“Not your dad’s Oldsmobile:” an advertising slogan many years back, one attempting to stem the flow of active choices then favoring Japanese and German automakers. The truth of it remains—it is not the same Oldsmobile—nor is it your dad’s phone, TV, streaming service, hair dye, music…….
I played a mental experiment game in college: Could I earn a living with my brain at age 24 if suddenly transported to ancient Greece or Rome? If I were a doctor with a family living in Berlin in 1937, would I have the wisdom to flee? And then (now) the obverse: how my grandparents (Jackie and Gaffer) would cope with what we witness daily.
Examples abound: gay couples deep kissing and fondling each other on a public bus. Homeless schizophrenics actively hallucinating and verbalizing their distress as they wander the streets of my downtown. Senators not wearing suits to work! High School seniors not being able to read cursive. Being able to look up virtually anything, answer any question—on the fly (but not while driving—but give it just a little more time) with a hand held device that has more computing power than all of NASA during the moon launches. My grandparents and their parents would believe I live in a world with great promise but mostly gone to hell.
Our cultural norms are changing as quickly as the computing power in our machines.
Objectively, and less judgmentally: a space alien re-visiting the US after 50 years might observe some interesting changes in people walking down the street: Tattoos and piercings fully visible for all to see. Barely an impression is registered even though at one time, these were curious and sometimes shocking things.
My transition: I grew up in a Navy town. One saw tattoos in teenagers but almost without fail, they also wore Navy or Marine uniforms. The subjects of this art was typically simple and it was easy to assume the judgement when getting them was clouded by alcohol—or a traumatic experience—or both. Walking by tattoo parlors in downtown San Diego did little to inspire a college bound kid to seriously consider sharing their experience.
Lethe, my mother, took the opportunity to lay out the expectations of class and privilege. Not only were tattoos tabu, but piercings were as well. This puzzled me in that Lethe had impressive (and tasteful!) jewelry which included ear rings. Most girls I would come to know as a young adult had pierced ears but bringing this to her attention, she demonstrated clip-on earrings, and pointed out that the girls I was inspecting were not that unlike the sailors sporting tattoos. Message received.
Years later, my mother sent my wife earrings for Christmas. Kernie was and remains famous for having multiple ear piercings on each side; the earrings were pointedly, clip-ons. Message received.
My High School friend Bruce and I contemplated tattoos as seniors in high school. I have no idea how common such a discussion might have been back then. Our conclusion? A tattoo had to have meaning that would endure at least a decade. You had to know yourself well enough to pick an image that would not embarrass you ten years later. We came up blank. We did agree that once found, the tattoo would be positioned to be seen only at the discretion of the wearer. Decision delayed.
My brother would add his input: “Why would I deface this perfect body?”
Years passed. I would eventually get a tattoo—-I am pretty sure I was the last in my nuclear family to get one—wife and two daughters took the plunge first. My decision came after I was desensitized by friends and patients baring tattoo after tattoo after tattoo. This experience made me more open to the possibility of finally getting one for myself. I held to that discussion in 1970 and while attending a cardiology conference in Maui, the irrational urge came and lecture by lecture, I slowly built a totemic design with symbols from my life. I scheduled a time on a Friday night in Lahaina, and the rest is history—a simple band that is not completely circumferential on the upper right arm.
This decision came when my vanity had slipped a bit—after all, who really cared any more? Kernie was enthusiastic about my choice (she had made hers years before). I wasn’t dating. My job was not in jeopardy……. I had watched a pediatric nurse slowly add image after image, at first discreetly and then, with many years put in at the local hospital, a loopy green Celtic tattoo low on one forearm. I worried that she might get fired; she wore sleeves at work. All around me, state workers, many with advanced degrees were reflecting a changed norm. With time, the notion that an employer or the military might not accept you because of an arm tattoo disappeared. The “market” took care of that. You can’t fill quotas of acceptable applicants if you don’t consider the tattooed.
The notion that tattoos may be a sort of addiction fits many people. You can’t settle on just one, it seems. Your setting, of course drives this. Prison tattoos were literally in your face when I was a resident taking care of prisoners. Interesting how the doctor’s voice and sense of space changes when you learn that that teardrop tattoo on the face marks a murderer. Veterans were capable of dramatic tattoos: an eighty something old man was admitted to the hospital under hospice. He could no longer tell me the story of his tattoos but on his back were two full sized flappers, dancing nose to nose, from his waist to his shoulders. Another who could discuss his choice had the Lord’s Prayer tattooed across his back—this celebrated his participation in D-Day.
For adolescents, the tattoo is an act of defiance and making a declaration of independence. A friend of my daughter, returning from a summer trip to France showed Amber and Kernie her tattoo, obtained at age 16 years in Paris—-on her lower abdomen, where an appendectomy scar would ruin the effect, as would an eventual pregnancy, was a small breeching porpoise. So cute! This was instructive to Amber who like her peers, was itching to demonstrate with a tattoo, her individuality. They were all talking about it. She made her case, knowing that our blessing would be needed in the state of Washington where the age of consent for tattoos was eighteen years (in fact it remains a crime even with parental consent). I was not a fan of this idea; my difficulty was that the design she chose met all the criteria that Bruce and I had discussed years before. The image was taken from some large earrings (pierced, no less) that Amber had from South Africa. A large crescent moon held within its corners a bushman wielding a bow. It reflected a cool aboriginal design and her travels to exotic places. I asked where she would want it. She found a suitable place—hidden— I drew the design on with black Ink and was rewarded! A week later, she reported that she changed her mind—this was not where she would want it. For me this deferred the tattoo decision for her concretely without an argument. But wait—what about a piercing?
Of interest, I had seen my first body piercings somewhere just west of South Africa when doctoring on Semester at Sea. A young coed had abdominal pain required some evaluation and as she lifted her blouse for the abdominal exam, I saw a small gold ring pierced on the lip of her bellybutton. I remember thinking, “Now that is very cute.” As Amber and Kernie reviewed her options, I learned that our nurse practitioner in the ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) office was offering free ear piercings to family members of her co-workers. While not exactly in her usual anatomical practice space, I asked how she felt about an umbilical piercing on a sixteen year old. She enjoyed a challenge and said she would be happy to do it. Amber was all in as were her cagey parents who both thought that if she changed her mind, the ring could be removed and there would be no real evidence or regrets which are common with tattoos.
The trends I observed in the 1990’s with my disrobed patients became well-known to all of you. The numbers and areas of tattoo placement increased. I noted that white collar women increasingly made the commitment to tattoos typically in their early middle years. Lethe’s sense that only lower class working women or prostitutes had tattoos was easily refuted each and every day. More ominously were the themes of many tattoos, especially in younger men and women—-themes of death abounded. For soldiers returning from the Middle East, this is understandable but in women applying cosmetics at Nordstroms? Skulls, snakes, bats, morbid images, and zombies were common. I have come to think that at some subconscious level, there is a death cult—widespread in our country—and the culture of tattoos reflects this.
This image and its associations made an impact in my family. Kernie had her mind set on getting a first tattoo. The tattoo parlor in downtown Olympia was named the Electric Rose and its logo was a skeleton with the skull surrounded with roses—-a logo of the Grateful Dead. Darby was with Kernie when design ideas and costs were to be discussed and Darby drew the line at the door. “I do NOT want to go in there and I do NOT want you to get a tattoo.” Darby was a willful 5-6 year old. Kernie did an epic negotiation: “Fine, I will not get a tattoo now but we have to make a deal; you owe me. I am not doing something I want to do because you asked and sometime in the future, I am going to ask you to not do something you want to do and you will have to pay me back.”
And that too came to pass……I think……..
Amber on the other hand was not so willful, but in her first year of college, decided to exert her independence as an adult—she came home from college with a tongue piercing. These were big at the University of Washington in the late 1990’s. This was not my (our) favorite choice, but were astonished by her planning: she spoke with her dentist to optimize placement of the piercing and the attached metal ball so as to avoid damaging tooth enamel. The metal balls in the set she bought came in different colors, and she could match them to her clothing. Choices. She took meticulous care of the piercing and we were happy to see that this trendy accoutrement lasted about one quarter and then disappeared—no visible scar; no speech impediment. During that time, I did take a day to join Amber and spent a morning with her “piercer” near University Avenue at the UW. Despite all my years of doing a variety of procedures, I marveled at the ingenuity and process to provide piercings without local anesthesia, cleanly, and quickly. The client base, not to mention the artists were sights to behold using sheer volume of product as the first criteria of impression made, and then the artistry holding a close second.
And that seems like a lifetime ago because, it was……Sleep peacefully, Jackie and Gaffer, you are not missing a thing!!!!
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