), she chooses to mock and demean it instead. She made some bad tattoo choices and now feels she needs to berate, belittle and patronise anybody who chooses to become tattooed – whether it be a full sleeve or a minge-sized snoopy.
Bidisha indulges in many a tattoo-hating trope: the “you’ll-regret-it-when-you’re-70”, the “tattoos-are-working-class-and-the-working-class-are-scum” and “it-has-to-mean-something” being her favourites.
These were her choices, not the artist, not the industry, not other tattooed individuals.
Admitting your tattoo regrets is fair-enough, sharing your experiences with the readers of a national newspaper is fine; but adopting a self-righteous attitude and dragging down every other tattooed person whilst you do it, is inexcusable.
For Bidisha,
Feminism & Tattooing: Let’s Talk!
After a long time in the reading, planning and thinking phase, I’m now in the early stages of my empirical research – I have been in contact with a small number of tattoo artists via email, and have had some amazing and interesting responses to my questions, inciting some exciting discussion and dialogue.
I am always really humbled when I receive responses within my research – people giving up their time to write to me, or talk to me about their experiences and sharing personal stories and opinions never ceases to inspire me and I am forever grateful.
The most recent response really stood out to me – this artist was the first artist to self identify herself as a feminist (in her email); and within her response it is clear that her feminism is really important to her, and a huge part of her identity. My next set of questions to her will be about her feminism, and how (if) it intersects with her art, her professional identity as a tattooer and her personal identity as a tattooed gender-queer (self identified) woman.
I was really excited by this for many reasons, but mainly I think because I too identify as a feminist and this is a huge part of whom I am, and what my research is about. But until now, I haven’t thought about talking directly to the participants about if they identify as feminists, and if they do, how this might affect their work as tattoo artists, and them as tattooed women.
When I think about this, it seems like a completely obvious subject to broach within my research and I’ve began contemplating why I haven’t thought about this before.
Surely feminism and tattoos lend themselves to one another? Reclaiming the body, subverting beauty norms, taking ownership, and creating an alternative identity – all feminist issues and ideals, right?
I myself am a feminist, carrying out ‘feminist research’ – I endeavor to ensure my research methodologies are feminist, so why aren’t I capturing this in the empirical research and the subject matter itself? Many of the participants talk about setting up women-friendly spaces, or all-women studios and negative attitudes to women tattooers. So why aren’t I asking a direct question about feminism and whether the artists think of these practices as Feminist?
One of my key themes within my research and literature review will be a discussion on feminist aesthetics and so my subsequent analysis of the data will no doubt include a link between these seemingly feminist practices carried out by the artists and feminism/feminist aesthetics. It now seems like a ludicrous and glaringly obvious omission to not ask the participants about feminism.
Perhaps I was avoiding the subject?
Perhaps I was avoiding the F word?
I wonder if I felt that striding on in there with the big ‘Are You A Feminist’ question might put people off taking part in my research? Not that I think it should, but more that I think there is a risk of this happening. Especially when you are conducting research via email – it is much more difficult to convey what you mean in a succinct and clear fashion. Talking face-to-face is easier in many respects and I hope to broaden my research with face-to-face interviews soon.
Are people put off by the word Feminist still? Or am I making presumptions because of personal experiences, recent media reports and comments in public on-line spaces?
Maybe my initial concerns were about ‘putting people off’ – but as a feminist, conducting feminist research, I should be embracing this challenge and striving to redress this issue within my work.
I am so inspired and relieved (!) to have received the latest participant email; the artist, in effect has given me ‘permission’ to talk directly about feminism with the research participants and I’m looking forward to the discussions ahead….
Please get in touch with your tales of feminism and tattoos!
What is ‘Heavily Tattooed’?
When I started to write my PhD research proposal, I knew I wanted my research to focus upon “heavily tattooed” women. So I wrote this into my proposal, and knew that there would come a time where I would have to actually quantify what I meant by ‘heavily tattooed’ – did I mean 50% body coverage? 60% 70%? Or did I mean visible ink? It was a difficult decision to make, and one that I avoided thinking about.
Last week I was lucky enough to be put in touch with somebody who might want to take part in my research – I was told by our mutual contact that she was heavily tattooed. When I met with the possible respondent, she laughed that she had been deemed heavily tattooed and told me she didn’t consider herself to be. I don’t know if I would deem her to be heavily tattooed, I didn’t see any of her tattoos – we just talked about ideas and some brief experiences of being a tattooed woman, and it really wasn’t necessary for us to share our ink on any kind of visible level.
This got me thinking about the term ‘heavily tattooed’ and my difficulty in quantifying what it is, and what it isn’t. One person’s heavily tattooed is not another person’s heavily tattooed. One person’s minimally tattooed, is not another person’s minimally tattooed. I don’t know if there is a difference between how tattooed people categorize fellow tattooed people, and whether non-tattooed people categorize tattooed people differently. I just don’t know.
As a researcher, do I have the right to categorize the level of body coverage somebody has and to deem her heavily tattooed or not?
I’ve decided to include this question/issue/dilemma in the actual research process – I’ll pose it as a question within the focus groups and interviews. Do you consider yourself to be heavily tattooed? What is heavily tattooed?
I think it might spark some interesting discussion around how people categorize themselves, and others. It also allows the participants to categorize themselves for the benefit of my research – which goes someway to empowering the respondent within the research process, I hope.
On the Sexualization of the Transgressive Body
I know I have written about the sexualization of tattooed women before; my previous post on the subject focused upon tattoo magazines and the images they choose to adorn the cover pages with. Today’s post was inspired by a Facebook status by one of my local tattoo studios, a new studio opened by somebody I respect as an artist. The studio was advertising for “female tattoo models” for a calendar, and to find “Miss …..* Tattoo” (*insert name of studio).
As a tattoo fan, especially if you are a consumer of tattoo magazines, you won’t be a stranger to the Tattoo calendar. Usually given away with special new-year issues of the magazine, featuring scantily-clad women with varying levels of ink. I’m not denying the photography is usually pretty cool, the artistry is good and the calendar is generally aesthetically pleasing. But the models usually fit into societal norms of what is ‘beautiful’ or ‘sexy’, just with added body art. So is this formula not a bit old-hat now? Do we not deserve something a little different? A little more exciting? Or is there no market for anything other than “sexy-thin-model-with-tattoos-posing-in-provocative-stance”? I think there is a market for something different, we’re either not making ourselves heard or we’re not being pro-active enough in our power as consumers.
What about tattoo fans that yes, appreciate a woman with a good tattoo, but also appreciate a man with a good tattoo– because, shock horror! It’s the ink we’re looking at and not the body wearing it. Now I know this is a radical idea, but how about a calendar featuring both men and women with high quality ink? If it’s a calendar of ‘sexy women’ we’re after, surely we can rely on Nuts and Zoo magazine for that?
And as for a competition to find “Miss Tattoo” – I was obviously in the throws of a bourbon haze when we were all bundled into the time machine and transported back in a midst of flares and platforms to the 1970’s – the days of beauty contests pitching women against each other in an attempt to eek out the ‘beautiful’ one who strives for world peace. “Miss Tattoo” my foot.
My PhD is taking a positive stance and looking at heavily tattooed women creating new beauty norms, new aesthetics and transgressing the ideals we are fed constantly by society. I wanted to keep it positive, looking at what women are doing to subvert ideals and resist the pressures. But, after getting so angry over this, and contemplating where I sit with the whole issue, I would really like to include a chapter on the sexualization, or the fetishization of the transgressive body…
All I need to do now is work out how.
Tattoos: Public Skin & The Fear of Flesh
If like me, you are a fan of body art and are often distracted by various on-line media sources; you may have noticed the influx of tattoo-related articles in recent weeks. The Guardian in particular has been quite tattoo-laden, and it’s always good to see positive coverage of body art in the mainstream media. However, what isn’t so good is the public comments that these articles undoubtedly always attract.
It still astonishes me just how many people feel the need – time and time again- to put finger to keyboard and enlighten the rest of us with their judgments, opinions and anecdotes about various tattoo-related hilarities: usually involving how dirty tattoos look, how ‘awful’ tattoos look on ageing skin, and one recent comment that told us we certainly wouldn’t want a tattooed surgeon operating on us in our hour of need (?!).
As a tattooed person, these are all things I’ve heard before, and hear/read repeatedly – especially in the comments section of such articles, and as a tattooed person studying tattoos as a PhD subject, I have an added interest in these public reactions. I began this blog to explore my academic thoughts in a more informal context, the ideas shared here aren’t extensive and may need some work – I may have even changed my mind in a week’s time, who knows?!
I’ve been doing some reading and thinking around the Grotesque, carnivalesque and ‘space’ (of which we fill, not the planet-type space!), and what with these infuriating comments coming thick and fast, it got me thinking….
When does skin become open to public comment and opinion? When does our or my skin become public skin – something open to opinion and derogatory judgments? Why do people think it’s acceptable to openly talk about how awful they think somebody’s skin is? In any other context, expressing our disgust at somebody’s body/skin/identity would be considered socially unacceptable, so what is it about tattoos that transgress these social boundaries of etiquette and common decency?
Tattooed people are constantly left in a position where-by we are defending our choices, and ‘proving’ ourselves to be decent human beings. Yes, it’s our choice to become tattooed, and some people – a lot of people- don’t like tattoos, and that’s fine, of course. It is also ok for these people to express their views, obviously. I’m not saying that it’s not, what I am wondering is why tattoos provoke such a reaction, and why people feel the need to express their dislike, distaste and disgust.
On my reading around The Grotesque Body, I have been considering how as a society we actually don’t like bodies. We don’t like oozing, fleshy, functioning bodies. We are conditioned into liking ‘perfect’ bodies – the clean, the smooth and the compact. We don’t like talking about the stuff that bodies produce, (we are lead to believe by sanitary product advertisements for example, that menstrual blood is blue for goodness sake). Bodies scare us – hair, blood, guts and goo – YUK.
I would take a guess at the majority of tattooed people being pretty much OK with the oozing, leaky, imperfect body. We have to be: sitting for hours at a time, bleeding and in some degree of discomfort, the healing and after-care– you get to know your body quite well. We are embodied subjects, at one with our bodies. And it’s my suggestion, possibly even hypothesis (for fear of sounding like an ACTUAL SCIENTIST) that this is what some (not all) non-tattooed people fear. I will point our here, that I know many non-tattooed people who are completely ‘at-one’ with their bodies, and they don’t judge tattooed people. Tattooed bodies (heavily tattooed bodies specifically) represent positive excess, and we as a society are not meant to engage with any kind of excess.
A tattooed body is a strong, powerful body – it says, “fuck you, I’m not adhering to your social norms and mainstream ideals of what it is to be beautiful”…. And some people don’t like being addressed like that: being stared back at by the bodies they were staring at in the first place.
Tattooed bodies are a new kind of beautiful, a new aesthetic – a scary prospect perhaps. Tattooed bodies are not docile bodies, and that, to some people is just not acceptable.
If you would like to read about the grotesque, carnivalesque and some other stuff, you may like to read these if you haven’t already:
The Female Grotesque by Mary Russo
Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin
Extreme Beauty by J Swearingen and J Cutting-Gray
Space, Time and Perversion by Elizabeth Grosz
In the Flesh by Victoria Pitts
Women Artists Making Their Mark
Always happy to see some positive coverage of tattoos in the mainstream media, imagine my delight when I saw this blog post on the Guardian site, about women tattoo artists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/fashion-blog/2012/oct/05/female-tattoo-artists-make-their-mark?commentpage=7#start-of-comments
I have used the term ‘women artists’ and not ‘female artists’ because any use of the word ‘female’ in relation to any discussion surrounding the human race and not the animal kingdom makes me cringe.
My first observation was that the blog appeared in the ‘fashion blog’ section, which made me think why not the society section, or art, or culture? I’m not sure if the placement of the blog depends upon the person who writes the post, or who makes the decision – the author or the editor. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting point that the placement happened to be in ‘fashion’. I think, especially as the post is about ARTISTS, I would have preferred it to be placed within the art section, or culture at least.
The sub-heading states that the increase in women artists is “changing the business” but doesn’t really go on to explain why or how within the post. I mean, I would like to know – how exactly are women changing the business? Yes there is a noticeable increase in women artists – and this is indeed, brilliant of course. But, how is this changing the tattoo business?
The article also asks why women artists are so popular. Why wouldn’t they be? This is a valid question, I suppose – the women mentioned in the article are well known within the industry and are the ‘hot names’ at the moment, which is why they have waiting lists years long, but this happens to male artists too. It does pose the question, do people go out to find a woman artist specifically? Or when looking for a tattoo artist, does one look at the art work first, and gender second? Would you choose a woman artist over a man *just* because you want a woman artist?
Do women really make ‘different’ art to men? Is there a feminine aesthetic? Surely we are past the idea that men create ‘masculine’ art and women create ‘feminine’ art….. aren’t we?
One statement in the blog post really caught my attention: “with 20 million of the 62.6 million of us in the UK inking our bodies, the aesthetic of beauty is shifting”. CUE MY PhD! I love the idea of a shifting beauty aesthetic, and the fact that tattoos are a part of this. This, has it happens, is a major focus within my PhD.
So although I began by saying I was pleased when I saw this article, I seemed to have moaned about it a little, and questioned it somewhat, and perhaps I’ve ended up with more questions than answers. But questioning, and critiquing is a good thing, surely.
And, the post does point out that the tattoo industry is a “hugely progressive industry in terms of gender equality”.
Hoorah!
penandinked 