QUEERING THE BODY, COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES THROUGH PIERCING AND TATTOOING
A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for kJoH^T the Degree
Master of Arts
In
Women and Gender Studies
by
Melinda Monique Lopez
San Francisco, California
Spring Semester 2018 Copyright by Melinda Monique Lopez 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Hierarchies of Body Modifications & Art and Acts of Queering the body by Melinda Monique Lopez, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts: Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University.
Julietta Hua, Ph.D. Professor of Women and Gender Studies
Professor of Women & Gender Studies QUEERING THE BODY, COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES THROUGH PIERCING AND TATTOOING
Melinda Monique Lopez San Francisco, California 2018
In this thesis project I show how a broader collective identity is produced through body modification and art, specifically piercing and tattooing since the 1990’s in the United States. I argue that the act of modifying and altering the body also queers it, and allows for reflexive embodiment, where the body acts as vessel for self-expression, ownership, adornment, or acts of resistance. While individual processes, the act participating in body modifications in also simultaneously creating a collective identity. I therefore trace the influences of social movements in U.S. since the 1950’s on body modification practices. My oral histories bring social activism into conversation by discussing how these acts of activism have influenced and produced different social identities, including different ways of performing femininities and masculinities.
I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis
Date PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to truly thank from the bottom of my heart both of my readers that took the time and dedication to read and help me strengthen my project, I have learned so much from Professors Julietta Hua and Christoph Hanssmann intellectually. I would also like to thank the participants that were so willing to allow me to question their reasoning behind their decisions to perform acts of body modification and art onto their bodies throughout their lives as of yet. Lastly, I am very grateful and appreciative of the support and patience from my family, my love, employers, co-workers, and the many loved ones that have allowed me to sacrifice so much time while completing my Masters program, this success is not mine alone. Thank you, thank you, I love you, and God Bless! TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction/Literature Review...... 1
The Historic Altered Body...... 2
Body Art and Modification as a Collective Identity...... 4
Queering the Body...... 5
Queer Theory...... 7
Queer Theory and Biopower...... 9
Methods- Oral Histories...... 12
Overview...... 14
Conclusion...... 15
Chapter 1: Piercing...... 16
The Human Body revealed through Queer Theory...... 20
Disidentifications...... 21
Counterpublics...... 22
The Regulation of the Body through Power...... 26
Kinship...... 26
Reclaiming the Body through Feminism...... 27
Chapter 2: Tattooing...... 33
Conclusion......
v 1
Body modification and art, such as piercing and tattooing can be read as an act of
queering the body. When one considers the political significance of the body: desire,
embodiment, and identification are all loaded with complex meanings that have multiple
interpretations. The space our bodies occupy holds political significance individually and socially.
I didn’t think much of my body as a site of political importance or as a site of resistance until my
late twenties. Piercing and tattooing were a part of my teenage years into adulthood, socially and
culturally. My aunts, uncles, and parents grew up during the Civil Rights social movements in
South Central Los Angeles, California. I grew up with many oral histories of when they were
discriminated against as Mexican Americans, children of immigrants, and the challenges the
women in my family experienced being women of color. My father’s tattoos and branding came from his teenage years of brotherhood, cultural pride, and religious significance. My mothers were
along the same lines, but were removed due to her embarrassment about exposing them in the workplace. During my teenage years piercing of the belly button, nipples, eyebrows, multiple ear
piercings, sleeve tattoos, tattoos on the lower back for young women were becoming very
mainstream and frequent due to pop culture.
Growing older, piercings and tattoos started to play a new role and significance for sexual
communities, socially and individually, one classic example during the 1980s into the 1990s was
the self-identified gay man who pierced his left ear only, to indicate being a part of the gay
community. My cousin’s tattoos and scarifications were all significant and signified lost family
members, nationalism, or spiritual significance. Some of my uncles have various warrior type
women tattooed on their body that symbolized a reflection of the type of women they had, or
wanted, as a form of respect for their partners, such as a female warrior Amazon image. As I
became older and exposed to more gender expressions and identifications beyond our western
binary system of male or female, my thirst for knowledge about the construction of power, gender,
heritage, control, and regulation has increasingly grown when it comes to ones embodiment.
Why are our bodies such a threat and a site of control and supervision? As a queer? As a woman? As a self-identified gender-neutral body? As an intersex body? As a man? In this thesis I 2 would like to explore our embodiment as a site of political resistance and significance, individually, socially, and collectively. I want to look at the historical influence of social movements since the 1950s in the United States around different modes of body art and modifications, and how these movements contributed to one's self-expression and individualism collectively within diverse communities. My argument from my research believes that the body can be queered through bodily practices of modifications, such as piercing and tattooing. I would like to suggest and examine that since the 1990s in the United States, body modification and art, may have become its own broader collective identity within different subcultures and communities. I want to explore the involvement of embodiment and how various forms of body modifications play a role in contributing to the reproduction of body hierarchies within bodily modifications individually and socially.
The Historical Altered Body
Our daily-lived experiences reflect differently on every individual body. Factors of our past, race, gender, sexuality, and our physical bodily attributes contribute to our visibility of how our bodies are read. Personal narratives of body modifications and art are reflective forms of bodily transformations, and the way one intervenes to self-construct how they identify with their body and self-ownership. I want to look at the body as a political site of resistance through the personal performance of altering the body and expand upon the notion that the body is capable of being queered through the production of modifying one's body as a form of bodily expression and embodiment.
Historically, different forms of body modifications and art have had varied and have various meanings to different cultures internationally and globally. The colonial history of the art of tattooing can be traced to Polynesia from the mid-1800’s when an English explorer named
Captain James Cook “encountered it” on a voyage touring the South Pacific1. Different forms of foot binding during the middle ages in Europe or the Chinese culture referred to as the ‘lotus foot’
1 Cole, Anna. Douglas, Bronwen. Thomas, Nicholas. Tattoo Bodies, Art, and Exchange in the Pacific and the West. Duke University, Press. Reaktion Books 2005. 3 or “head-shaping practiced since the times of pre-Neolithic Jericho in Egypt,2” traditionally associated with beauty and royalty, are all diverse forms of body modifications and body art.
Piercing, branding, and scarification practices can be traced to many African cultures as rites of passages during life milestones, to indicate rank, accomplishments, fertility, or marital status.
Many cultures honor these forms of body modification as a rite of passage, brotherhood, or through the practice of tradition politically or culturally.
Body modification in the U.S. reached its peak during the 1990s within different associations, and took the American culture by storm, contributing to different communities of kinship and alliances. Various forms of piercing became very mainstream during the late 1980s into the 1990s; however, its origin and birth as an industry started during the mid-1970’s by Jim
Ward and Doug Moug in West Hollywood, California. Piercing and tattooing during this period for some were more commonly read as deviant bodies not conforming. Bodies were being considered courageous because they alter their physical appearance, and chose to use their body as a vessel for self-expression and ownership. Victoria Pitts-Taylor in her book In the Flesh:
The Cultural Politics of Body Modification (2003) writes: “The explosion of styles and performances of body modification, the rise of studios catering to the interest in nonmainstream forms of body art, and the advent of a whole host of magazines, websites, exhibitions, and books celebrating and debating the practices culminated in what became known as the body modification movement.3” Body modification as a movement of collective identities holds multiple commonalities of political significance for many bodies, I have found through my oral histories and interviews this past year each varying in degree, yet collectively shared through the same practice(s) of body modification and art.
2 Brain, Robert. The Decorated Body. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. (Pg.92). 3 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. Volume 1st Palgrave Macmillan edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. EBSCOhost, (Pg.4). 4
Body Art and Modification as a Collective Identity
Identity formation begins early sex, naming, gender expectations, race, and religion all
shape our personalities from birth. From the beginning, our bodies are also central to identity, and
sometimes collective identities emerge through processes of embodiment. I would like to situate
myself as a scholar and the usage of the term “collective identity” within my argument, and
expand from the usage by American scholar Joshua Gamson in his article The Organizational
Shaping of Collective Identity: the Case of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals in New York,” (1996).
Gamson’s positionality upon the usage of the term “collective identity” refers to organized bodies,
which fashion collective consciousness through reflection and social interaction. He points out
how many “overlook the structural influences of interactions, which are shaped and limited by the
organizational and institutional contexts in which they took place. (1996; 237)4” In what follows I
have analyzed historical activism that has occurred in the U.S since the 1950s, that has
contributed to the social awareness of our bodies as a site of political significance, in addition to
how much it is regulated and controlled. Body modification and art such as piercing and tattooing
have provided an outlet for people to use their body, as another form of identification, self
representation, and empowerment over their bodies. “Collective identity is a broader term that
recognizes the construction of identity and consciousness as a central element of all movements
(Whittier; 1991; 7).5” In this paper, I would like to show how the practice of piercing and tattooing
has developed as a collective identity in the U.S., due to the influence of social activism that has
occurred since the 1950s.
My argument of body art and modification as a collective identity draws on Victoria Pitts-
Taylor (2003) discussions of the body as a site of power and self-expression, and as something
that is shaped through social interaction. She explores the body as a site of power, a site of self-
expression, which is situated as a social problem. I believe bodies that have been voluntarily
4 Gamson, Joshua. "The Organizational Shaping of Collective Identity: the Case of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals in New York." Sociological Forum, vol. 11, no. 2, June 1996, p. 231. EBSCOhost, (Pg. 237). 5 Whittier, Nancy Elaine. "Feminists in the "Post-Feminist" Age: Collective Identity and the Persistence of the Women's Movement." Order No. 9211249 The Ohio State University, 1991. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 9 Apr. 2018. (Pg.7). 5
modified have been read as deviant, lost, or confused, due to the social construction of what is
deemed acceptable and normal, rather than the body being taught as a vessel for ones autonomy
and empowerment. Each body has a story to tell about their journey of how they decided to
modify their bodies. Body modification and art is a form of self-expression that is accessible to
every type of person. My argument focuses on the individual agency to modify one’s body, while
simultaneously looking at the collective social commonalities of how different social movements
have connected politics and activism through embodied identity. Challenging the societal norm
and produced knowledge has historically created alliances among different people when it comes
to social movements, collective identity, and activism for change.
Historically in the United States, every social movement has been a by-product of
previous forms of activism for humanitarian rights. “The gay liberation and lesbian feminism
emerged in the late 1960s6" and “early 1970s as a spin-off movement spawned by the 1960s
wave of militant contention7.” The development and occurrences of social movements thus
create space for new identities for body reclamation and self-expression. “Imagined alliances within certain social movements also have created divisions within sub sexual communities.
(Echols; 1989)” As I will discuss in more detail in chapter one and two, imagined alliances and
imagined kinships are by-products of social movements within the human population.
Queering, the Body
During the late 1980s and into the 1990s Queer Theory began to take shape arising in
part from AIDS activism and identity politics, and began to explore further and challenge
heteronormativity, and ideas about gender and sexuality. “Heterosexuality” is very much a new
historical phenomenon that emerged in the late 19th century into the 20th century, stemming from
6 LGBT activism in the United States has been documented since the 1940’s and 1950’s (Stein 2012). 7 Ghaziani, Amin, et al. “Cycles of Sameness and Difference in LGBT Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 42, June 2, 2016 (Pgs.165-167). 6
the classification of homosexuality (Foucault 1984). Teresa de Lauretis (1990) and others were
central to the formation of queer theory as a field related to but distinct from women and gender
studies. Specifically, the field expanded on the theoretical applications of “queering”,
foregrounding critics of norms. Queer theory provides a theoretical framework to expand
queerness, and its visibility in society, and as forms of embodiment, self-expression, and
ownership over one’s body and sexuality. Original founding scholars from this field were credited
and influenced by the work of Lauren Berlant, Leo Bersani, Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, Michael
Warner, Jack Halberstam, Michael Foucault, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick8. Michael Foucault
exposed this significant emphasis that has been placed on gender, and sex within modernity. He
pointed out how ‘regulatory ideals,’ such as sexual identity has become a form of being an
abstraction, such as forms of masculinity and femininities. Queer theory has striven to change the
established norms and challenge the accepted knowledge of sexuality, gender, and sexes. It
challenges the heteronormativity of the knowledge produced and expands its assessments through the academic outlet of different scholars from queer scholarship.
According to Campbell (2011) queer theory does not have a singular view, and “it is
diverse as its members.9” lain Morland and Annabelle Willcox in their book Queer Theory, (2005)
writes: “Queerness calls at once for a celebration of the diversity of identities.”10 My positionality
within my argument wants to address the misconception that queer theory can only apply to
LGBTQI-identified people, just like feminist theory was able to reach the mainstream with time,
queer theory has application to self-identified heterosexual bodies. “Queer theory disrupts
conventional parameters of an embodiment.11” When I use the term “queering” in what follows I
draw on queer theory’s mobilization of anti-normativity to consider how bodies are queered
through body modification and art. The performance of queering the body is the act of challenging
mainstream conformity and challenging the established norms of how the bodies should be
presented. In my argument I am using the term queering to challenge the accepted norm in
8 Halberstam, Jack. "An audio overview of queer theory in English and Turkish by Jack Halberstam". Retrieved 29 May 2014. 9
society, and dare to reclaim new space, for new narratives, and new communities of one’s self-
expression and self-embodiment through body modification and art, such as tattooing or piercing.
When I refer to the norms in society: I am referring to traditional Western views of accepted femininities and masculinities, in addition to the challenging of the conventional Western
ideologies of an embodiment, such as apparent body modification, such as facial tattooing, or
stretched earlobe piercing. Thus all possessing the potentiality of challenging established norms of conformity within mainstream acceptance.
QUEER THEORY
Queer theory, in essence, challenges the normative and the gender binary system. I would like to explore the value of applying queer theory to the different modes of body art and
modifications and start a dialogue of how various social movements in the U.S since the 1950s
have influenced different alliances within different sub-communities. I want to explore the multiple roles that body arts, and modifications play in all communities and extend queer theory further by
mobilizing the concept of “queering” as an act of challenging normativity and conformity in this realm. My primary goal is to explore how queer theory allows us as scholars to expand our agency and desire through reclaiming embodiment, social justice, and self-identification at the site of body modifications. I build on Victoria Pitts-Taylor and Lisiunia A. Romanienko’s (2003) theory of the body as a private and public site of social significance, specifically by drawing on oral histories I conducted in my research. Bodily practices and modifications are a reflection of one’s self-identification, both representing a person’s past and how they imagine their future.
Queer theorist Jack Halberstam (2005) writes in his In a Queer Time and Place.
Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, (2005): “queer time and space are useful frameworks for assessing political and cultural change in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.12“ He researches the subcultural practices and “alternative methods of an alliance for different forms of
12 Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press, 2005. (Pg. 4). 8
transgender embodiment,” reflecting on identity politics, the gender queerness, and the role of
identity performances of the queer counterpublics. Halberstam addresses the temporality and
forms of production queer bodies must engage as forms of survival in life, location, and body transformation. We must explore the nature of the human body as scholars to critically think of the more critical picture of how our bodies are read, and what are the contributing social factors
involved in representation and gendered identities.
How can the act of modifying your body be read as a form of rebellion, resistance,
beautification or empowerment? Pitts-Taylor (2003) writes: “The queering of body modification
reflects a radical politicization of the erotic, sexual body, and engages issues that are of particular
importance to the gay, lesbian, and transgendered communities.13” Embodiment for many
marginalized communities has been heavily regulated and policed. Through a limited space of
movement for self-expression, a very limited agency is possible for some marginalized
communities. Sexuality plays a key role in this regulation of how our bodies and gender should
perform on the larger scale. Judith Butler (1999) has argued, “We ought to think of identities as
produced intersubjectively and in space and time; identities are not fixed essences to be discovered but rather processes of both reflection and interaction with others that are continually
performed and revised through and within the embodiment.14” Contesting and challenging the established norms lived experiences, and social practices provide the opportunity for us to queer space, time, and embodiment. I would like to explore how the body is capable of being queered through body modifications and art. For many who have modified their bodies, this has
represented a renewed self-possession and identification. Through their reflections and in
interaction with others, acts of body modification come to form a broader collective identity within the American culture.
13 Pitts- Taylor, Victoria. In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. Volume 1st Palgrave Macmillan edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. EBSCOhost, (Pg.92).
My analytic approach with my thesis project will engage Jose Esteban Munoz's (1999)
work on disidentification and his ‘performance of politics.’ His theory of disidentification reflects
not only forms of the performativity of our bodies as a site of resistance and survival strategies,
but also a site to create new self-narratives and forms of identification for marginalized bodies
through lived experiences. How do types of body modification create spaces for new subjectivities
and embodiment of one’s identification? What is the role of temporality in these choices and
practices of body modification and body art? Queer theory provides a platform for new narratives,
bodily empowerment, expression, and ownership through the performance of body modification.
Queer Theory and BioPower
What are the effects of social power over embodiment and subjectivity Nikki Sullivan and
Susan Stryker (2015) keep in mind in their research questioning the construction of the
hierarchies of body modifications? “Queer Theory explores the relationship of the nature of ‘the
human' in relation to the queer, focusing attention on how sexual norms regulate hierarchies of
humanness. 15(Luciano; Chen: 2015)” Established hierarchies of humanness reflect the development of how labels and identifications are formed and embraced. One must view the act of queering the body, as an act of denaturalizing established categories, to make space
linguistically beyond the binary systems and way of thinking, and how power functions. Pitts-
Taylor questions what are the morally and medically acceptable forms of body modification for queer bodies? What are the body politics of individuals who choose to use their bodies as vessels for body art or modification? What are the forms of power that are being exercised when one
decides to place piercings, tattoos, or types of scarification on their bodies as a form of re ownership, resistance, or bodily integrity?
As one of the founding fathers of Queer theory, French social theorist and philosopher,
Michel Foucault's concept of biopower, and his biopolitical framework addresses the power
15 Luciano, Dana. & Chen, Mel Y. "Introduction: Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 21 no. 2, 2015, pp. iv-207. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/581599. (Pg.186). 10 relations over the human life, in the final chapter of History of Sexuality, vol 1 (1988). How does sovereign power play a key role applying his concept of biopower? What is the position of the
“anatamo-political pole of power" and the role of “biopolitics” of the regulation over the individual and the population, when it comes to human behavior and gender regulation of the binary system? Foucault’s biopower framework addresses the notion of sovereign power conducted by the nation-state, which controls subjugated bodies through numerous techniques of regulation. In
Dean Spades Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the
Law (2011) he refers to subjugation as a substitute term for oppression, “captures how the systems of meaning and control that concern us permeate our lives, our ways of knowing about the world, and our ways of imagining transformation.16” Foucault’s biopower framework divides his theory into two categories of biopolitics and anatomo-politics. Foucault’s reference of biopolitics refers to the regulation of the more substantial population’s wellness, of life administratively through the lens of the state. He believes human bodies are being viewed as a species, as opposed to anatomo-politics, which the sovereign power is self-regulated through the individual within the nation’s population, as the body as a machine. I would like to bring the notion of sovereign power into conversation with my argument: that since the 1990s in the United States forms of body modification and art, has become its own broader collective identity of resistance of sovereign powers, control, and regulations over marginalized communities. As a movement to create space for new narratives of self-identity, re-ownership of embodiment, and agency of the political space one’s body occupies. Spade and Foucault’s theories both address the way power relations work to regulate bodies through techniques and mechanisms. I want to push their frameworks of power and subjugation further as foundations of social growth and awareness of the power of modifying one’s body individually, socially, and collectively.
Halberstam states, “The relations between sexuality, time, and space provide immense insight into the flows of power and subversion within postmodernism. (2005)17” Foucault argues the struggle of sexuality throughout time has consistently been regulated as a site of knowledge
16 Spade, Dean. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law. 2011. Introduction: Rights, Movements, and Critical Trans Politics. (Pg.25). 17 Halberstam, Jack. 2005.(Pg. 13). 11 and privilege, which continuously affects the order of power over multiple bodies. Foucault states:
“the manifestations of sex, the idea that there have been repeated attempts, by various means, to reduce all of sex to its reproductive function, its heterosexual and adult form, and its matrimonial legitimacy fails to take into account the manifold objectives aimed for, the manifold means employed in different sexual politics concerned with the two sexes, the different age groups and social classes. (1978)18” Time and space are brought into this conversation through history and the movement of bodies. Bodies according to Foucault are the vessels where state power is exercised to maintain “the effectiveness of the order of power.19” It was through this production of this knowledge in the attempt to control it, that in reality produced sexuality he argues. Sexuality as we know it is very much regulated, and as mentioned earlier, has become very heterosexually normalized, not allowing space for other sexualities to exist, or to be treated humanely. Due to social activism and the courage to fight for human rights for all types of bodies, we are slowly shifting the social awareness of other types of “sexuality” in the American culture.
Foucault’s concept of biopower brings sovereign power into conversation behind the scenes and can be applied through the performance of body modification of how bio-politics individually regulate bodies, or how populations of bodies are monitored and read differently through his concept of anatomo-politics. Foucault's concept of biopower analyzes how state power separates the community from individual bodies of who is worthy of living, and who will be subjected to death due to the body they embody. Where is the placement of the bodies that have been altered or covered in body art situated in? For example, are all bodies treated the same medically if a medical practitioner is treating a body without any body modifications versus a body full of piercings, branding, tattoos, a transgender, or intersex body? Are their lives still valued for their full humanness based off of the exterior of their bodies?
Systematic control and power have played vital factors within the relationship of technology and the medical industry, through physical regulation, health standards, and which bodies are eligible for having accessibility to medical accessibility for health care or any forms of
is Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1 (1978).” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 41, no. 4, 2015, (Pg. 103). 19 Foucault, Michael. 1978. (Pg. 104). 12 physical modifications or cosmetic surgery, especially for marginalized sub-communities. Viviane
Namaste in her Sex Change, Social Change. Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism
(2005). She argues that historically Canadian feminism for the forward movement of women’s rights has an intimate relationship to imperialism. She looks more closely at economic hegemony and accessibility to health care for the overall population. Pointing out the only bodies through employment are provided this human right to health care, while other bodies are discarded systematically. She shares her research on the role of healthcare as a business, and its political involvement. However, pointing out that underlining fact, that medical care is not a state responsibility, instead an individual responsibility. Namaste’s research reflects imagined alliances of liberation for subcommunities, yet, exposes how marginalized bodies are consistently left behind within certain movements. I would like to place Namaste, Spade, and Foucault’s work into conversation with each other of how power relations’ influence imagined alliances and kinship.
Methods
My method revolves around oral histories of people of all genders and different ethnicities in the age range of 25 to 65 years old. The majority of my informants were family members, clients of mine for years, many were highly involved within the piercing or tattooing industry or both, as business owners, tattooist, students, or a variety type of dancers. Different forms of body modification and art have been influenced by various social movements, and have become a resource for individual bodies to explore and reclaim their self-expression and identifications due to political awareness of social injustice. Self-expression and agency is a site of empowerment for
many people. What will future studies produce on the long-term effects of these different types of modifications? How will our gender, race, and sexuality play a role? My general questions for my oral histories were the following, depending on time allowed for some of my interviews: 1. What is your definition of body modification? 2. When, how, and why did you get your first tattoo/piercing?
3.Did something happen in your life that created or contributed to your choice to modify your body? 4. Did you associate any of your modifications as a form of self-expression or a kind of 13 political identity? 5. Where any of these tattoo/piercings related to feminist views, or a way of reclaiming your body through self-expression? 6. Do you associate your choice of body modification with feelings of desire, pain, empowerment, performance, or defiance? 7. How did your self-expression, self-identity, and self-narration shift after your body modification(s)? 8. To commit to scarification, piercing, or tattoos is a very long-term commitment. Are you still proud/excited, and take ownership of your personal choice to have modified your body? More directly was this a well thought out action with personal meaning to you? 9. Do you consider your body modification beautiful in your self-perception? 10. If you feel comfortable sharing this with me, how many tattoos and piercings do you have currently? 11. Do you think your body has been read differently with time since your first tattoo/piercing? 12. Lastly, through this act of altering your body, did you ever feel a level of kinship among others? Many of my oral histories were conducted in person; a couple were over the phone, a few were a continued interview through email, to clarify their responses. I would ultimately like to tie in my observations, especially of the reactions of my argument in my thesis by my interviewees' positionality of the power of queering the body. I am also interested in questioning the positionality of their perspective of the existence of a hierarchy of body modifications.
How are these body modifications subjected to different levels of consent and agency for one’s private individual choice? I have selected to take the path with piercing, tattooing to show multiple ways, one is capable of queering their body through space, time, identification, and performance. I feel by selecting oral histories, as my primary method to support my analysis will provide space for individuals to share their narratives, beliefs, and empowerment instead of objectifying their body modification or body art. I selected my informants through personal engagement through a couple of my professions as a bartender or as a studio ambassador for a fitness studio. During this process I have developed intimate relationships with my informants that shared more than one or multiple forms of body modifications. 14
Overview
In the body of my thesis, chapter one will focus on the historical movement of piercing from the 1990s to the present in the United States, discussing subcommunities of social movements within the different communities, that all shared the collective experience of modifying their body through piercing as a form of self-construction, i would like to explore self objectification of the body, and how types of piercing play a role in queering one’s body and self construction. How does this choice of piercing one’s body play a role in one’s private and public space of agency and ownership in their embodiment? I want to explore relationships of imagined kinship produced through mainstream media in the U.S. and by the pop culture during the 1990s precisely onto the American youth. Social movements I will tie into this chapter are modern primitives, the rise of the leather and kink communities in the 1990s-2000s (as bi-products of multiple activism occurring within the gay communities, the Folsom Street Fair/Festival based in
San Francisco, and propaganda slogans from Betty Friedan’s generation of the Second wave of feminism.
In chapter two, my focus will shift to tattooing communities as a second form of body modification(s), and a way of queering one’s body through self-expression, identification, and as a form of resistance of mainstream ideologies. I will provide the colonized push back towards the cultural practice and valued meaning of performing the act of tattooing, and how this form of control and regulation has contributed to bodies being read as deviant or lost by altering their bodies. I will apply queer theory to support my argument of how one can queer their body through forms of survival of disidentification and performance of politics argued by Esteban
Munoz. I want to explore the temporality of the practice of tattooing, the body transformation
(past, present, future; a form of remembering), supported by oral histories of personal discourse(s). I would like to associate the processes of self-identification and performances as political expressions through body politics. Social movements I would like to cover in this chapter revolve around the cultural revitalization movement (re-ownership of artistic representation), the 15 modern primitive movement (post human discourse), the civil rights movement, and the feminist movement.
CONCLUSION
In this introduction, I have outlined my academic goal for arguing that one is capable of queering their body through the act of modifying their body. I would like to explore further the political significance our bodies signify and embody in society. The feminist belief of one’s own right over their body I will unpack, and will be my feminist intervention in my argument of the agency granted to people whose bodies have been modified through piercing, tattooing, or substantial modification(s). Feminism as a group collective has always fought against systematic control and the regulation of bodies. I would like to argue that personal bodily transformations are queered through performance, identification, space, and time socially and collectively through the act of modifying one's body, and dare suggest it could be viewed as its own social movement in a broader sense through collective identity within the American culture since the 1990s. It is through multiple social changes and activism of sameness and differences within different communities that created new identity politics and counterpublics of one’s embodiment. It is through this movement of body modification and art, which created space for imagined alliances and imagined kinship within multiple sub-marginalized communities. My positionality in this thesis will use a biopower framework of systematic regulation and oppression to continuously create a hierarchy within the community of body modifications and art. I would like to use queer theory to challenge the normative, and expose the private and public body, as a site for the embodied subject to reclaim forms of identity, visibility, self-fashioning, and self-expression. 16
Piercing
“The personal is political, the political is personal" is a well-known statement associated with past U.S. protest movements, however, this slogan was primarily associated with the second wave of the women’s rights social movements during the 1960s. Let’s think about that chant statement for a moment, and how would you define what is personal to you versus what is political when comes to your beliefs, and more importantly when it comes to your individual body?
Do they not coexist collectively as a byproduct of one’s individualism? I find this chant, very relevant to the concept of our body as a political site of significance as Victoria Pitts-Taylor (2003) has argued. Our bodies carry a lot of political significance, through our identification, its representation, our embodiment, to the way one chooses to modify their body as a form of self- expression. If our bodies were not such a threat to the continuity of the progression of society, then why is it regulated and monitored by the state as much? Why has this right and agency been oppressed by communities of women, children, minorities bodies, or non-heterosexual sexual communities? What are the power relations at play when it comes to the decorated body in the
American culture?
Historically piercing as a form of body modification and art can be traced from ancient times: “The oldest mummified remains ever discovered were wearing earrings, attesting to the existence of the practice more than 5,000 years ago. The practice of body piercing has waxed and waned in Western Culture, but it has experienced an increase of popularity since World War
II, with sites other than the ears gaining subcultural popularity in the 1970s and spreading to mainstream in the 1990s.20” The practice of piercing one’s body is conducted for multiple reasons as a form of bodily expression from identification, to community affiliation such as religious or spiritual, to defiance, to sexual pleasure, to aesthetic value. I would like to argue that this form of body art and modification, piercing, is commonly shared through a variety of sub-communities and subcultures, and contributes to the notion of body art and modification as a collective identity
20 < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodv piercina> 17 in the United States since the 1990s. My goal is to expand this argument of the performance of piercing and modifying one’s body as a form of queering one’s body, through time, and space of one’s embodiment.
When I use the term “embodiment,” I am collectively including the individual and the social body of one's self-embodiment. Social settings for the public are together shared and have
influenced individuals through shared space. It is divided spaces throughout time and historical shifts that have collectively altered self-awareness, and self-embodiment. This shift in self- awareness could be provoked by generations exposed to war, or social movements that shared common ideologies for human rights, or equal rights. When I speak of one’s embodiment, I am attempting to intervene in the body occupying both the public and the private self, through individualism and socially collectively. I would like to utilize Nick Crossley’s reflexive embodiment21 of situating the body as both an object and subject simultaneously, as a form of representation, and how the body is capable of possessing a temporal spilt being capable of
being a subject and the object, thus capable of being reflexive. The expansion of his argument was built on Gabriel Marcel’s (1965) formulation “we must conceive of our embodiment in terms of the twin aspects of ‘being’ and ‘having.22’” Crossley cross-examines Emile Durkheim and
Anthony Giddens (reflexive reconstruction of the self) approach to the collective individualism and
how modernity has caused this transformation of the individual and their decisions to move forward with body modification and art. Giddens (1991) argues that it is through modernity, that
many rituals and traditions of cultural practices have been lost due to geographic mobility; thus we as “individuals are increasingly forced to answer these questions for ourselves; to reflexively
construct a sense of our identity, biography, and future trajectory.23” Crossley points out how
Durkheim (1952) states: “it is our principle means of announcing our identity to both ourselves and other people. Our embodiment is central here both because it is the very substance of who
21 Crossley, Nick. Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. Open University Press, 2006.
22 Crossley, Nick. 2006. (Pg.2). 23 Crossley, Nick. 2006. (Pg.18). 18 we are and must necessarily be molded to fit our identity choices.24” My usage of the term embodiment within my argument is keeping the body in mind, not only as a public and private vessel, however, as an object and subject that is the very backbone of our reflexive self- identification, expression, and bodily awareness.
I would like to situate myself with the term queer as a verb and action of queering the body through body modification and art. The performance of queering the body is the act of challenging mainstream conformity and challenging the established normativity of how the body should be presented. I would like to push and expand the term queering beyond the state of being happy, or as it is used as the vernacular term for homosexuality. In my argument I am instead using the term queering as a term to challenge the accepted norm in society, and dare to reclaim new space, for new narratives, and new communities of one’s self-expression and self embodiment through body modification and art, such as tattooing or piercing.
Transnationally the practice of piercing one’s body has played both cultural and social roles for many cultures and traditions for thousands of years: “Aboriginal Australians practiced penile subincision and elongating of the labia. The pre-Egyptian, Nubian civilization elongated their skulls and used a simple technique to make tattoos. Later, ancient Egyptians practiced ear piercing while ancient South American cultures, like the Mayans and Aztecs, ritually pierced their tongue for blood offerings.25” Based off of different time periods, each ritual and tradition became its social practice of personalized meaning and empowerment through one’s embodiment: “The peoples of the Pacific Islands have practiced the piercing of ears, noses, genitals, and lobe stretching for generations. The men of Borneo, for example, would pierce the Ampallang, as did the men in the early history of the Filipino people, while the women of Borneo (and central Africa) practiced piercing and stretching of the labia in an effort to attract a suitable husband.26” Social standards within each culture have established different norms of accepted forms of body modifications of normalized body art aesthetically appropriate for each gender. Due to
24 Crossley, Nick. 2006 (Pg. 18). 25
When one considers the act of piercing, it can be viewed as a very common mainstream act conducted by parents onto their children at a very young age in the U.S. When I think of my childhood, one of the most youthful memories I can still vividly remember, was my father holding me in his arms, consoling me because I had just had my first ear piercing, and I was holding my ear crying. I had to be three or four years old, this act of beautification onto little girls has become a very normalized practice within the American mainstream culture. Could this be viewed as a political activity conducted by parents or a normalized one? Or what about the parents that wait for them to become older, around the years of 7 to 11, when you may have a child continuously requesting for this body modification? Could this experience not also create a moment of kinship and bonding between the two people? I bring this question up, primarily to one show the regulation of certain types of body modification that are permitted by our culture, so in this context, it is not viewed as an act of rebellion, yet instead as a gender associated body modification normalized in enhancing beauty aesthetically. In my argument I would like to address the act of piercing one’s body focusing on bodies during their teenage years, into adulthood, where it was their own personalized conscious decision to either self-pierce themselves, or want a different type of piercing beyond just an ear piercing, such as a belly button, a nipple piercing, the lip, an eyebrow, the nose, or genital piercing etc. An oral history I conducted with Ariellah
Aflalo27 stated all of her 11 tattoos and 15 piercings were all very intimate and well thought out associated with the adornment of her own body and her positionality of her own body. As time went on, and she added to them and shared: “these body modifications also solidified her self- identity and lifestyle with time.” Her first piercing was in 5th grade, and later wanted more, she
27 Oral history conducted on March 20, 2018 with Ariellah Aflalo. 20 was shocked and elated when her mother allowed her to get three more piercings in her ears at such a young age. As Ariellah grew older and added to her body modifications and she found this as an outlet that “lead her to be bolder in her body.”
The Human body revealed through Queer Theory
We all possess two forms of identifications over our bodies, the private and the public suggested by Victoria Pitts-Taylor, thus labeling the body as a political site to be controlled and regulated: “People getting genital piercing are using their bodies as symbolic conduits between their inner beings and the values, sentiments, and beliefs possessed by their desired social group. (Myers; Pitts-Taylor; 2016)28” Sexuality plays a key role in this regulation of how our bodies and gender should perform on the larger scale: “Queer theory explores the relationship of the nature of ‘the human’ in relation to the queer, focusing attention to how sexual norms regulate hierarchies of humanness. (Luciano; Chen; 2015)29” Established hierarchies of humanness reflect the development of how labels and identifications are formed and embraced.
Through my process of interviewing individuals concerning their performance and agency of how they chose to modify their body, one expressed by Ron Deniro how power was a byproduct of his environment growing up. Ron shared “that his body art shifted the way his body was read in his community daily, of where he had been, and a reflection of his body art as an observation of his life transitions of what he was going through30.” Jack Halberstam states in his book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives: “the construction of spatial practices is obscured by the naturalization of both time and space. (2005; 8)31” Piercing is a potential site for not only queering the body but also as a site of empowerment of ownership, identification, agency of one's temporal self-expression. It brings forth the awareness of their
28 Meyers, James. Non-Mainstream Body Modification. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Volume 21, Issue 3, pp.267-306. First published date: July,25,2016. 10.1177/089124192021003001 (Pgs. 297-298). 29 Luciano, Dana and Chen, Mel Y. "Introduction: Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 21 no. 2, 2015, pp. iv-207. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/581599. (Pg.186). 30 Oral history conducted with Ron Deniro, on January. 12, 2018. 31 Halberstam, Jack, 2005. (Pg. 8). 21 body through the longevity of their lived experiences involving their gender, race, and sexuality taking into account the space their body occupies and their past and the futurity of their body.
Disidentification
Performances of altering the body through piercing vary upon different bodies. However, some can be classified as acts of performing disidentity, as Jose Esteban Munoz (1999) points out as a form of ‘practice of freedom.’ His argument concerning disidentity addresses multiple forms of survival one may struggle in their daily life, such as cultural, material, or psychic survival.
In Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Munoz’s approach to disidentification makes space for “the process of self-actualization” for the minoritarian subjectivity: “Disidentification is about managing and negotiating historical trauma and systemic violence; a discourse as a response to ideologies that discriminate against, demean and attempt to destroy components of subjectivity that do not conform or respond to narratives of universalization and normalization. (1999)32” Many of my oral history interviews expressed association of their choice to modify their body, as a form of disassociation from the standard norm. This performance created their own counterpublic of dominant ideologies, and for some, their performance combined their public and private self simultaneously through highly visible piercings that are considered extreme and radical.
Let us take into consideration how specific forms of social activism such as the Civil
Rights, Feminism, the LGBT movement, the Chicano movement, the Black Power movement all contributed to different ideologies for more human rights: “Disidentification is a strategy that works for and against dominant ideology, such as identification or assimilation. (Munoz; 1999)33” These movements all created new spaces for new self-identification, desire, and self-expression that
Munoz’s theory negotiates. Encountering moments of disidentifying with the American way of life,
32 Munoz, Jose Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Pg. 161). 33 Munoz, Jose Esteban. 1999. (Pg.11). 22 due to its universalization and the normalization of their bodies being overlooked and forgotten within the system of the American government. Factors of one’s gender, sex, race, and one’s sexuality affected their way of living that made it political. Social awareness of these political shifts in America filtered into the mainstream culture, and bled into the production of our literature, films, and the music culture: “Feminism, for instance, has described how the female body living under patriarchy has been denigrated by numerous forms of social control and violence, but also how it can be received as a space for pleasure and empowerment for women.34” How have different social movements that occurred during the 1960s through the 1980s in the U.S. truly affected the self-development of different subcommunities and cultures identification and their representation socially and collectively on a daily level physically?
Counterpublics
It is through resistance, agency, empowerment, and consent by individual bodies that decided to perform body art and modify their self-representation of how they identify with their body. Collectively with time and accessibility in the U.S., body art and modification (piercing and tattooing) has become its community conjointly with sub-communities and cultures since the
1990s; that have focused on physical self-expression, empowerment, and rebellion against mainstream ideologies of how bodies should be presented and conserved. Individual counterpublic discourse creates space for new narratives of disassociation and disidentification of mainstream conduct, values, and beliefs. According to the social theorist, and one of the founders of Queer Theory; Michael Warner, writes in his book Publics and Counterpublics: “Counterpublics are, by definition, formed by their conflict with the norms and contexts of their cultural environment, and this context of domination inevitably entails distortion. (2002; 63)35” I dare to expand from Warner’s statement: it is through these counterpublics conjointly among many subcultures and communities, that body modification and art, have become their own social
34 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.6)
35 Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Cambridge, Mass., Zone Books; Distributed by MIT Press, 2002. (Pg.63). 23 collective, and has the potential to be disruptive of norms. Space and time are shared individually and collectively. It is the very push back against mainstream dominant ideologies that co-create counterpublics of how one’s body can be viewed as a subject and an object concurrently. It will ultimately be a self-reflection of their self-identity, yet simultaneously queering of the body through challenging dominant established norms. Due to one’s personal desire of their body to be different, and more meaningful mentally, emotionally, and aesthetically for themselves, and at times collectively through a common kinship or bond with another, such as a brotherhood or sisterhood. A commonality shared by people who choose to have “extreme piercings” share an imagined alliance among other bodies, that have the same interest of piercing as a body modification are thus able to have an open dialogue of their sense of commonality due to this performance of queering their body through a physical alteration. Again, I would like to remind my reader, that I am attempting to push Queer Theory forward through positioning my usage of the term queering as an action conducted beyond the self-identified LGBTQ body; as an act of challenging established conformity and normativity of the human embodiment, through self reflection, identification, and expression.
Gender theorist Judith Butler has argued, “we ought to think of identities as produced intersubjectively and in space and time; identities are not fixed essences to be discovered but rather processes of both reflection and interaction with others that are continually performed and revised through and within embodiment. (Butler; Pitts-Taylor; 2003)36” Contesting and challenging the established norms, lived experiences, and practices provide the opportunity for us to queer space, time, and our bodies. Jack Halberstam “explores how “queer space,” refers to the place doing practices within postmodernism in which queer people engage and how it describes a new understanding of space that is enabled by the production of queer counterpublics. (2005)37” An example of how subcommunities can contribute to a collective bodily movement is through reclaimed spaces and performances of their bodily expression, modification, and identification. An oral history interview pointed out this performance of modifying his body was a form of “re
36 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.84). 37 Halberstam, Judith. 2005.(Pg. 6). (Counterpublic is a creation from two foundations between the mainstream and a subculture, a queer space that is resistant to becoming hegemonic). 24 ownership and one’s realization of something to re-center one’s self-perception of himself.”
Johnny Stanley stated: “I have always had initial urges, to look this way, rather an inherent feeling of how my body should look, I can’t explain why I have to look this way, I can look like everybody else, but it feels more right to look like I do.38”
The BDSM community for example commonly practices multiple forms of body modifications39, the leather and kink subcultures both located within the San Francisco, Ca., communities started to develop rapidly during the mid-1960s and into its sub-communities. It was during the 1980s due to the AIDS epidemic there “became an opportunity for the city (in the name of public health) to close bathhouses and regulate bars, which they did beginning in 1984.40” This caused many city organizers to develop this street fair called the Folsom Street Fair for public awareness, visibility, as a movement for a source for safe sex information, and a space for their counterpublic beliefs, values, and lifestyles of how their public and private bodily identity express themselves. Pitts-Taylor points out: “Around the late 1980’s, body modification began to emerge as a cultural movement that brought together a range of interests and traditions related to the body, culminating in a network of overlapping subcultural groups with diverse interests, who eventually began identifying themselves and each other as “marked persons” or as “body modifiers. (2003)41” Anatomo-politics make an intervention here in producing easily managed
“normal bodies,” and how “modified bodies” interrupt that mode of “efficient” governance. It is through the performance of challenging normativity that allows anatomo-politics to be at play here, exposing the regulation and control by disciplinary institutions, and how body modifications are an outlet as a form of expression and identification through different embodiment. This approach Halberstam states allows us a new site to rethink the production of cultural practices.
What is the role of cultural politics if one considers the act of modifying their body as a political
38 Oral history was conducted on January 18, 2018, this participant did not want his name in the paper; this is a false name created to protect his privacy. 39 BDSM: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadomasochism; all considered erotic practices. Many bodies participate in forms of body modification within this subcommunity. 40 Rubin, Gayle. "The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather, 1962-1997" in Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture (City Light Books, 1998). 41 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003. (Pg. 7). 25 practice within multiple subcommunities? And is this performance a form of denaturalizing the established categories of humanness?
Identity politics and movements are linked to “class movements, feminist, gay and lesbian, and post-colonial movements,42" How have different social movements influenced imagined alliances within different communities? The movement of Modern Primitives has created its own community in the U.S. from the 1970s to the present, through body modifications such as genital piercing, tattoos, breast cutting, to branding and has become a way for individuals to reclaim a previous history culturally, or spiritually through a modern lens and understanding according to Victoria Pitts-Taylor (2003). This movement created by Fakir Musafar focuses on the practices and rituals of variations of body modification, such as flesh hook suspension, scarification, tattooing, to even corset training: “Modern Primitivism, which developed in the sexually-radical sadomasochistic (SM) communities on the West Coast during the 1970s, became progressively queer in the late 1980s and early 1990s in relation to queer cultural politics in the United States and Great Britain. (2003)43” Not only is piercing a form of expression, but it is also a form of body art, which is influenced through many cultural factors: “Body modification opens new possibilities for gender, sexuality, and ethnic identity.44” The body as a political site of significance allows one’s agency to control how one’s body is being read socially. “The modern primitivist movement self-consciously rejects the deeply ethnocentric tradition of the West and instead extends nostalgic views of indigenous cultures as more authentic, natural, and communal. The movement also employs very contemporary, postmodern notions of identity, culture, and the body, presenting each as malleable and elective. (Pitts-Taylor; 2003; 124)45” This movement attracted multiple subcommunities, sexualities, and cultures through the common belief of one’s authority and consent of what is done to their body, and how they want to self construct them self publicly and privately.
42 < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social movement> 43 Scarborough, K. Neil. Modern Primitive body art: The cutting edge of queer performance. Bryn Mawr College, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2005. 3282539. (Pg. I) 44 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.14). 45 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003. (Pg. 124). 26
The Regulation of the Body through Power
A couple of my oral history interviews, mentioned the concept of power in association with their performance of body modification, and how it did alter the way their bodies were read by figures of authority. Their bodies were scanned as deviant and were profiled as dangerous, for example, something as simple as “crossing the border’’ states J.S, was due to his extreme facial piercings and tattoos. With the concept of power in mind, I have found through various oral histories conducted there has been a shift in the way their bodies are read with time when speaking of their body modifications. Many body modifications performed back in the early 1990s from my oral histories were many of the people whose piercings and tattoos were read, as dangerous, different, and extreme. Their social body was challenging the mainstream ideologies through highly visible body piercing or other forms of body modification. Collective identity comes into the conversation here primarily due to shared space and time through the collective reflexive embodiment that made body modification and art a site for American bodies to use their body as a site for self-expression, adornment, and empowerment. When discussing how their bodies are read currently in the year of 2018, it is not that big of an issue, rather a common thing now to have a facial piercing, or a sleeve tattoo some stated. It has become so prevalent now for
American bodies to have at least one of these forms of body modification in the U.S., to where one could suggest this form of self-embodiment could be its own social movement in a broader sense, due to the shared collective identity.
KINSHIP
Forms of kinship or bonds were and are created through the alteration of the body through the naturalization or the acceptance of body modifications for many communities in the
U.S., as an outlet for a stronger sense of belonging, and as a form of how one identifies. “Leather and SM communities had long seen body practices as a path to enlightenment and a transformation of the self, as tattoo historian and ethnographer Margo DeMello puts it; the 27 embrace of non-Western forms of body modification reflects an attempt to create a bodily event that is meaningful for the individual and community identity.46” Just as in social movements activists share a common interest for a general purpose, a struggle, the act of modifying one’s body, contributes to the community of bodies that are modified. Not all modifications are the same naturally; however, there are situations that community building is conducted within subcommunities, such as fraternities or biker communities, or a state institution such as prison, national armed forces, ie: the Marines, Coast Guard, etc.
Very commonly during the 1990s piercing as a whole became a form of beauty aesthetically for the American youth, such as piercings on the nose, eyebrows, tongues, belly buttons, or nipple piercings. One of my oral histories with Johnny Stanley shared how since he was eleven years old, “he felt compelled to have piercings on his body, and throughout his lifetime, he has continuously shifted his piercings or enlarged them consciously. It is has become his own journey of self-expression, agency, and ownership of his embodiment.47” J.S., managed a piercing and tattoo parlor for close to a decade, and has been out of the scene for the past five years, however, he mentioned ‘the old school’ approach to receiving body modifications, how one must have many forms of body modification in order to deserve the right to have public, visible ones. In essence, a rite of passage within specific communities, rituals of acceptance for a community, or an outlet for empowerment through reclaiming space within a community of that shares a collective identity.
Reclaiming the Body and Feminism
Throughout American history, many social movements were inspired by previous events and activism that created and promoted awareness, and the drive for change for American individuals and communities. Many would dare say the Civil Rights Era during the 1960s laid the ground for many different social activisms for the American population. Activism by women
46 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003. (Pg. 96). 47 Oral history was conducted on January 18, 2018, this participant did not want his name in the paper; this is a false name created to protect his privacy. 28 started making headlines during the late 19th century fighting for gender rights including the right to vote and property rights, referred to as the Women’s Right Movement, with the success of the passage of our Nineteenth Amendment for the right for American women to vote. The second wave of feminism came about during the late 1950s, and early 1960s expanding the fight for equality legally, reproductive rights, the workplace, the family, and one’s sexuality. Betty Friedan’s
Feminine Mystique (1963) received much a credit to the awareness and depression of many white, educated middle-class housewives who were experiencing “the problem that has no name,” this publication reached the mainstream media and became a top seller, contributing to the spontaneity and intensity of the second wave of women’s right as a social movement48. A common quote mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is associated with this social movement was “the personal is political,” or referred to as "the political is personal,” tying in both systematic and social inequalities and the nuclear network of the family. The collective social movements from the 1960s into the 1980s mobilized different communities with a different awareness of political injustice and social oppression.
My feminist approach stems from the concept of equal treatment and rights for all bodies regardless of one’s self-identified gender. The separation of bodies and humanness amazes me as a scholar and as a human being. Individualism, self-construction, counterpublic narratives, and self-expression are one of many beautiful factors we would consider freedom, and as a privilege in a democratic American culture. Forms of body art and body modification such as piercing and tattooing is a performance of self-ownership and embodiment, by challenging the established norm of how our bodies are preserved and presented daily.
Pitts-Taylor shares a personal narrative of Raelyn Gallina, a well-known body modifier who pierces, brands, and scarification, routinely treats each client experience as a spiritual act, to cleanse the body of its past, and create new space for the new body:
“I’ve pierced a lot of women who are getting that piercing (the clit- hood) specifically because they’re incest survivors, or they’ve been raped, or abused in some way, and they are wanting to reclaim their sexuality that’s been damaged. They want to reclaim something that’s
48 In addition to the energy of the second wave of women’s rights, there was also more tension within different marginalized minority feminist communities, many African American feminist felt men in their communities were in need of employment and were being systematically oppressed and held back. 29
been stolen from them in a really nasty way. They want to re-empower themselves and their sexuality and take that back.49”
Pitts Taylor explains, “for Gallina clitoris piercing signified (re) appropriation for many clients.”
Genital piercing for some bodies are viewed as a rite of passage through empowerment and reclaiming of one’s body from past experiences, as Raelyn points out, that has created a level of disconnect with one’s ownership of their bodies: “By the mid 1990s, this discourse of reclaiming the body from victimization was being widely reported in accounts of women's body modification.
(2003)50” This form of body modification has become an outlet for individuals to reclaim space and their embodiment caused by a form of trauma, thus, also the development of a subcommunity within the subculture of body modification, a sort of healing is allowed for people individually and socially collectively. The consciousness of wanting to re-own, recreate, and transform one’s body, I argue is an act of queering the body, the act of disassociation of specific temporality, the act of owning new space, and creating a new narrative for one’s individualism and self-expression. Could this not be read as another site of feminism for women?
Many women, who found empowerment through different styles of body modifications, especially in their genital regions, expressed a form of reclaiming the body as a form of feminism.
The social construction of the female body is not only a site for reproduction and control, but it is also a site of objectification of one's personhood, especially for the male gaze one personal narrative shares. This creates a space for our bodies to be vulnerable as victims and a lesser form of humanness. In Pitts-Taylor’s (2003) research she shared an interview: “In Body Play and
Modern Primitives Quarterly, Becky’s description is accompanied by photos that display long, highly keloid scars in the shape of half-moons. The half-moons encircle the lower end of each breast, echoing their contours. She writes:
In 1994, I made the decision to reclaim my body for myself. For a long time, I had felt as though my sexuality were not my own.... I had many bad sexual experiences as a child. Now as an adult, having been so used to protecting myself, becoming emotionally and physically withdrawn, I found that I was unable to physically and spiritually connect myself to my adult sexuality. I began with the relatively small step of having my clit-hood
49 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003. Pg. 64). so Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.57). 30
pierced. It was the most direct way I could think of to say to myself. This space is mine. (1997; 2003)51”
This quote shared was pulled from Pitts-Taylor’s (2003) research that exposes Becky’s narrative reflecting her personal empowerment, disidentification, ownership, and a rite of passage to a new path of her own self-healing through genital piercing. This decision Becky made to modify her body through piercing, scarification, and tattooing, not only queered it, but it also queered the space and time she was occupying. This process provided a site for Becky to let go of her past violating experiences and redefine her own reflexive embodiment on her own terms and translation. “Becky, who wanted to visually connect her genitals to her heart, through piercing and scarring as a way to reclaim her body, as a way of healing by rewriting a new identity from being a victim in her past body.52” Pitts-Taylor is sharing with her readers how the woman body is a site of “negotiation between the power and the powerless, (2003)53” and “argues that women are not choosing whether or not to be modified and marked, but are negotiating how and in what way and by whom and to what effect. (2003)54” One woman’s oral history I conducted expressed that her nipple piercings came out of the private desire to be rebellious, and also different from the women in her own suburban environment, in addition to shifting her own cultural identity of being more modern in her Latin traditional family55. Body modification as a movement has become a resource for individual bodies to explore and reclaim self-expression and identifications. Self-expression and agency is a site of empowerment for modified bodies. These shared narratives of different approaches to retrieving one’s body are common acts of encounters that are shared within multiple subcommunities. How have these self-identified women’s stories (of their counterpublics) of body ownership through their body modification, encouraged and fueled, other social movements of the awareness of the vulnerability of female bodies?
51 Fakir Musafar, “Becky’s Breast Cuttings,” Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly Vol. 4, no. 3 (1997), 26-27. Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. (Pg.63-64). 52 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.64). 53 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003. (Pg.80).
54 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2003.(Pg.76). 55 Interview conducted on January 18, 2018 with Katrina Villafuerte. 31
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have questioned how are we able to separate the personal from the political when it comes to our body? I explore how our bodies do carry a political significance individually and collectively, which is consistently in a struggle with power relations trying to regulate the decorated body. Piercing as a body modifier has historically emulated one’s representation, culturally, socially, or religiously. I argue that this form of body art and
modification, piercing, is commonly shared through a variety of subcommunities, and contributes to the notion of body art and modification as a collective identity in the United States since the
1990s. I expanded this argument by the performance of piercing and modifying one’s body as a form of queering one's body, through time, space of one's reflexive embodiment. I have discussed some subcommunities within the American culture and social movements that have contributed to the performance of modifying one's body as a self-constructed image of oneself. I have provided a historical background from the 1950s that contributed to the development of other forms of activism, resistance, and the desire to own one's body, and agency out of defiance for some, and out of compulsion for others.
Oral histories I would like to conclude this chapter were shared by Johnny Stanley and
Ariellah Aflalo; Johnny Stanley stated: “Early on in my childhood, being a child raised in the
1980s, becoming a teenager during the early 1990s, pop culture did play a key factor. The media
played an influential factor of how my self-perception was developed during that time.56” Ariellah stated at the age of seventeen: “I wanted my tattoo to reflect the feeling of adornment I felt inside to reflect, and wanted to express it. I had my friend draw it. It beautified my body.57” This tattoo
Ariellah spoke of is a blend of skulls with a cross bone in the background, the skull is cracked with sunflowers coming out of it, the placement of this tattoo is on her left thigh; she views only beauty coming out of it through the flowers. Johnny and Ariellah both expressed a form of adornment
56 Oral history was conducted on January 18, 2018, this participant did not want his name in the paper; this is a false name created to protect his privacy. 57 Oral history was conducted with Ariellah Aflalo on March 20, 2018. 32 they self-perceived for their own body at an early age. Their body is and has been used as a vessel for their embodiment as a site for their representation and identification. Forms of claiming their body was the physical act of altering and enhancing their body, through forms of piercing or tattooing themselves. Different kinds of piercing within subcultures communities since the 1970s have reimagined our perception of our body as a canvas and how we identify or express our bodily desires through body modification and art. I argue through the performance of queering one's body through body modification one is challenging established categories, and making new space for their bodies, and self- identification through self-expression. It is through collective counterpublics and identities: body art and modification I dare suggest has become its own social movement conjointly within subcommunities and cultures since the 1990s in the U.S. It was the communal awareness to alter one's body mentally, physically, and eventually for a more profound personal meaning and attachment of their embodiment. Identification cannot be viewed solely through one lens, we must conjointly think of one’s identification through their embodiment, the space they occupy, and their lived experiences through time that have co-created their identification. 33
Tattooing
In this chapter, I would like to explore further the role of one’s embodiment and the ability to queer the body, through body art and modification, such as tattooing. How has tattooing as a form of body modification contributed to the creation of imagined alliances for different kinds of collective identity? How have they helped to redefine communities and self- identities with the social influences of past social activism in the U.S.? How have past historical events within the
American culture contributed to different types of femininities and masculinities, and different forms of self-expression through body modification and art?
This imagined alliances among different people have contributed to subcultures that share empowerment of their body art and modifications. One subculture I would like to share is the community of the SuicideGirls. Their very name is associated with “women who choose to
look different through the act of having tattoos on their bodies to challenge mainstream beauty in culture, an act of ‘social suicide,’ by being different they come together.58” It is through time, and the practice of tattooing as a body modification and art, which created space for different
subcultures to be established as communities of self-expression, and empowerment:
“SuicideGirls is a contemporary lifestyle brand, combining the DIY attitude of underground culture with a vibrant, sex positive community of women (and men).59” Of all the beautiful photos and
shared testimonials, a personal quote shared by a woman Silencia in their book published in
2012, SuicideGirls, hard girls, soft light. Silencia’s entire back is filled with the Virgin Mary with a
beard, holding a baby with the sun reflection over her back, in the background, there is a circus
behind the sun, above the sun, there are the yin and the yang of two skeletons wearing a tuxedo.
Silencia’s states: "I grew up idolizing the riot grrrl scene and held many third-wave feminist ideals.
When I stumbled across SuicideGirls, I thought, “Yes! Finally, a community that encompasses my
58 < https://www.suicideairls.com/ioin/> 59 The Founder and Photographer Missy Suicide started SuicideGirls in the summer of 2001 in Portland, OR. She now lives in Los Angeles and the site that started as an art project has grown into an internationally phenomenon. Insert pulled from their book published in 2012. SuicideGirls, hard girls, soft light. Ammo Books, www.suicideairls.com 34
beliefs- celebrating female sexuality and form (of all shapes, color, and background) in a positive
light!” I found SuicideGirls to be bold, sexy, smart, fun and completely empowering. Naturally, I wanted to be a part of this movement, and I have loved every minute of it since. (Plus, it also
makes for cool stories to share with grandkids when you’re older).60” I introduced this subcommunity and culture of the SuicideGirls into this conversation because it is a safe environment for women and men who want to look different through their body modification and art. Throughout this chapter I would like to explore the influence of different time periods of social activism in the U.S. since the 1950s, which has influenced a collective identity among different people that have tattoos. I argue that one is capable of queering their body through body modification and art, through one’s reflexive embodiment.
As a reminder for the reader when I use the term embodiment, I am collectively including the individual and the social body of one's self-embodiment. It is shared spaces throughout time and historical shifts, which have collectively altered self-awareness, and our self-embodiment, of the body being both a subject and an object. When I speak of one's embodiment, I am attempting to make an intervention of the body occupying both the public and the private self, through
individualism and social collectivity. More specifically I would like to build on the term reflexive embodiment61 used by Nick Crossley’s, he situates the body as both an object and subject simultaneously, explaining how the body is capable of possessing a temporal spilt of it as a subject and an object, thus capable of being reflexive. Gabriel Marcel’s (1991) perspective earlier on stated: “our embodiment is central here both because it is the very substance of who we are, and must necessarily be molded to fit our identity choices. (Marcel; Crossley; 2006)62” Both scholars are unpacking “how the body is capable of ‘having’ and ‘being’.63" My usage of the term embodiment within my argument is to keep the body in mind, not only as a public and private vessel, however, as an object and subject that is the very backbone of our reflexive self-
identification, expression, and bodily awareness.
60 Quote from Silencia, city of origin: Portland, year of birth: 1983, since: 2007. 61 Crossley, Nick. Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. Open University Press, 2006. 62 Crossley, Nick. 2006.(Pg. 18). « Crossley, Nick. 2006.(Pg.2). 35
To queer64 one’s body through body art and modification brings into the conversation not only the temporality of the past and current altered body (post body modification as tattooing), yet brings the body into a transformative stage, of a new or updated personal narrative of self- expression or kinship. My goal in this chapter is to expand my argument that since the 1990s in the United States, body modification and art, has become its own collective identity within different subcultures and communities. Body art and modifications such as forms of tattooing have denaturalized established categories of the body’s limitations and possibilities for self- identification and self-expression. Deciding to alter one’s body through body art aesthetically manifests self-expression and self-representation. Reasons behind this consent for body modification could be culturally associated, a reflection of stature, political significance, spiritually, or even emotionally tied to a loved one. Could the diversity of the American culture be a factor that contributes to the creation of multiple narratives, identities, and struggles, one must experience on a daily level within their own reflexive embodiment?
The Collective Identity of the Historical Tattooed Body
The longevity of the practice of tattooing goes back centuries, associated with multiple cultures and communities; this practice of body modification and art varies through time and space:
“As most tattoos in the U.S. were done by Polynesian and Japanese amateurs, tattoo artists were in great demand in port cities all over the world, especially by European and American sailors. The first recorded professional tattoo artist in the United States was a German immigrant, Martin Hildebrandt. He opened a shop in New York City in 1846 and quickly became popular during the American Civil War among soldiers and sailors of both Union and Confederate militaries.65”
64 When I use the term queer in this context, I am using it referring this term as an action of challenging the established norm of how bodies are altered through the act of modifying their physical appearance or decorated through body art, such as tattooing, scarification, or piercing. Challenging the conformity of given gender roles in the American culture. «
The temporality of these transitions within American communities has contributed to the growth of imagined alliances and kinship within different subcultures and individual bodies. It is through time the common practice of body modification and art that has slowly shifted into the mainstream
American culture, by bodies of influence, that interweaved themselves into the movement of having a tattoo as a form of self-expression, and a performance of self-agency according to
Robert Brain (1979): “With time marginalized communities, such as ex-convicts, fishermen, or the lower class, have been associated with this act of defiance against authority, currently the act of tattooing one's body has become it own social movement as a form of self-expression and self ownership of their bodily embodiment.66” Through time and acceptance, tattooing as a practice became its own economy and its accessibility expanded to include American youth, Dale Durfee
(2002) writes: “Skilled tattoo artist found themselves travelling around the Pacific, where people had long worn extensive tattoos, they brought back to the States all kinds of ideas garnered from places such as Japan, Polynesia, and New Zealand. Designs started down a very different path because the new emphasis was on creating tattoos that worked in harmony with the three- dimensional form of the human body.67” An oral history with Jason Richter shared: “I was hesitant at first to want a tattoo, when my Polynesian friends who I play rugby offered me to get one with them, but the experience shifted my whole outlook about getting the tattoo. When we flew to New
Zealand, I explained to the artist what I wanted it to reflect: respect, honor, and truth, and requested for it not to go past my elbow. They stopped me and said, “Bro, you just tell us what you want, but you do not design it, we determine how big it is and how it looks.” Richter, then stated: “I realized then, that it was not just about me, but a ritual, and tradition, and brotherhood, I was being welcomed into. I felt honored. The process took two in half days.68” His tattoo covers his entire left arm and bleeds into his upper back. Sharing this personal experience was a site for not only self-expression and cultural appropriation; Jordan’s individualism was deepened physically and socially, through this form of body modification and a shared collective identity and self-fashioning._One’s individualism may be displayed through tattooing yet still tied to a collective
66 Brain,Robert. 1979.(Pg. 162). 67 Durfee, Dale. 2000.(Pg.8). 68 Oral history was conducted with Jordan Richter on March 17, 2018. 37 social subculture. When one shares this experience of getting a tattoo, they also become a part of another community collectively that believes in the concept of body art and modification. This collective identity was shared through the act of altering their body, self-fashioning, and kinship.
Tattooing as a body modification and body art challenges established categories of normativity and conformity and pushes the notion of how one’s body should be presented and treated: “Contemporary theory and research on embodying gender echo Beauvoir's (1961) classic notion that the body is a situation. Beauvoir's position is that subjectivity is always embodied, the body is always part of one's lived experience, and personal experience is shaped not only by biographical, historical, cultural, and interactional contexts but also by how one uses his or her freedom or agency.69” Reflexive embodiment considers the subjectivity of the body, and the body being as an object, thus allowing more agency for one’s personal lived experiences socially and culturally to become contributing factors of one’s individualism. Tattooing is a way that one can express their identity through their bodies not only visually, but also a method to claim ownership over their bodies both privately and publicly by altering them. Is this performance of tattooing one’s body, and altering its own form, a form of resistance and empowerment simultaneously? Could this not be read as a collective identity for different people to claim more autonomy over their bodies?
The accepted western narrative of foreign cultures being described to the population of the West concerning the performance of altering one’s body through cultural performance or stature, has been commonly read as a form of inferior knowledge and conduct: “Forms of body art, are digested always within a binary of “primitive and the civilized,” modern world verses and old world, our daubing and mutilations ‘natural’ and their ‘unnatural’.70” It was through the lack of knowledge, and the inability to communicate with non-western cultures, that caused this misunderstanding of their cultural significance and way of living, that created this separation of common values, in addition to the role of colonialism over indigenous cultures: “Evidence suggests that people all over the world have been tattooing their bodies for thousands of years,
69 Schrock, Douglas, et al. “Transsexuals’ Embodiment of Womanhood.” Gender & Amp; Society, Volume 19, no. 3, 2005, pp. 317-335. (Pg.318). 70 Brain, Robert. 1979. (Pg.9). 38 often as a way of showing their social status. History tells us that, in reality, tattoos have little to do with barbarism and are in fact the result of highly developed cultures.71” Cultural traditions and rites of passages have varied throughout the globe: “In many parts of the world, but particularly in
Melanesia and Africa, the tattooing of nubile girls is not a matter of pure aesthetics but a recognition of their future biological role. At the menarche, a girl becomes a woman who can now marry and have children, and frequently it is the critical parts of her anatomy-breasts and belly- which are decorated.72” What are the important rituals, and traditions that have been lost through time? “The Neolithic ‘Iceman’ found preserved in ice in the Italian Alps during the 1990s had tattoos on his back and legs. The Maori people have developed immensely intricate facial patterns that tell of the bearer’s ancestry, life, and personality. Bedouin women have long worn facial tattoos to ward off evil.73” How can we connect this longevity of the historical practices of body modification such as tattooing, as a form of self-expression and identification within different cultures and communities to its contemporary practice in the U.S.? What are the social movements that contributed to the shifts in the perception of one’s embodiment in the U.S, since the 1990s that contributed to this collective identity?
The Evolution of Femininities and Masculinities since the 1950s in the U.S.
The feminist perspective I would like to approach and expand upon will circulate around the complexities of different levels of femininities and how body modification and art play a role in these body hierarchies. How have historical, social movements played a part concerning the influence of different forms of femininities and masculinities, and how has it contributed to different forms of collective identities? I would like to expand my argument from this concept introduced by Samantha Holland in her Alternative Femininities (2004): “The difficulties lie primarily in the fact that the term ‘femininity’ is a concept which refers to a set of gendered behaviors and practices, and yet which is fluid and not fixed, and can mean as many different
71 Durfee, Dale. Tattoo. 1st St. Martin's ed., St. Martin's Griffin, 2000. (Pg. 7). ” Brain, Robert, 1979.(Pg. 50). 73 Durfee, Dale. 2000.(Pg.7). 39 things as there are women (just as there are as many ‘masculinities’ as there are men.) As Judith
Butler argues, it is ‘a stylized repetition of acts’ and is fragile, shifting, contextual and never complete (1990; 2004).74” Holland questions what is the role of cultural conformity? Many theorists have debated the complexity of the meaning of femininity, and have questioned why it is addressed as singular? I find that honoring a singular description of ‘femininity,’ only reproduces a singular form of how a woman should present and behave with her body, thus reproducing not only a sexed body but also not allowing other types of individualism and self-agency for women to exist. What are the contradictions between conformity and resistance through different forms of femininity when it comes to body modification and art? I question this because I have noticed through the wide range of my demographic of oral histories conducted, all people that participated expressed their femininity and masculinity very differently, yet all shared a collective identity of why they wanted to tattoo as their body modification.
Once one is capable of acknowledging the existence of multiple types of femininity and masculinity, space is then provided for different forms of bodily narratives to be shared and expressed through body modification and art: “It seems that the recent Western movement for body decoration really started life in California during the 1950s and 1960s.75” Diversity and awareness of different cultural upbringings continuously influence dominant U.S. culture, when it comes to the shaping of the female woman's bodily norms. A woman from a large urban area, for example, might be exposed to a broader range of gendered self-expressions than a woman from a homogenous rural area76. How are these hierarchies of femininity and masculinities produced, or is this another form of simply policing gender bodily behavior, when it comes to self- expression? Ariellah shared when she received her sleeve tattoo in 1994 or 1995. There were not a lot of women that had visible tattoos. It wasn’t common. For her, this form of modification only enhanced her own adornment and beautification within her embodiment and self-expression.
74 Holland, Samantha. Alternative Femininities: Body, Age, and Identity. New York, Berg, 2004. (Pgs.8-9). “Ideas of femininity equates with young, white, slim, heterosexual, able-bodied women have been refuted by a number of theorists who point out that femininity should never be a singular descriptive term, but instead should always be femininities (Connell, 1987; Glover and Kaplan, 2000; 4) and genders (Bryson, 1999; 50).” Durfee, Dale. 2000. (Pg.8). 76 Hanssmann, Christopher. Suggested this approach for this sentence. Thank you! February 22, 2018. 40
Why was it considered more rebellious for a woman to have her arm tattooed with a sleeve of designs much more in the 1990s, in comparison to the current time frame in 2018? If anything with time, body modification as a collective identity has I dare say altered our view and concept of beauty and have accepted different forms of femininity and masculinities.
Different levels of body modifications and art are reflective of varying levels of feminine self-expression, this could be paired with different types of tattoos and their placement, some are self-expressive privately and absent to the public eye, and others are intentionally visible to show one’s body art and modifications as forms of self-expression. An oral history with Colleen S. stated: “I have a couple of tattoos visible intentionally, most of those were my earlier ones, because I wanted them to be public, however, I do have two that are very intimate in meaning, so only certain folks have seen them or if I decide to allow them to.77” Where does the role of visibility and intimacy come into play through body modification and art in our reflexive embodiment78? Different social movements throughout U.S. history since the 1950s have overlapped different forms of activism and awareness of the systematic oppression that women, people of color, and other marginalized communities experience by different types of control over their bodies and their agency as humans. It was through various social movements that people have strengthened real ownership, an agency for self-expression, self-individualism, and for social awareness of fighting for space to exist in their body.
During the transitional years of the 1950s into the 1960s in the U.S. experienced a lot of change demand by the American culture. Equal rights and the visibility of social injustices were on the rise, the American population needed and fought for change over the regulation of their bodies. Some voices were heard through different social movements such as the feminist movement during the 1960s, yet some women disidentified with this movement because other marginalized women’s voices focused on oppressions that were not seen or heard within the feminist social movement. Women of color have acknowledged that feminism during this time period was dominated by voices of middle-aged, white, educated women fighting for gender equality. According to Nikki Sullivan in her book A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (2003):
77 Oral history conducted with Colleen Sanders on February 28, 2018. 78 My colleague Amanda Mannshahia provided insight. February 15, 2018. 41
“Women of colour, for example, expressed their distrust of the white feminist focus on gender, claiming that politically and socially they had as much, if not more, in common with (the struggles of) men of colour than with white women, who they noted, continued in some respects at least-
reap the benefits of colonisation.(2003; 37-38)79” A great example of two different forms of activism that affected women and the development of their femininity during this period were two communities of women, one was the activist feminists, and the others were women of color who
named a different form of feminist activism, womanism.
This was the time period of social activism where Black and Latina feminism rose in visibility within the mainstream media, and focused on gender compromise, in addition to women’s rights. To quote the American novelist and activist that coined womanism, Alice Walker
stated: “Womanism is to feminism, as purple is to lavender.(1983)80” This quote became
mainstream in her book In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: Womanist Prose, (1983) a decade
after the feminist movement was up and going, yet played a very instrumental role over different women communities, that related to the concept of womanism over feminism: “Womanism is a
social framework that separates itself from feminism, centers black women, celebrates womanhood and aims at achieving and maintaining an inclusive culture in all societies. Black feminism is addressing the tridimensional oppression of classism, sexism, and racism.81” Different forms of femininity and masculinity have been the byproduct of different types of systems of
oppression against them, and activism throughout the decades in the U.S. has brought the
personal into the political realm and contributed to one’s self-individualism and self-expression
over their embodiment and space their bodies occupy.
As mentioned in my chapter one, ‘the personal is political’ when it comes to our reflexive
embodiment, and the transgressions done to it, through state regulation and control. I state this to
remind the reader of how much social change, social awareness, and cultural conflict that
occurred among many different communities during the late 1960s going into the 1970s. The U.S.
government was being nationally challenged for multiple reasons, tension was rising, and people
79 Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York University Press, 2003. (Pg.37-38). 80 Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. 1983. 81< http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-feminism-and-womanism/> 42 wanted to their voices and concerns to be heard. An article in the Special TIME Edition on 1968,
The Year that Shaped a Generation stated:
“What forces turned America’s middle-class kids into fledgling revolutionaries during the late 1960’s? When one considers this time era of the massive social movements for this generation’s political awareness, a lot of individualism of morals, values, and self- identification were being molded for a college student graduating college in 1968. They were high school seniors when John F. Kennedy, a politician who had gained their trust and inspired their dreams, was shot to death in Dallas; they experienced the assassination of Martin Luther King, who influenced their idealism and protest desire for a humanity approach for peace for all bodies, to the torment of the war in Vietnam, and the reality of one being drafted into the war.82’’
The historical, social movements in America during the twentieth century affected different social groups and individuals through time, space, action, and the awareness of the political significance of where their body was positioned within the American population. It was through this political awareness, which made a lot of personal decisions political, over their own bodily expressions and self-representation as citizens of the nation.
I bring these different social movements into the conversation to remind us of the political chaos that was occurring the U.S. culture during this time period, and how our bodies did play a role with these activists’ movements. Children born in the late 1970s and 1980s were raised with the awareness of America's social injustices exposed during the 1960s and 1970s, and were descendants of the older generations who were the activists fighting for equality in rights through protesting, as active soldiers in previous wars, all were fighting for the right to live, to exist, to have a voice in their nation’s body, to have the power over their own body as a human for the future generations. These historical shifts contributed to different symbols, ideologies, and slogans of personal beliefs and self-expression of individualism, yet collectively within subcultural and communities. Body modification and art is an individual practice usually; however, there are acts shared by groups of people together who have received tattoos, to preserve the moment of bonding and kinship, as mentioned earlier with Jordan’s oral history. Thus this individual act of
82 Special TIME Edition on 1968, The Year that Shaped a Generation. Schupf, Margot. May: Dissent. Skirmishes on the Quadrangle. Student rebels took charge at Columbia University, and other Universities felt the heat. (Pg.42). 43 tattooing is also a collective mental performance especially if one considers the number of feminist forms of tattoos that have been placed on different bodies. I would like to quote a
mainstream celebrity, Lena Dunham, from a YouTube video explaining one of her tattoo’s placed
near her vagina, below her waist to the right of a blooming rose, she exposed publicly on
Snapchat her decision to have this tattoo, stating: “ I think it gives me a sense of control and
ownership of my body, that is often beyond my control.83” Tattoos for female empowerment have
also been associated with political slogans throughout different social movements, such as “my
body is not your business,” “my body my right,” “girl power,” and so on.
Tattooing as a form of bodily expression has contributed to imagined alliances within different subcultures and communities, thus contributing to an overall collective identity. Among all oral histories conducted by myself for this project, regardless of age, all participants have shared that they have experienced and felt an unspoken kinship with other people that have visible modifications and that share the same space before. Johnny S. states: “body modification I feel is a human icebreaker, because of the experience of actually modifying your body, it can be
an open dialogue, especially now because of its accessibility and education.84” Common tattoos’
shared among different subcultures among men such as, “money over bitches,” slogan correlates to their bond to the hip-hop community and the torn divide between success and getting paid or
getting laid85. This slogan reflects a certain type of lifestyle and personal belief within men during the late 1990s in San Francisco86. Ron Deniro, another participant in my oral histories, stated:
“Some of my tattoos are shared by others in regards to what they mean, but a lot of them are
personalized with a different experience.87”
Another common shared tattoo is the shape of the pineapple I have discovered through
conversation and research that reflects hospitality, friendship, a symbol of social, warmth, and
83 August 2017, shared by Lena Dunham on Snapchat, this citing is from a YouTube video named: Lena Dunham Shows off two HUGE New Tattoos, Explains Why! 84 Oral history was conducted on January 18, 2018, this participant did not want his name in the paper; this is a false name created to protect his privacy. 85
Counterpublics and the Gaze
What are the counterpublic narratives that are produced through the private and public self when it comes to the act of queering one’s body through body modification and art? Margot
Mifflin states in her Bodies of Subversion (1997) book: “Tattooing was a dramatic inversion of such 19th-century presumptions. It not only called attention to the flesh, which had become increasingly exposed through rising hemlines, plunging necklines, and sleeveless dresses of the era but also flouted conventions of feminine conformity and understatement at a time when women were becoming more outspoken and enjoying greater cultural visibility; they were going to college and joining the rising industrial workforce; they had earned the vote and were even entering public office. As a statement of their tastes and individuality, tattooing was a bold intrusion into the masculine realm. (1997)90” How are different femininities placed within the stratification of body hierarchies when their bodies are visibly filled with tattoos? How does the social construction of femininity influence other women to modify their bodies as a performance of
88 < https://www.reference.com/world-view/pineapple-svmbolize-spirituallv-8acaa4e923b28cf5> "C rossley, (Durkheim 1956a: 265) 2006.(Pg.12). 90 Mifflin, Margot. Bodies of Subversion: a Secret History of Women and Tattoo. 1997. (Pg.34). 45 self-expression? And if this act is performed how does this alter their self-perception of empowerment or adornment over their embodiment?
Are the body hierarchies that are being reproduced due to the male cosmetic gaze of beauty for the female body? Has this physical beauty shifted for the younger generations of the
U.S. culture, of what is considered beautiful? If so, how does this ‘heterosexual male gaze’ influence the reproduction of body hierarchies within body modification and art? According to
Anthropologist Joy Ralph: “While men are judged negatively for tattoos, society is more accepting of tattoos on men than on women. Tattoos are seen as an expression of male gender; women who get a tattoo are considered to be violating gender rules and are therefore ‘a threat to social order. (2007)91’ Organizations such as the SuicideGirls encourages, shows and uses body modification as a means to resist mainstream beauty norms, thus queer the body. The body, through tattooing, becomes a site and space where ‘the personal is political,’ or perhaps ‘the political is the personal’?
The individual struggles experienced by some of these women, could be traced to the tridimensional oppressions connected to womanism such as classism, sexism, or racism, in addition to feeling associated to feminism? There are many new narratives of different types of femininity that have been self-constructed to reflect one’s individualism publicly and privately of their embodiment since the 1950s. Women in these different subcultures challenge their placement of femininity, with full tattoo sleeves, bodysuits, or piercings that are in essence resisting specific female roles and norms of “wholesome femininity.” At the same time pulling certain images of their accessories that reflect their individualism, such as the pin-up image from the 1950s.
The temporality of one’s body continuously goes through different transitions of their bodily awareness, influenced by multiple factors such as their cultural upbringing, kinship, or through the mainstream media. Personal identification and association are usually the underlining of one’s body modification of one’s own attachment to their body art. An oral history conducted
91 "Introduction to Body Piercing and Tattoos: At Issue." Body Piercing and Tattoos, edited by Sharon Bahadosingh, Greenhaven Press, 2007. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://jpllnet.sfsu.edu/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010480101/OVIC?u=sfsu_main&xid= 5814640d. Accessed 19 Dec. 2017. 46 with Ron Dinero on January 12, 2018, stated the very first tattoo he wanted was his mother’s name, Teresa, which is located on his back in big bold letters: “Primarily because I only felt she was the only person in my entire family that actually saw me, knew me, and my intentions in life.”
He shared he had his father and Tia's (aunts) in his life all throughout his childhood, but he never felt as supported, loved, and accepted as he did from his mother. Ron currently has over 90 tattoos all over his body, from his head all the way to his knees. He still considers his first tattoo his masterpiece on his body, a reflection of his backbone in his life. So not only is Ron’s performance of body modification and art a form of self-representation, his tattoos are a way for him to be reminded of where he came from, and where he has been in life. Every tattoo he has placed on his body has a story behind it, and who gave him the tattoo. Robert Brian (1979) writes:
“In modern society, particularly in the United States, physical differences are almost an insult to the ideals of community conformity. The tattooing of gangs and groups is considered antisocial since it symbolizes personal allegiances to ideals outside the ideals of mass democratic society.
(1979; 162)92” A handful of Ron’s tattoos were associated with groups of kids he grew up with on the streets of San Francisco, CA and wanted these tattoos to reflect his own form of physical expression within his community.
Like all social movements, one must consider the tensions involved and the roles of resistance and rebellion, what space and narratives are represented? There has been a shift of this social awareness of individual self-expression within this performative act of body modifying such as tattooing within the U.S. culture. Dale Durfee states:
“Times really have changed in the West as far as the creative content of tattoos goes. At the turn of the twentieth century, tattooists used sheets of standardized designs to save time and money. At the turn of the twenty-first century, people feel free to think about what expresses their personality and beliefs. They may use their own sketches and ideas and work with the tattoo artist to produce something that makes just the right kind of personal statement. (2000)93”
Generations after the mid-1990s were able to commodify their individualism now and customize their own tattoos, if they wanted, and source the body modifiers whose work they admire.
92 Brain, Robert. The Decorated Body. 1st U.S. ed., New York, Harper &Amp; Row, 1979. (Pg. 162). 93 Durfee, Dale. 2000.(Pg. 9). 47
Simultaneously there is another shift of younger generations subconsciously wanting a tattoo merely to have one, for its beauty, reflecting their act of self-desire not associated with resistance or forms of rebellion. Another oral history conducted with Johnny Stanley on January
18, 2018, stated his first body modifications such as piercing, branding, and tattooing, were not acts of resistance, but instead self-awareness and a form of him “re-centering his self perception.94” Stanley worked in the body-modifying scene for a handful of years and associates himself with the second generation of body modifiers that were taught by the “old school” generation. He shared he always imagined his body looking different intentionally since his early teenage years, and never fully felt like he was in his body until he altered certain aspects of his body. Johnny Stanley’s first physical body modification was at the age of fourteen; he currently has four visible facial piercings, a branding across his chest, and 15 tattoos. During his interview he shared through time since his first body modification his body has been read differently, in a sense, that back in the 1990s it was more drastic, now it has become mainstream, to where reactions are not as dramatic.
By the 1990s, the next generation had the accessibility of this performance of altering their body to their own will. New movements such as the Modern Primitives or Cyberpunk were introducing new paths and significance of one’s physical expression and ownership. The literature and social movement of Modern Primitives was a magazine label that followed interviews of body modifiers during the late 1980s, that shared the common interest of tattooing, all forms of piercing, branding/scarification. This literature provided space for the journalist to address the subjectivity and personal meanings of the body modifier choices in their physical performance
(this different form of collective identity). The movement of Cyberpunk “takes body modification into cyberspace, biomedicine, and high technology, framing the body as a limitless frontier for technological innovation. (Pitts-Taylor; 2003)95” The temporality of body art and modification in the U.S. culture has consistently shifted over different generations, however acceptance, kinship, resistance, self-expression all associated with one’s self-identification and association within
94 Oral history was conducted on January 18, 2018, this participant did not want his name in the paper; this is a false name created to protect his privacy. 95 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria, 2003.(Pg.13.). 48 subcommunities continues. According to Nicholas Thomas in Tattoo: Bodies, Art and Exchange in the Pacific and the West (2005): “Tattooing, as body inscription, is thus the embodiment and representation of identities and relationship resulting from the objectification of one’s own body, and others, in a shared time and space. (2005; 171 )96” Through the generations in the U.S. since the 1950s the practice of tattooing has developed a collective identity. According to The Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press. “In September 2006, the Pew Research Center conducted a telephone survey that found that 36% of Americans ages 18-25, 40% of those 26-
40 and 10% of those 41-64 had a tattoo: They concluded that Generation X and Generation Y are not afraid to express themselves through their appearance, and tattoos are the most popular form of self-expression.97” Robert Brain states:
“One of the most important impulses behind tattooing seems to be a search for identity in a precarious situation. (There is also a magical element: sailors may use Christian symbols for protection- cross tattooed on the back, for instance, magically alleviated the pain of flogging, in the United States, on the other hand, a pig tattooed on the left instep was an infallible charm against drowning.) Those in dangerous occupations, such as deep-sea fishermen, sailors, soldiers and criminals attempt to create a sense of identity by tattooing.(1979; 160)98"
Another oral history conducted by Alonzo Lopez on February 7, 2018, stated many of his tattoos were given to him while he was in prison and did reflect his bond to the gang Ochentas99 he was a part of during his youth and still into his adulthood. His tattoos also branded him of his positionality within the gang and cultural heritage with time. Like another oral history mentioned above by Ron, the beginning of his tattoo’s was commonly shared experiences with guys he grew up with in the neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles, Ca. When he was imprisoned, this form of body modification, tattooing became even more of a significant form of survival, self- expression, and resistance, due to the role of control exercised by the state regulation over his body. In the state institution such as prison, everything is monitored over their population, their
96 Thomas, Nicholas, et al. Tattoo: Bodies, Art and Exchange in the Pacific and the West. London, Reaktion Books, 2005. (Pg.171). 97 "A Portrait of "Generation Next'"'. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Retrieved 5 April 2012. https://en.wikipedia.orq/wiki/Tattoo#cite note-39: Generation X birth dates range from the early 1960s into the early 1980s; Generation Y (also referred to as Millennials) birth dates range from the early 1980s to the early 2000’s. 98 Brain, Robert. 1979.(Pg.160). 99 Ochentas is the name of a gang created in South Central LA, meaning 80th Street. This gang has traditionally been associated with the Mexican and Mexican American youth, created during the 1970s. 49 clothing, identifications, eating schedules, what one can read, or listen to. “The relation between culture and individuals is mediated by state policies that act upon bodies/subjectivities.100”
Tattooing becomes a form of self-identification, self-expression, and a signifier of one’s community for survival. The practice of tattooing in the prison system works differently for people who have been in prison and then are reintroduced back into society. Some of these tattoos are practices associated with survival and belonging, but then how are these bodies read when they are out of the prison institution? Many I dare say, depending on the placement are still read as deviant and as 'criminals,' how does this practice of body modification limit their reflexive embodiment after state institutions come into the conversation? How are these forms of masculinities placed within the hierarchies of people?
What is the role of kinship of cultural heritage, and tattooing as a practice individually and within a community? According to Robert Brain: “By transforming the natural body into a cultural body the individual subordinates himself to the common social values of his group. The body may even become a kind of model of society, which aesthetically communicates customs and role relationships from individual to individual. (1979)101” When one thinks of the late 1980s into the
1990s the influence of cultural revitalization within tattooing as a collective identity of self- expression, influenced many different types of bodies to desire exotic forms of tattoos that were non- American based, this created space for individuals to express their self-individualism and personal association to other cultural symbolism and ideologies.
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of this chapter, I have questioned how has past historical events within the U.S. culture contributed to different types of femininities and masculinities, and various forms of self-expression through body modification and art. I discuss the role of temporality and space through the performance of bodily modification, and how this collective identity among different
100 Miskolci, Richard. “Nikki Sullivan and Samantha Murray (Eds), Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies (Queer Interventions), Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; 249 Pp.: ISBN 9780754675303, US$114.95.” International Sociology, vol. 26, no. 5, 2011, pp. 649-652. (Pg.651). 101 Brain, Robert. 1979.(Pg. 15). 50 types of communities and bodies, have challenged the body’s limitations and possibilities of self- expression and self-individualism. I trace different forms of social activism that influenced and co produced different forms of femininities and masculinities. I question how have these various forms of social activism influenced self-identification, and the bodily awareness of their body as a site of political significance, and what imagined alliances were developed through these social movements with time within different sub-communities and cultures? How have different movements of feminism created imagined partnerships within different sub-communities, ideologies, and social beliefs within the mainstream U.S. culture? I explore the body’s limitations and possibilities of new forms of self-expression and modifications through a wide range of factors that shape one's lived experiences and how to challenge mainstream conformity of their physical space and reflexive embodiment. Different forms of kinship and imagined alliances have played a role in the production of shared values and beliefs of the practice of body modification and art. 51
CONCLUSION
In this thesis I have addressed different practices of body modification and art focusing on piercing and tattooing, and how the practice of body modification is capable of queering the body. I have argued that since the 1990s due to the influence of past social activism in the U.S. culture, body modification and art, has developed a collective identity of using one’s body as a site for self-expression, ownership, and reflexive embodiment. I have provided historical background for the altered body, both in piercing and tattooing, and how this collective practice could be suggested as a social movement in the broader sense through a collective identity.
I have used queer theory as my main analytical framework, through the usage of biopower, disidentification, and the furturity of one’s embodiment. I have conducted multiple oral history interviews in order to include personal narratives of the practice of body modification and art, in order to support my argument that one is capable of queering their body, through altering their body through modification and bodily art. My intention is to push queer theory further into the mainstream dialect, and use the term queering as a verb, that challenges normativity and the conformity of our embodiment.
I have addressed the humanness of the altered body, and how different bodies have been read historically due to their alteration and modification of their embodiment. I have tied in past and current social movements that have co-produced subcultures and communities, that have used body modification and art, as a common practice to reflect their self-ownership, agency, belonging, self-representation, and empowerment over their bodies, which could be understood as a political act for some. I have brought into conversation the role of power over our bodies, and how they have been systematically controlled and regulated, and how one is able to use their body as a vessel as a site of political significance.
I have discussed how the different forms of kinship and imagined alliances have been created through social activism, and the role of how body modification and art, has provided the body as a site for self-expression, ownership for self-recognition, and even forms of reclaiming one’s ownership of their past body, due to traumatic events of one’s lived experience. I have 52 pushed the notion of the term reflexive embodiment of the altered body, in order for us to perceive our body, not only subjectively but as an object concurrently, thus allowing our body to be reflexive of our embodiment.
I have started the dialogue of bringing past social activism in the U.S. since the 1950s into conversation as the byproducts of these collective identities, and how it shifted not only the political awareness and significance of our bodies, yet the social and collective awareness of the power our body carries of our self-identification. I have addressed generational transitions of social activism, and how it has contributed to different types of femininities and masculinities with time, and how body modification and art has played a role within one’s self-representation and communal kinship through the practice of altering their bodies.
How do body modifications and art play a role within the reproduction of body hierarchies when one brings the presence of technology into the conversation? I would like to continue my research on the body as a site for political significance and reflexive embodiment even further. I believe the body will always merge the private and public self through social settings and collective identity, and be always influenced by our lived experiences. One’s reflexive embodiment brings the body into conversation as an object concurrently as a subject, thus allowing the soul that inhabits the body agency to desire an ear lobe stretching, to a full arm sleeve, to breast implants. They all reflect personal levels of adornment, and self -representation of their personal identity. Why do we accept different forms of body modifications on different bodies? Why do we allow the notion of the social construction of gender, so much agency and power over the way we treat other human bodies? Why do we feel the need to continuously reproduce our binary system of two sexes, thus not allowing other genders to exist, or more importantly allow “ambiguous” bodies to live safely in their own bodies, within their own definition of how they identify?
In this paper I have circled around the concepts of one’s reflexive embodiment and how one’s body can be read individually and socially through a broader collective identity. My next step concerning this project will lead me into the area of somatechnics. According to Nikki
Sullivan (2012): The term somatechnics was coined by a handful of scholars leading with Susan 53
Stryker, Samantha Murry, Joseph Pugliese, and herself included during the years of 2009 into
2010: “The term somatechics we see as the inextricability of soma and techne, of bodily-being-in- the- world, and the dispositifs in and through which corporealities, identities and difference(s) are formed and transformed, come to matter. (2012)102” I am very interested to break down the power relations at play over our embodiment, technology, and the reproduction of body hierarchies.
What is the role of beautification and desire through body modification and art? How has the influence of overall body modifications alter the way of how we consider what forms of body modification as beautiful now, since the 1990s? Is our gaze for beauty still normalized and conditioned through a heterosexual lens? How will technology expand our understanding of the human body? When it comes to bodies that fall under the transgender or intersexed communities? What bodies lose power once we shift our concept of only having two genders in our world? What different forms of knowledge will be gained and produced? I would like to continue to unpack how the role of technology and the technological embodiment contribute not only to the reproduction of hierarchies of bodies, yet also contributes to the humanness of one’s embodiment. According to the Somatechnics Research Network:
“The term ‘somatechnics’ indicates an approach to corporeality which considers it as always already bound up with a variety of technologies, techniques and technics, thus enabling an examination of the lived experiences engendered within a given context, and the effects that technologies, technes and techniques have on embodiment, subjectivity and sociality.103”
How does this research apply a feminist queer phenomenological philosophy for the body, as
Susan Stryker and Nikki Sullivan (2012) question when one brings somatechnics into the conversation? Through somatechnics, I will further explore the relationship of body modifying to the queer body, and the relationship of the difference of the “natural” and the “artificial body,” post body transformation.
102 Sullivan, Nikki. "The Somatechnics of Perception and the Matter of the Non/Human: A Critical Response to the New Materialism.” European Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 2012, pp. 299-313. (Pg.302). i“3
The next step I feel I need to head into will be into the realm of somatechnics and bring the role of technology into our conversation and how technology has played a role in the normalization of heterosexuality and the role of body modifications onto different subcommunities.
According to Richard Miskolci: “the concept of somatechnics and the intervention of Queer
Theory makes the interventions of bringing the social body and the body of thyself (2011; 649-
651 )104“ into conversation. According to the blog for somatechnics:
“Genealogically, somatechnics is situated within critical and cultural theory. It takes as established a critique of the mind/body split, and its associated distinction between inside and outside, and self and world, and instead turns its attentions to the ways in which embodiment, the intervolvement of the world and the embodied subject, is shaped through the technologies, techniques and techniques of that world.105”
I want to bring into conversation the role of the embodied technological subject and its relationship with body modifications. When I am speaking of the contribution that technology plays within the realm of body modification, I am referring to the established binary system we currently understand of only acknowledging two sexes. It is through this taught concept and belief that we as humans, a community, a population do not allow space for other genders to exist, thus making an ambiguous body feel lost within their own embodiment, and consciousness. I will tie in somatechnics and explore how the queer body is read as a human, and especially the difference once one’s body is modified. What forms of surveillance is regulated over the control of one’s identity representation?
©
104 Miskolci, Richard. “Nikki Sullivan and Samantha Murray (Eds), Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies (Queer Interventions), Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; 249 Pp.: ISBN 9780754675303, US$114.95.” International Sociology, vol. 26, no. 5, 2011, pp. 649-652. (Pg.649-651).
105