IMPURE BODIES: BODY MODIFICATION WITHIN A SETTLER COLONIAL STATE

A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of As The Requirements for 36 The Degree Pott VOW'AS'T Master of Arts • J)4-% in Women’s and Gender Studies

by

Jessica Carrie DeTomasi

San Francisco, California

May 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Impure Bodies: Body Modification within a Settler Colonial

State by Jessica Carrie DeTomasi, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree:

Master of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University.

Nan Alamilla Boyd v Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies

Deborah Cohler Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies IMPURE BODIES: BODY MODIFICATION WITH A SETTLER COLONIAL STATE

Jessica Carrie DeTomasi San Francisco, California 2017

Within the United States, attitudes towards tattooing have always been intimately tied with perceptions of gender, race and class. While most historical and sociological texts acknowledge that modem tattoo culture in the West can be traced back to the onset of colonialism in the South Pacific in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few recognize colonialism as an ongoing process that continues to shape life on a global scale. In juxtaposing histories of tattooing in the United States with an intersectional feminist lens and the work of postcolonial theorists such as Ann Laura Stoler, bell hooks, and Scott Lauria Morgensen, the gendered and racialized underpinnings of the modem tattoo industry become more clear. In the contemporary moment, the practice of tattooing is being increasingly recruited into neoliberal modes of feminist activism and identity formation, often still relying on iterations of the colonial discourses that characterized tattooing in the seventeenth century. In tracing this non-linear history of tattooing in the West, the patterns of gendered and racialized disciplinary practices of settler colonialism become apparent, as well as the stakes for the of future feminist activism.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Date TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... v

Introduction...... 1

Ch. 1: Tattooing and the Construction of Race on the American Frontier...... 22

Ch. 2: Nationalism, Body Modification, and Modern Primitivism...... 50

Ch. 3: ‘May the Best Woman Win:’ Ink Master and Commodity Feminism in Neoliberal

Tim es...... 79

Bibliography 115 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Chris Lockhart, GRL PWR Tattoo, 2017...... 1

2. Nikki Lugo, Portrait o f Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2015...... 7

3. Sydney Parkinson, The Head o f a New Zealander, 1771...... 23

4. Stephen Langdon, Benita with Her Daughters Honey and Anahera, 2016...... 24

5. Lithographic Poster for Le Capitaine Costentenus, 1890...... 29

6. Olive Oatman with Tattoo, 1858...... 32

7. Cesare Lombroso, Italian Criminal Tattoos, 1876...... 37

8. Tattoo designs including Rose o f No M an’s Land and Pharaoh’s Horses, 1935...... 39

9. Samuel O’Reilly, Eagle and Shield, 1875-1905...... 40

10. Nora Hildebrandt, 1880s...... 41

11. Maude Wagner, 1911...... 43

12. Artoria Gibbons styled as a Flapper, 1920s...... 47

13. Jerry Collins, Traditional Flash Sheet with Suzy Wongs, 1965...... 51

14. Ruth Weyland, Hazel Mackly Tattooed for Dorothy Jean Ellis, 1933...... 53

15. Jerry Collins, Traditional Flash Sheet with Girl Head and Peacock, 1960s...... 55

16. Jerry Collins, Traditional Flash Sheet with Native Americans, 1960s...... 56

17. Jerry Collins, Pinup Flash Sheet...... 59

18. Jerry Collins, Hawaii Flash Sheet...... 61 19. Theodor Gallq, America, 1630...... 61

20. Holly Ellis, Flash Sheet with Archer and Big Cats, 2015...... 63

21. Fakir Musafar, Fakir as the Perfect Gentle man, 1959...... 68

22. Paul Gauguin, Spirit o f the Dead Watching, 1892...... 72

23. GRL PWR Tattoo...... 80

24. Safety Pin Tattoo...... 81

25. Ashley Love, No Means No, 2014...... 82

26. Mariano Vivanco, Kat Von A 2016...... 91

27. Jeremy Saffer, Wonderful Magical Witch Bitch Sisters, 2016...... 97

28. Mark Mann, Ryan Ashley Malarkey for Inked Magazine, 2017...... 104

29. Fuck the Patriarchy Dynamite Tattoo...... 110

30. Set Your Pussy Free Tattoo...... I ll

31. White Woman Wearing Headdress...... 112 1

Introduction

Fig. 1 GRL PWR, tattoo by Chris Lockhart, digital image via Buzzfeed.

Being a tattooed woman was not an inherently feminist act for me until I got my

fourth tattoo; a half sleeve portrait of Frida Kahlo covering almost the entire top half of

my left arm. The portrait was styled after the photograph of her taken for Vogue Paris,

showing Kahlo with a crown of flowers, surrounded by roses and framed by a banner that

reads “Lady Luck.” At twenty years old, I already had three small tattoos; a blue moon on

my right wrist, a small sacred heart, and script quoting from Sylvia Plath’s book of poetry

Ariel that reads “Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair.” Small, delicate, and easily

hidden, I had rarely received anything but compliments on my tattoos until I got my half

sleeve. Large, bold and bright, my Frida tattoo was a different matter. 2

Frida undoubtedly draws more admiration than anything else, often bringing

unexpected and joyful moments of recognition from others who know and love her. The

size and boldness of the tattoo, mainly due to its noticeability, draws a fair share of

criticism as well. Almost immediately after receiving the tattoo, I noticed that nearly all

the discouraging comments I encountered were not so much about the tattoo itself but

about my gender. Strangers ask me how I think I’ll look in a wedding dress. I once was

spanked by a man I barely knew while he whispered “Boys don’t marry girls with

tattoos” in my ear. I’ve been grabbed on the street by strange men asking to look at my

tattoos, an excuse to stare at my body at an uncomfortably close range.

It wasn’t until I became more noticeably tattooed that I began to see the

possibilities of tattooing as a form of feminist resistance. Solely from the gendered

comments I began receiving from friends, family, and strangers, I realized that becoming

heavily tattooed was transgressive in a particularly gendered way. Becoming a tattooed

woman, especially a heavily tattooed woman, speaks to a disregard for traditional

feminine respectability, and for some seems to foreclose upon the typical patriarchal and

heteronormative dreams a young American woman is generally expected to have.

This didn’t stop me from getting more tattoos, partially because getting Frida

inadvertently brought me deeper into my local tattoo community. I met my partner in the

shop where I had Frida tattooed, and we spent much of the first year of our relationship painting together after hours in the tattoo shop. Here I was introduced to and fell in love with traditional American flash, skimming through the dozens of books in the shop and 3 slowly building a mental list of everything I wanted. I continued getting tattooed by my partner’s brother (who did Frida), and after being together for about two years, my partner tattooed me for the first time; a medium-sized black and grey traditional style fortune teller, based off a Milton Zeis design from the 1930’s.

Since then I’ve continued to slowly build a collection of mostly traditional

American tattoos; some of them have meaning, some are purely aesthetic. Many of my earliest tattoos having more meaning than the later ones; when I was first getting tattooed

I was uncomfortable with the scrutiny and attention they brought and meaning provided a protective shield against criticism. Many of the meanings I ascribed to my early tattoos were intertwined with my bourgeoning, if rudimentary feminist sensibility. A sacred heart, gotten with my mother, my first feminist role model. A quote to commemorate my favorite high school author; a portrait of my favorite artist.

Some of my tattoos are ironically feminist, like the burning bra on my right arm, an anniversary gift from my partner done at our favorite shop in San Francisco. My most obviously feminist tattoo is on the left side of my ribs, playful script that reads “feminist killjoy.” Done as a sort of talisman or good luck charm after submitting my application to the graduate division of San Francisco State University’s Women’s and Gender Studies department, I now regret choosing to place the tattoo in a spot that is rarely visible. When

I got it, placing it on my ribs was a conscious decision; still uncomfortable in being vocal about my feminism at the time, it felt safer to hide the tattoo. 4

My Sylvia Plath and Frida Kahlo tattoos have particularly layered meanings.

Frida and Sylvia first came to me when I was thirteen, after being diagnosed with a

thyroid condition and being briefly taken out of school. I drew strength not only from

their work but from their lives; Kahlo’s blunt and emotionally raw work spoke directly to

me throughout high school. During this time I relapsed twice, eventually opting for

radiation treatment that kickstarted another autoimmune disorder that causes my skin to

slowly and sporadically lose pigment over time. Before strangers were stopping me to ask

personal questions about my tattoos, they were stopping me to ask personal questions

about the pale spots of skin that circled my eyes and fingers. Getting tattooed as soon as I

turned eighteen was clearly a way for me to claim some sort of control over my body at a

time when it was furiously out of control. In this way, the mere act of getting tattooed

was feminist for me. Through my tattoos, my body became mine. After I got my Frida

tattoo, it was like she had been there the whole time.

As I’ve gotten a little bit older and my understanding of feminism has matured,

the meanings and relationships I have with my tattoos have become more complex. When

I first got my Sylvia Plath tattoo it was in honor of not only her resilience but my own, a

reminder that like with a phoenix, something new and better can rise from pain. Now,

only six years later, the tattoo still holds this meaning, but I can’t help but also read it

critically, as a romanticization of the trauma and mental illness that so often characterizes

the most prominent narratives we share about female artists. Always tragic, always before their time. Sometimes I can take another step back and view a third layer, reading the tattoo as an ode to the pain and emotional complexity of teenage girlhood, where tragic heroines like Plath and Kahlo are loved and admired deeply.

Frida Kahlo, like Plath, has been consigned to narratives of trauma and tragedy. In this way, getting her tattooed on my arm is another problematic romanticization. My

Frida Kahlo tattoo is my favorite tattoo and will always be, sometimes feeling more natural that my own skin. But as a white, middle class American woman, wearing this tattoo is an appropriation and a claim that was not mine to make. Kahlo, a brilliant artist and political revolutionary, co-opted as a fashion icon by a country and economic system that she despised, has been made into a good luck charm.

How can I reconcile these complexities and the multitudes of layers that they entail, both feminist and problematic? Can I still consider my tattoos feminist if they symbolize a contested and problematic feminism, perhaps the very same marketplace feminism now being increasingly hailed by other feminist tattooers and tattooees?

Meaning is in the eye of the beholder; our tattoos gain legibility primarily through the ways in which we choose to introduce them to the world. In this way, their feminist possibilities can either be opened or foreclosed upon. In wearing a tattoo that can be claimed as feminist, we have a responsibility to adequately and thoughtfully define what that feminism means. These personal queries and experiences take on a broader and more urgent significance as tattooing becomes increasingly popular in the mainstream and as a new form of feminist activism. 6

Over the last three decades, the once marginal practice of modifying the body through tattooing has exploded in popularity in the United States. Historically synonymous with the exoticism of Indigenous cultures, then isolated to the hyper­ masculine spaces of the barracks and the prison, tattooing is now a mainstream, even mundane practice. Nearly a third of Americans have at least one tattoo, with their status as symbols of rebellion diminishing with each new study (Pew 2010), and heavily tattooed people are becoming more visible through popular reality TV shows like Ink

Master and TLC’s Ink series. Nearly half of millennials are tattooed, indicating that the practice will continue to grow in American culture (Harris 2016). Perhaps even more noteworthy than this overall increase in tattooed Americans is that since 2012 the number of women with tattoos has exceeded that of men, 31% in contrast to 27%. Despite this trend, men are twice as likely to model visible tattoos, while women are more likely to acquire smaller tattoos with more conscientious placement, a statistic that echoes my own experiences of masking and unveiling (Pew). Numerous studies show that while women are now more likely to be tattooed, tattooed women are generally perceived as less intelligent, less honest, and less caring than their non-tattooed counterparts (Mee Mun et al 2012; Mehta 2013).

Even with the increasing numbers of tattooed American women, the practice is still significantly stratified by gender, with women often experiencing particularly gendered and sexualized forms of stigma. In early 2017 tattooing among women took on an even more fascinating significance with the presence of overtly politicized, explicitly 7

Fig. 2 Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tattoo by Nikki Lugo, digital image via Mic. feminist tattoos (Travers 2015; Bianco 2015; Edwards 2017). While women have been associating body modification with feminism since the 1990’s, only recently have mainstream media outlets like Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post offered image- centric lists of “badass” feminist tattoos that make the perfect politicized accessory, often with the adage “Wear your feminist heart on your sleeve” (Vagianos 2015; Larbi 2017).

Small, delicate lettering and quotes like “GRL PWR” (Figure 1) and more recently

“Nevertheless, She Persisted” seem to be some of the most common “feminist” tattoos, but large and colorful portraits of icons like Rosie the Riveter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

(Figure 2) can also be seen gracing the arms of young feminists. Some even argue that the utilization of tattooing as a form of bodily autonomy and reclamation makes the practice an inherently feminist act. The January 2017 Women’s March on Washington proved to 8 be a catalyst for the upswing in the trend of feminist tattoos, with dozens of women across the country lining up to get inked after the march (Hagi 2017, Cunningham 2017).

As Foucault has taught us in Discipline and Punish and The History o f Sexuality, the body is always rooted within a political field, the locus of a constellation of discursive power relations well equipped for subtle and sometimes violent coercions (1975).

Regulatory institutions such as the military, the education system, the law and prison industrial complex, among a variety of others, place the body within a regiment of subjection and quiet manipulation (137). Susan Benson argues that prior to the rapid expansion of tattoo practices at the end of the twentieth century, the spaces in which the nation-state had the most direct control over the discipline of bodies such as the prison, the military, or among laboring populations, were the spaces wherein tattooing was most prolific (Benson 238). The ways in which we choose to style and modify our bodies are deeply entrenched in these state-based normalizing systems; in his essay “The Social

Skin,” a definitive text for those who study body modification, Terrence Turner argues that the decoration of the body is central to normalizing and regulatory practices in all cultures. Skin becomes the “symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted,” the liminal space where the self meets the outside world and the surface where we express ourselves most (Turner 112).

The tattooed body, and most certainly the gendered tattooed body, is an especially charged site for social and biopolitical intervention as well as individual expression. The emergence of tattooing as a site for feminist inquiry requires a more surgical examination 9

of the frameworks that shape our current understandings of bodies, gender, and politics.

While tattooing can undoubtedly be an instrument of feminist activism, it is no less

entrenched in the complex debates surrounding the intimacies of race, gender, class and

privilege that have generated passionate debate within the feminist movement since its

inception. Absent from contemporary “you go girl” styled think pieces on women,

feminism, and tattoos is a more nuanced discussion of intersectional feminist politics; the

glimpses of marked skin popular media outlets collect and share are overwhelmingly

white. As exemplified by the contentious debates surrounding the Women’s March, the

problem of race within the feminist movement continues to be central (Ramanathan

2017).

The lack of proper attention to race is not limited to mainstream feminist circles

and contemporary discussions on feminist tattooing; the absence of a critical

interrogation of race characterizes much of contemporary scholarship on American

tattooing, which generally focuses primarily on either class or gender. Recent studies in

the US have focused in particular on the subversiveness and continued stigmatizing of

tattooed women, with authors such as Margo DeMello, Margot Mifflin, and Beverley

Yuen Thompson offering insight on contemporary perceptions and practices concerning

women and tattoos. Akin to Foucault, for many contemporary tattoo researchers the politicization of the body is directly tied to its economic utility (Foucault 26); DeMello in particular situates her examination of tattooed Americans within the frameworks of class, asking how a once working class phenomenon came to be a marker of social status and 10 middle class sensibilities (DeMello, 11). A common tattoo adage without a known author,

“Good tattoos aren’t cheap and cheap tattoos aren’t good,” speaks to the ways in which tattooing is becoming increasingly commodified and rising in value. But as David

Roediger contends in Wages o f Whiteness, race and gender have always been decisive components of class formations in the United States, with the term “working class” often being an unconscious conflation of whiteness and masculinity (2007). In a similar vein, after reflecting on the racial tensions within the feminist movement, brought to light in the mainstream after the visibility of the Women’s March, Grace Hong remarked that

“historically, the category ‘woman’ has implicitly meant white woman” (Bates 2017). The absence of any meaningful discussion of race in scholarly conversations on the increasing popularity of tattooing is a conspicuous one considering the practice of tattooing in the

West is deeply enmeshed with histories of imperial expansion and colonial violence.

While tattooing has always had a sporadic and marginal presence in the West, the colonization of the South Pacific is what fixed the tattoo within modern western consciousness (DeMello 45). Contemporary studies on tattooing generally treat colonialism as a historical event rather than a continuous system of hierarchal social and economic organization, situating it firmly within the past and often obscuring its violent tendencies.

Ann Laura Stoler argues that Foucault’s conception of disciplinary practices can be traced back to the earliest moments of colonization, contending that the project of

European settlement was one of violent organization and domination of private life that 11

“depended on the management of sex in the making of racialized forms of rule” {Haunted by Empire, 32). For Stoler, the regulatory and normalizing manifestations of biopolitics are formulated through hierarchies of power based on race and gender difference first mapped out during colonization; these systems of power are not historical in nature but have continued into the present moment, plastic and malleable yet holding on to their established significance. Tattooing as a practice of body modification is then doubly inscribed within colonialism; the body itself is already constantly navigating a cluster of colonial power relations, and the racialized history of tattooing compounds this colonial complication. Tattooing has always been intimately linked with colonial perceptions of gender, race, and class in the United States, with body modification practices hailed in distinguishing proper colonial subjects from racialized Others. The embrace of tattooing by white feminists becomes even more complex when we take into account Stoler’s argument that historically, women’s bodies have often been a primary site of working out these hierarchies of power, with white women often carrying the responsibility of maintaining racial stratification (36).

These perceptions concerning colonialism, feminism, gender and race, while seemingly disparate, formulate the often obscured frameworks in which contemporary attitudes towards tattoos are developed. Any conception of feminism is incomplete without an intersectional framework, and any critical inquiry into the practice of tattooing is incomplete without a thorough interrogation of the intricacies of settler colonialism, race, and gender. As recent scholarship, pop culture, and the new wave of lines seen 12 outside of tattoo shops in recent months suggest, the practice of tattooing is being increasingly recruited into neoliberal attitudes concerning capital, commodification and individualism. By recruiting tattooing within white feminist bids for equality, apparent after the Women’s March and in the increasing visibility of women tattoo artists on reality TV, and by erasing the colonial history of tattooing, contemporary feminist tattoo practices participate in the dismissals of racial and gendered inequalities that characterize the neoliberal project. Drawing from Lisa Duggan’s Twilight o f Equality, neoliberal policies can be seen as an extension of colonialism and systems of bodily regulation, emphasizing individual utility for the benefit of western economic expansion while obfuscating the ways in which these very systems are distinguished by inequalities in gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality (2014).

In summation, contemporary studies of women and tattoos are lacking in three distinct ways; they inadequately and voyeuristically historicize the relationship between tattooing and colonial violence, they offer little critical analysis of tattooing within neoliberalism or the ways in which neoliberalism is a reiteration of colonialism, and they rarely present a properly intersectional conception of feminism, a movement that is itself implicated in hierarchies of white and class power. These shortcomings manifest in outwardly simple questions that, as a young woman with the words feminist killjoy tattooed on her ribs in looping script, bring me back to my earlier query; is tattooing an inherently feminist act, and are self-described feminist tattoos really feminist? To begin to dig at the roots of these questions, we must first look at the establishment of tattooing 13 in the west within the violences and domination of settler colonialism in the United

States, a thread that continues to be present throughout tattooing’s entire history in the west.

The general consensus among historians is that modern tattooing entered western culture through colonization, particularly in the South Pacific. In the introduction to her anthology Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History Jane

Caplan contends that tattooing has always had a sporadic and marginalized presence in

Europe, arguing that “the Pacific encounter is not originary, as we shall see. Moreover, it turns out to be a somewhat benign episode, by contrast with the more vicious reappropriations of the primitive that were responsible for relocating the tattoo on to the

European social Other a century later” (2000). Here Caplan glaringly participates in the dismissal of colonial violence common in contemporary tattooing histories, referring to colonization as a “benign episode” rather than a violent ongoing process; she continues to gloss over the “ethnic Otherness” associated with tattooing by arguing this perception quickly morphed into a “classed Otherness.” Nevertheless, the word tattoo derives from the Tahitian word tatua, introduced to Europeans after Captain Cook returned from his expedition with the British Royal Navy in 1769 (DeMello 45). In Alfred Gell’s study of

Polynesian tattooing, he argues that these early moments of contact between the West and

South Pacific are what fortified the association of tattoos with the primitive and racial

Other, a perception that continues into the contemporary moment (1996). In using the term primitive, I refer to the ideology developed by Europeans in order to justify colonial expansion and domination over Indigenous groups; a framework used to stratify the European and the non-European within heavily raced and gendered binaries. Authors such as Marianna Torgovnick and Frances Connelly, in examining the utilization of primitive tropes in modem art, have argued that the concept of primitivism is composed of a series of discourses that are “fundamental to the Western sense of self and Other;” in other words, the European perception of self is created in relation to an imagined conception of the Indigenous, or the “primitive” (Torgovnick 8). As Connelly succinctly puts it, “the primitive existed in the eye and the mind of the European beholder” (2). Torgovnick goes on to argue that discourses on the primitive are composed of a series of contradictory and multifarious tropes; the primitive as childlike, irrational and violent, libidinous and “without fear of the body,” intrinsically tied to nature, shamanistic. In her critical examination of Foucault’s disciplinary study The History o f

Sexuality, Staler makes an argument similar to Torgovnick’s, suggesting that the tropes of the primitive were developed in relation to concepts Europeans already held about themselves (Race and the Education o f Desire, 7). In contrast to Foucault, Stoler’s understanding of biopower and the organization of life within Europe is a direct response to race and the colonization of Indigenous populations. The concept of the primitive defined much of the colonial project, and continued to be associated with tattooing well into the twentieth century. The term was most notably co-opted within American tattoo communities at the end of the twentieth century during the Modern Primitivist 15 movement, and is still clearly evident in the stubborn persistence of “tribal” styled tattoos. Benson argues that quickly after its re-introduction to Europe, tattooing was reconfigured into a specifically Western tradition that was deeply associated with sailors, soldiers, criminals and other marginalized populations (238). For Benson, the association between tattoos, the hyper-masculine and the alternate association with the primitive are not singular but operate in relation to each other:

Whatever the extent o f ‘real’ tattooing in the past- and evidence suggests that this might be a more complicated issue than one might suppose- the practice is thus clearly associated with the disreputable and the marginal on the one hand and the primitive and exotic on the other. These associations, forged into an account of atavistic pathology in the late nineteenth century, bring together two significant tropes in late nineteenth-century Western thought: the idea of the distribution of cultures in space and time in terms of advanced and backward, primitive and civilized; and the idea of the layering of the human psyche, in which the primal, the impulsive and the instinctual is to be found ‘beneath’ the controlled and rational exterior of the self’ (Benson 139).

The associations of tattooing with the primitive, the military, or criminality all have the same effect; to augment binaries of the civilized and the primal and bolster colonial expansion. Primitivism itself makes up the backbone of both military and criminal associations; western armies coerce and discipline primitive others, while the European criminal became increasingly drawn into conceptions of the primitive and racial atavism.

Despite the contentions of historians like Caplan, tattooing is always read in relation to conceptions of the primitive as defined by colonialism.

Prior to the twentieth century, tattooing was primarily associated with sailors and

Indigeneity. As the practice became more visible in Europe due to colonial expansion, 16 white Europeans began making a living as tattooed performers. By the nineteenth century, there was a bourgeoning tattoo industry in the United States; Olive Oatman became the first tattooed woman to make a living as a traveling performer, lecturing on her experiences living with the Mohave as a young woman (Mifflin 17). Oatman and her contemporaries enthralled audiences with fictionalized narratives of capture and forcible torture at the hands of Natives, commingling their stories with broader colonial tropes of white women in need of rescue from abstract, racialized threats (Staler 35).

Tattooed women who followed Oatman performed in dime shows, museums, and carnivals well into the 1930s, many of them using their own sensationalized captivity narratives to keep audiences’ attention. The practices of these women further confirmed the conflation of tattooing with the primitive, while their burlesque costuming engendered the association between tattoos and hyper-sexual women. Towards the

1930’s, as captivity narratives became less relevant to the public and the performing circuit became flooded with tattooed women, the narratives began to center more on independence and modem womanhood. Performers like Artoria Gibbons told audiences she fell in love and ran away with a tattoo artist, wanting to escape her rural town to see the world (Govenar 225). These narratives often fit neatly with discourses on the modern, independent flapper girl of the 1920’s, placing an emphasis on individualism and consumerism (Weinbaum 127).

After the 1930’s, the tattooed performance industry decreased rapidly and tattooing again became conflated with masculinity and militarization. During WWI and 17

WWII tattooing underwent what is referred to as the “Golden Age,” when tattooing became deeply associated with national belonging in the face of imperial expansion and racialized threats (DeMello 58). During this period, what is typically referred to as the

“American Traditional” style of tattooing was established. Characterized by bold, thick black outlines and limited but bright color pallets, many of the designs and motifs popularized during the 1940s and 1950s are still worn among tattoo purists today. The colonial attitudes that characterized perceptions of tattooing in much of the nineteenth century carried through and were augmented by the highly militarized and sexualized canon of tattoo designs established during this period. Perhaps some of the most common and glaringly racist images are pinup designs, which often depict white-looking women adorned with a variety of racialized costuming, ranging from the hula dancer and the geisha to the topless Native American woman.

These designs seem to signify ownership of not only the individual body but of the female, racialized Other’s body; as the state enacts its colonization the soldier enacts his own smaller form of dominance. Contemporary studies like DeMello’s, Mifflin’s, and

Caplan’s all readily acknowledge the significance of this period of time in the history of tattooing, yet none seem to recognize the hyper-masculinized and militaristic aspects of this period in relation to the colonial underpinnings of tattooing that were apparent during the previous two centuries. This again indicates the general perception of colonialism as a limited occurrence fixed within the past rather than as a process that continues into the present moment. More apparent is the colonial backbone of tattooing’s following movement, the

Modern Primitivism of the 1990s. During the 60s and 70s, tattoos quickly began leaving the margins of society and became more mainstream. At this time, the types of imagery and tattoos people were getting also began to rapidly expand, largely in part to technical advancements that allowed artists to work outside the scope of the simplified designs and color schemes of the Golden era. As tattoos expanded into the mainstream they still held their earlier cultural significance; theorists such as Benson, Christian Klesse and Scott

Lauria Morgensen argue that the continued association between tattooing and primitive cultures is what makes contemporary tattooing practices so appealing; the binary between

“primitive” and “civilized” that circulated during imperial conquests is utilized by modem primitives in the reverse, as a rejection of modem culture. The association between the primitive and body modification are what make the practices transgressive and subsequently desirable.

People who choose to tattoo or modify their bodies in extreme ways, whether by becoming completely covered in tattoos or by participating in Modem Primitive practices like scarification, piercing, and branding, do so in order to reject the normalizing practices of mainstream culture in late capitalism (Benson 242).Tattooing represents a transgression that supposedly removes the tattooed person from mainstream society; or at least signals their voiced opposition to social conformity. Modem Primitives in particular derive their practices from seemingly Indigenous sources, often utilizing the same primitivist discourses that augmented the process of colonialism and Indigenous 19 genocide. Now the natural and childlike mysticism of the radicalized Other is acclaimed, even desired. Still seen as in direct opposition to Western conceptions of civilization and social organization, the primitive is now the space wherein bored white Americans voice their objections to their white Americanness. Tattooing is still entrenched in concepts of the primitive, but the cultural landscape has changed so that primitivism is associated with cultural purity and nonconformity as opposed to degeneracy and atavism.

As argued by bell hooks in Black Looks, this is indicative of a contemporary wave of “imperialist nostalgia” wherein the beneficiaries of colonialism mourn the passing of what they have destroyed, marking it with nostalgic mystification (hooks 369).

As argued by hooks:

Cultural appropriation of the Other assuages feelings of deprivation and lack that assault the psyches of radical white youth who choose to be disloyal to western civilization. Concurrently, marginalized groups, deemed Other, who have been ignored, rendered invisible, can be seduced by the emphasis on Otherness, by its commodification, because it offers the promise of recognition and reconciliation (hooks 370).

For both hooks and Benson, appropriation of Otherness is indicative of a rejection of mainstream capitalist culture, as well as a way of rewriting a white supremacist past, hooks contends that appropriation indicates a desire to become the other rather than make the other over, suggesting that the appropriation of indigenous tattooing practices is an attempt to reject one’s place within a hierarchy of racialized and gendered imperialism.

Engaging in primitivist practices offered a reconciliation to inheriting settlement without abdicating the privileges that come with that inheritance (Morgensen 163). This refusal/ 20 reconciliation does little to legitimately reject mainstream capitalism, and asserts the racialized structures intended for subversion, hooks argues that “certainly from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the

‘primitive’ or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo” (hooks

367). Christian Klesse makes the same argument in his examination of tattoo communities that specifically identify as modern primitives, contending that “modem primitivism allies itself with a tradition which played a significant role in the justification of colonial rule and subordination” (Klesse 18). Both Klesse and hooks attribute the infatuation with raced Others as a result of commodity culture and postmodern white identity crises. In appropriating Indigenous practices and imagery, white people contribute to the erasure of the violence and exploitation of colonialism, absolving themselves of the inheritance of settlement and benefits of white supremacy.

If modern primitives attempted to subvert the normalizing structures of neoliberal capitalism, it seems that in the current moment the tattoo industry is being increasing articulated within it as the practice becomes more commodified. Since the election of the forty-fifth president of the United States in 2016, feminists have been flocking to get tattooed in unprecedented numbers, which some profits from tattooing being donated to women’s organizations and causes. The use of politicized tattoos speaks to a new commodification and marketing of feminism; while these practices carry the possibility of subversion and build solidarity and group affiliation, whether they subvert neoliberal, 21 settler colonial hierarchies of power is questionable. As feminism becomes increasingly coopted in depoliticized neoliberal discourses of empowerment, self-esteem, and personal development, it becomes imperative to examine tattooing as a feminist practice through an intersectional, postcolonial framework, beginning by tracing American tattoos to their earliest roots. 22

Chapter One: Tattooing and the Construction of Race on the American Frontier

While there had always been a marginal and sporadic presence of tattooing in

Europe prior to the seventeenth century, most historians agree that modem attitudes

towards tattooing emerged as a result of global colonial expansion, particularly in the

South Pacific. Tattoos were (re)introduced to the West by Captain Cook after his

expedition to Tahiti with the British Royal Navy in 1769 (Thomas 7). Cook recorded

dozens of tattoos throughout his travels in the South Pacific, most of which were linear or

geometric, depicting stars, animals, and figures (DeMello 45). Sailors and crewmen were

returning to Europe from oversea voyages sporting Tahitian, Hawaiian, and Maori tattoos

as early as 1784, and by the nineteenth century some Europeans and South Pacific

Islanders had a pastiche of traditional Indigenous tattoos and westernized images of

rifles, cannons, dates and lettering (DeMello). This period of cultural exchange and

imperial expansion gave tattooing new life in Europe, establishing western attitudes

towards tattooing that are still held in the contemporary moment. Colonial perceptions of

gender, race, and sexuality were intimately tied to attitudes towards the modification and

adornment of the body, and continue to shape attitudes towards tattooing in the current

moment.

As tattooing became more visible within Europe during the eighteenth century, the practice was becoming increasingly dangerous for Indigenous populations. Methods

in controlling Native body modification practices became integral aspects in the conquest 23 and elimination of Indigenous populations and ways of life in colonies spanning the globe, beginning almost immediately after

European contact. In 1770, only a year after Cook made contact with the

Maori in New Zealand, Europeans began trafficking the preserved heads of natives with sacred chin tattoos in a heads-for-weapons trade that lasted over sixty years Fig. 3 The Head of a New Zealander, with a comb in his hair, an ornament of green stone (DeMello 46). Ta Moko are sacred, in his ear’ and a fish’s t00th around his neck’ Sydney Parkinson, 1773. Made on Cook’s first linear.. racial . . tattoos that , signify . status voyage, now in the British Library, and social affiliation among Maoris; heads of the deceased were traditionally preserved as a way of remembrance, a practice that declined significantly after colonization began.

The demand for Maori heads was so substantial in Europe that it became dangerous for

Maoris to wear moko; many were killed if they had chin tattoos, and in the decade before trading was outlawed in 1831 Maoris were captured, forcibly tattooed, killed, and beheaded in order to fill the market demand.

The relationship between violence and body modification practices in colonialism is not limited to the South Pacific; as Anna Cole and Anna Haebich make clear in their 24

Fig. 4 Benita (Tahuri) with her daughters Honey and Anahera, Stephen Langdon, 2016, digital image via Broadly. study of corporeality and discipline in colonial Australia, the control of body modification practices had been utilized in destroying Indigenous cultures and establishing colonial forms of rule (2007). The “vulnerable and unreliable boundary” of the skin, separating the inner and the outer self, was a particularly productive site for the violent subjugation of Indigenous populations; throughout British colonies in Australia,

Burma, and India, colonists used tattoos as a way to mark the criminal, often inscribing their crimes directly on the suspect’s forehead (Cole and Haebich 296). Colonists viewed

Aboriginal scarification practices as ornamental rather than intimately linked with social and political institutions; they read the scarification of male bodies as feminized adornment intended to attract the attention of women, a cultural practice in direct opposition to the European custom of women adorning their bodies for male gratification

(300). This reversal stems from the primitivist trope of Indigenous men as weak and effeminate in comparison to white men. Ann Laura Stoler and Scott Morgensen argue

policing the masculinity of Indigenous men was in reaction to the malleable boundaries

that defined European masculinity; in defining Indigenous sexuality and bodily

presentation colonial Europeans were also defining their own sexual and gender norms

(Morgensen 37). The feminization of Indigenous men also justified sexual violence

towards Indigenous women by European men, a practice that was central to imperial

conquest. In this way, European perceptions of gender that were incongruous with

Indigenous ways of being were translated through corporeal violence, the body becoming

the primary site for violently enacting gender norms. Scarification practices among

Aborigines were also used to justify severe physical abuse in colonial Australia; one

colonist argued in an 1883 public meeting that “a native has a hide, not an ordinary skin

like ordinary human beings” and therefore required more brutal corporeal punishment

(Cole and Haebich 304). In a similar vein, theorist Marc Blanchard argues that “tattoos

are the mark of the colonized other: the difference between the colonized and the

colonizer is in the texture of skin” (1991). Modification of the body then not only

becomes a way to distinguish the colonizer from the colonized, but the human from the

non-human; the presence of tattooing and other body modification practices not only justified colonial violence but became a framework for enacting it.

Meanwhile, in Australia and around the globe, missionaries worked to eliminate tattooing, scarification, and other Indigenous practices by removing children from their

families and larger communities and placing them in Christian and Catholic boarding 26 schools, severing them from their cultural roots and often exposing them to a range of emotional, physical, and sexual abuses. (Cole and Haebich 304; DeMello 47; Yuen

Thompson 22). This practice was common in the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with at least over 100,000 Native children forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools in the United States alone (Smith 2).

Traditional practices and clothing were banned, and children were forced to ingest soap or wash their mouths with lye for speaking their native languages. State authorities, whether abroad or within Europe’s borders, had a vested interest in the raising of children; colonial institutions like boarding schools, orphanages, and workhouses were concentrated sites where the minds and bodies of young colonial subjects were taught to adhere to imperial standards of living and socialization (Morgensen 39, Stoler 43). The practice of removing Indigenous children from their families proved to be exceptionally effective in drastically minimizing body modification practices, ensuring these customs would cease to be passed to future generations (Cole and Haebich 304).

As colonists began the work of eradicating tattooing through violence and imprisonment overseas, sailors began bringing back enslaved Polynesians and displaying their tattooed bodies to captivated European audiences. Prince Jeoly, a tattooed man from the island of Meangis, is the earliest known person to travel and display their tattoos, traveling through Europe nearly a century before Cook landed in New Zealand. As nonchalantly put by Margot DeMello, Jeoly was “purchased” in 1691 and traveled through pubs and dime museums until he died of smallpox only a few months after he 27

arrived in Europe (48). At the height of his brief career, “The Painted Prince” had an

audience with King William and Queen Mary (Oettermann 194). In 1774, during his first

expedition to Polynesia, Cook brought back the tattooed Omai from Tahiti, who

originally worked as a translator but eventually became a celebrity oddity after his

masters decided to display him for profit. The display of tattooed Native bodies became

institutionalized and a staple of colonialism as exhibits like the World’s Fair became

increasingly popular (DeMello 47). These exhibits, along with comparable businesses

such as Bamum and Bailey’s and natural history museums, intricately intermixed

entertainment with science and education (Haraway 40). World’s Fair exhibits,

meticulously staged for white colonial audiences, functioned as a means of both

constructing and displaying proper hierarchies of gender, race, and class (Haraway 43).

Presented in institutional settings, the hierarchies on display in exhibits such as the

World’s Fair served to naturalize patriarchal and white supremacist organization; by juxtaposing racialized displays of Indigeneity alongside markers of Western technology

and progress, the fairs rendered colonial expansion as natural, justifiable, and benevolent

(DeMello 54). These expositions emphasized the perceived primitivism and savagery of

Indigenous practices like tattooing and scarification. The World’s Fair and contemporary exhibitions served not only to display native bodies for the entertainment and education of white colonial audiences, but to display the imperial, technological and democratic power of the West. This practice began in the United States in 1876 with the Centennial

Exhibition; it was the first exhibition where tattooed Indigenous people from Alaska, 28

Samoa, and Hawaii were displayed for American audiences, though tattooed performers had been traveling the country sporadically in the preceding decades.

While Natives were enslaved and placed on display, white sailors who had been overseas were returning to Europe to make a living as tattooed performers, no doubt capitalizing on the public interest in Indigenous cultures. While white people certainly enjoyed an agency not granted to their Indigenous counterparts, their performances often did the same work as the World’s Fair and centennial exhibition, augmenting colonial discourses on race and gender. The first white person to travel Europe as a tattooed oddity was Jean Baptiste Cabris, a shipwrecked sailor who spent most of his adolescence and young adulthood in the Marquesas. Cabris was so integrated into Marquesan society that he lost the ability to speak French, became fully tattooed, and claimed he married the daughter of a chief (Oettermann 196). He was brought back to Europe by a Russian expedition in 1804 and travelled as a tattooed performer until his death in 1821. Unlike many of his Indigenous counterparts, Cabris was able to ensure his body would be buried rather than handed over to a museum as a scientific specimen (198). Cabris’ story, whether fact or fiction, became the framework for white tattooed performers, with numerous followers sharing similar stories to enthralled audiences. A Bristol man named

John Rutherford, who began working as a traveling tattooed man in Britain shortly after

Cabris’ death, concocted a story in which he was captured and forcibly tattooed by

Maoris in 1816, escaped death, was then adopted by the tribe, married the chief’s daughter and subsequently became a chief himself (Oettermann 199). In reality, Rutherford had intentionally jumped ship and spent six years traveling the

South Pacific; while his facial tattoos were Maori, the rest were a collection of styles from Tahiti and Fiji.

Rutherford was able to make a comfortable living traveling through fairgrounds in England, and in 1830 a biography of his life called The Great

White Chief John Rutherford was published. James O’Connell, working Fig. 5 Lithographic Poster for Le Capitaine roughly around the same time as Costentenus, Paris, 1890.

Rutherford, was America’s first tattooed man and had a story nearly identical to

Rutherford’s, the only difference was his experience occurred in Micronesia (DeMello

56). Captain Constantine (Figure 5), the first tattooed performer made famous by P.T.

Bamum in 1873, told audiences his 388 tattoos were forcibly given by “Chinese cannibal natives” and reportedly earned a thousand dollars a week performing and recounting his story (Oettermann 200).

Common to all four narratives are captivity and forced torture at the hands of natives; regardless of how common or fictitious these narratives were, they appealed to

European audiences familiar with colonial discourses that rendered Indigenous cultures as violent, primitive, and lacking respect for their own bodies. The trope of the Native woman marrying the white European settler is a particularly salient colonial discourse, especially within the United States; Chris Finley argues that the geographical body of

“the New World” has historically been conflated with the Native woman’s body, both open to conquest and ownership by white European men (34). This narrative is central to the United State’s origin story; the mythology of Pocahontas and her love for John Smith is so culturally engrained that it became the subject of one of Disney’s most iconic films in 1995, speaking to how thoroughly these historical narratives saturate American culture.

These narratives naturalize colonial white supremacy and render invisible the sexual violence that is central to colonial conquest. By embellishing their stories in this way, performers like Rutherford and O’Connell fortified the colonial perception that Native women not only desired white European men, but that the conquest of the Americas could be achieved through the claiming of Indigenous women’s bodies. By procreating with Native women, often through force, European men did the simultaneous work of erasing her Indigeneity and laying claim to land through patriarchal kinship ties (Finley

34). Through Western patriarchal structures of property and land ownership, white settlers were able to lay claim to Native land by fathering mixed children. Furthermore,

Finley argues that “indigeneity, unlike blackness, is erased through miscegenation with whiteness, since colonizing logic stipulates that Native people need to disappear for the settlers to inherit the land” (35). Procreating with Native women not only allowed white men to claim land ownership, but bolstered the colonial logic of Native peoples as absent, 31 a perception that still informs contemporary discourses. Unsurprisingly, women who became tattooed performers and shared similar stories of capture and mutilation at the hands of Native Americans never included marriage or allusions to sex with Native men, which would have been viewed as a betrayal of both white Christian womanhood and the colonial project.

A stark example of this double standard is Olive Oatman, the first white woman to travel the United States and earn a living because of her tattoos. Oatman lived with the

Mohave for a period of four years until she returned to white society in 1856 at the age of eighteen, when she subsequently coauthored the bestselling autobiography Life Among the Indians: Being an Interesting Narrative o f the Captivity o f the Oatman Girls. It is unclear how much of Oatman’s experience was true and how much was fictional; it is also unclear how much of Life Among the Indians was written by Oatman and how much was written by her coauthor, methodist minister Royal B. Stratton. The general consensus among tattoo historians is that Oatman was transculturated into Mohave life to a significant degree, and that much of her biography was fabricated in order to appeal to a colonial audience eager to expand into western territories and fearful of racial miscegenation. Her narrative departs from the tattoo captivity stories of her performative predecessors; in her biography Oatman adamantly resists transculturation, her tattoos are a mark of enslavement rather than cultural adoption. Also in stark contrast to her male predecessors, in her biography Oatman developed no familial or sexual relationships with

Natives, explicitly keeping her white womanhood intact. Much of this is contested by historians, some of whom argue

Oatman did in fact marry a Mohave

man and may have given birth to two

children, a rumor that circulated soon

after Oatman returned to white

society (Putzi 180; Derounian-Stodola

35).

Originally traveling to the

crux of Arizona, California, and

Mexico with a sect of Mormons

called the Brewsterites, Olive and her

family were attacked by Yavapai in Fig. 6 Olive Oatman with tattoo, 1858. Digital image via the Arizona Historical Society. February 1851 after they split from

the group. Thirteen year old Olive and her sister Mary Ann were kidnapped; their parents

and all but one sibling were killed (Putzi 117). After roughly a year the two girls were

sold or traded to the Mohave, where they were transculturated and formally adopted by

Chief Espenesay and his wife (Derounian-Stodola 35). As was Mohave custom, the girls

were tattooed on their chins and forearms using a cactus thorn and a river stone, crushed to a blue powder and then rubbed into the open pin pricks (Mifflin 65). In Life Among the

Indians, Oatman omits her forearm tattoos, easily hidden beneath nineteenth century clothing, but describes her stark chin tattoos as marks of her enslavement. Margot Mifflin 33

and Jennifer Putzi argue they more likely signified her enculturation into Mohave life; the

tattoos were most likely designed specifically for the unique shape and character of her

face and would have been necessary for entering the afterlife (Mifflin 14; Putzi 186).

Within a few years Mary Ann died from famine, but Olive continued to live with

the Mohave until she was eventually recognized as white by a government official and

taken to Fort Yuma on February 22, 1856 (Oetterman 201). A year later Life Among the

Indians was published, instantly becoming a bestseller. In 1858, after selling out of two

editions, Oatman and Stratton began a book tour, circulating promotional photos that

highlighted Oatman’s chin tattoo and giving lectures with headlines like “Five Years

Among Wild Savages” (Putzi 178). Figure 6, taken in 1858, was a typical promotional

photo circulated to draw audiences to Oatman’s lectures; though her forearm tattoos are

hidden, they are alluded to in the geometric pattern on the sleeves of her dress. In Life

Among the Indians, the tattoos on Oatman’s face are a mark of her captivity rather than

her enculturation, marking her as an outsider rather than folded into the Mohave

community (186). This reading of the tattoos is essential to the central theme of Oatman’s

biography, that she resented her time with the Mohave and desperately clung to her white,

civilized self. In her book and lecture tour, Oatman does not address her forearms tattoos

at all, and she most certainly does not concede to a having a Native family. In the book her Mormonism is also rewritten as Christianity, and the Mohave are represented as savage, “human-shaped demons” and “man-animals;” any aspect of the narrative that 34 would threaten Oatman’s identity as a pure, white Christian woman is omitted (Putzi

179).

Life Among the Indians and Oatman’s accompanying performances were part a constellation of contemporary propaganda that dehumanized the Native population in order to augment white imperialism in the American west. Expansion into the west seems a virtuous and necessary venture, if not only to protect the innocence of women like

Olive but to save the Natives from themselves:

The march of American civilization... will yet, and soon, break upon the barbarity of these numerous tribes, and either elevate them to the unappreciated blessing of a superior social state, or wipe them into oblivion, and give their long undeveloped territory to another (Stratton 180).

Oatman’s narrative was designed to confirm her colonial audiences’ racial prejudices, as well as bolster the missionary project of converting Natives and eliminating their spiritual and cultural institutions. Oatman’s facial tattoo, an impossible to ignore symbol of her cultural malleability, is turned on its head. It becomes central in the defense of her civilized nature, making her physical body an essential element of white Christian nationalism (Putzi 181). As Stoler has argued, white women are often tasked with the burden of upholding racial purity in spaces of colonial contact; maintaining white supremacy becomes the “principle of their acceptance and participation in social life” (37). In order for Oatman to be accepted back into the fold of white society, so clearly marked as other by the tattoo inscribed on her face, she had to participate in a 35

narrative that upholds colonial violence and places whiteness above impunity,

unblemished by her ordeal.

Oatman intersected the forcible tattoo trope with the captivity narrative to an

extent that her predecessors hadn’t reached; captivity narratives, a distinctly American

literary genre, were generally racist propaganda pieces used to justify white expansion

into the west (Castiglia 3). Life Among the Indians can be located within a continuum of

captivity narratives and colonial media used to define racial boundaries and continue

progressive expansionism. The earliest propagators of the captivity narrative were already

legendary settlers such as John Smith and Daniel Boone, but Mary Rowlandson’s 1682

autobiography A True History o f the Captivity and Restoration o f Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

and subsequent lecture tour may have been what inspired much of Oatman’s career

(Kolodny 185; Derounian-Stodola 37). Both texts enabled the justification of imperial

expansion, white supremacy, and the destruction of Native populations and ways of life.

The protection of white women from the imagined violence of native men had long been

used to augment colonialism; prescriptions for proper white femininity and citizenship

were both imposed and reinforced by women such as Rowlandson and Oatman (Stoler

35). The overt support for Western imperialism and emphasis on white superiority that

saturate Oatman and Rowlandson’s narratives and performances allowed the two women

to commit the cultural lapse of lecturing in a public forum relatively unscathed.

Captivity narratives often emphasized the sexual vulnerability of female captors, playing on the colonist’s deep fears of miscegenation and racial boundary crossing 36

(Derounian-Stodola 38, Putzi 182). Perhaps audiences found Oatman’s tattoo so enthralling because of the intimacy and transcultural familiarity it suggests. As argued by

Stoler in Race and the Education o f Desire, the sexuality of white women and the possibility of contact with non-white men was a primary concern for colonists; policing the sexuality of white women also served the purpose of ensuring that racial boundaries remained distinct (Stoler 41). For this reason, the possibility of Oatman’s Native family is erased entirely from the text and her accompanying narrative, while decades earlier men like Rutherford and O’Connell were captivating audiences with tales of their marriages to Maori princesses. While tattoos were a symbol of transience, adventure, or worldliness when worn by white men, for Oatman they would have been a symbol of racial betrayal. In her book and lectures, Oatman performs the task of constructing and upholding whiteness by exhibiting the proper ways settlers should behave in the face of

Indigenous contact. Audiences were drawn to Oatman’s lectures not only to be titillated by her racial boundary crossing but in order to be reassured in the stasis of their whiteness; while these narratives did the work of defining whiteness and sustaining white supremacy, they also revealed the constructed and ultimately synthetic nature of racial difference (Woodard 117; Castiglia 7).

While it seems that Oatman’s narrative was a simple deviation from the typical traveling tattooed performers, her experience opened the door for women to break into the industry. Oatman’s perspective still augmented the association between tattooing and the primitive, a perception that was further fortified by Cesare Lombroso’s 1876 37 ethnography Criminal Man. The study offered the West one of the first analytic explorations of tattooing (Caplan 157). For Lombroso, whose subjects included prisoners, soldiers, and sex workers, criminality and tattooing were inherently raced and classed:

It is only natural that a custom widespread among savages and prehistoric peoples would reappear among lower class groups. One such group is sailors, who display the same temperament as savages with their violent passions, blunted sensitivity, puerile vanity, and extreme laziness. In their nudity, prostitutes too recall savage customs (Lombroso 61).

Fig. 7 Italian Criminal Tattoos, Cesare Lombroso, 1876.

Criminality and the presence of tattoos indicate atavism or the uncivilized; Lombroso, whose work contributed to the eugenics and social Darwinism movements, secured the conflation of primitivism, marginality, and tattoos in an institutionalized format. This conflation of criminality and tattoos would continue well into the twentieth century (Yuen

Thompson 26). Susan Benson has argued that the spaces where Lombroso conducted his 38 study are precisely the spaces wherein tattoo cultures flourish because of increased surveillance by the state; soldiers, prisoners, and sex workers’ bodies are particularly vulnerable to violence and state discipline, affirming an assumption that tattooing is a way of claiming the body (238).

Lombroso developed a fascination with the creative cultures within prisons, collecting his own archive of folklore, poetry, graffiti, songs, and of course tattoos; Figure

7, drawn in 1896, depicts one of his drawings of typical nineteenth century prison tattoos

(Gibson and Rafter 21). Lombroso divided the most common types of tattoos his subjects wore into four distinct categories that have stood the test of time to a considerable degree: love, religion, war, and profession (56). The most common tattoo designs of the early twentieth century echo Lombroso’s earlier categorization; images of hearts, daggers, flowers, pinups, military insignia, occupational badges, ships, and Christian symbolism were some of the most common images within the American tattoo repertory (Govenar

218; DeMello 50). The term “traditional American” refers to the folk art style of tattooing that developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; some of these images, such as ships, anchors, and swallows derive from European sailors’ motifs, while others, such as the “Rose of No Man’s Land” (see Figure 8) developed in the mid­ twentieth century (Govenar 219). The folk art canon of tattooing developed organically through word of mouth and imitation in the small and expansive North American tattooing community. Tradition American tattoos can be recognized by their almost sticker-like placement on the body, thick black outlines and heavy shading, and bold but 39

Fig. 8 Tattoo designs including Rose of No Man’s Land (top row second to the left) and Pharaoh’s Horses (bottom row far left), unidentified Bowery artist, 1935. Watercolor and ink on newspaper. Photo by Allison Meier for Hyperallergic, 2017. limited color pallets. Images are painted with watercolor on ‘flash sheets,’ then displayed on the walls of tattoo shops. Historically, customers would pick a pre-drawn image from the wall with little room for variation.

In 1891 Samuel O’Reilly developed the electric tattoo machine, modeled after

Edison’s perforating pen, and the rudimentary images found in tattoo shops across the country slowly became more sophisticated in their application and composition (DeMello

50). Prior to “Professor” O’Reilly’s tattoo machine, artists would bundle together five or more needles, dip them in India ink and repetitively hand poke the skin; the electric machine greatly expedited the process and made tattooing far less painful and much 40 cheaper, which may have had a hand in the turn of the century boom in tattooed performers.

P.T. Bamum brought tattooed performers from fairgrounds to more mainstream venues like the circus and museums, making tattooed performing a lucrative profession

(Oettermann 200). In discussing Bamum’s influence and inadvertently speaking to the significance of Olive Oatman, W.L. Alden argued that not only did Bamum invent the tattoo industry but that “Every museum was bound to have a Tattooed Girl with a yarn

about her having been captured by the

Indians and tattooed when she was a

little girl” (Alden 4). Tattooed women

quickly outpaced men when it came

to market demands, in large part

because of the eroticism their

minimal clothing brought to their

performances, bringing “a peep show

to the freak show” (Mifflin 20).

Excessive displays of naked flesh

(arms, knees, sometimes thighs)

coupled with impressive Fig. 9 Eagle and Shield, Samuel O’Reilly, 1875-1905. Digital image by Allison Meier via Hyperallergic, 2017. performances of demure femininity captivated audiences, and tattooed 41 women quickly exceeded the profits of their male counterparts by utilizing their sexuality to sell promotional photographs (DeMello 58).

Nora Hildebrandt (Figure 10) was the first American woman to become fully tattooed and enter the circus, borrowing her script from Olive

Oatman. At the age of twenty-two,

Hildebrandt first appeared at Bunnell’s

Museum in New York in 1882, where she dazzled the audience with her 365 Fig. 10 Nora Hildebrandt, 1880s. Margot Mifflin, 2013. tattoos and her enthralling tale of capture and torture in the wild West. Kidnapped by the Sioux, Nora was forcibly tattooed head to toe by her father at the direct command of Sitting Bull. At some point she was orphaned, lost her sight, gained it back, was rescued by a famous general, and then eventually made it to New York (Mifflin 10). Beginning in the same year as Hildebrandt,

Irene “La Belle” Woodard told audiences that she was tattooed by her father as a child in the “Wild West of Texas” to curb the sexual advancements of Natives (DeMello 58). Both these narratives are clearly derivative of Oatman’s and follow the typical pattern of gendered tattoo narratives; white women are tattooed as a mark of enslavement rather 42 than transculturation, or they rely on colonial tropes about the dangers Native men posed to white women. These narratives worked the duel task of upholding colonial discourses on race while also releasing tattooed women from responsibility when it came to the transgression their tattoos represented (Yuen Thompson 24, Benson 239).

Woodard was successful enough to tour in Europe, showing off her four hundred tattoos to captivated audiences and even the Munich Anthropological Society, where observers commented that “her nakedness seems beside the point” (Oetterman 202).

Some of the tattoos that she had included butterflies, flowers, Indians, eagles and rattlesnakes, a floral necklace on her collarbone that read “Irene,” and lettering that included the sayings “Never Despair” and “I live and die for those I love” (Mifflin 12:

Oetterman 202). Hildebrandt didn’t receive as many accolades as her younger, slimmer counterpart, with one New York Times reporter writing that “Her face is so hard that you wonder they ever got the needle through the skin without a hammer” in 1882 (Mifflin

20).

Woodard wasn’t in fact forcibly tattooed to protect her from the Sioux, but was tattooed by Samuel O’Reilly a decade before he patented his machine; she eventually conceded that Prince Constantine, the first tattooed man to perform in P.T. Bamum’s program, had inspired her to become a performer (Mifflin 16). Hildebrandt was tattooed by her husband Martin, a trailblazer in his own right who is credited with opening the

United State’s first tattoo shop in New York in the late 1800s. Hildebrandt and O’Reilly were responsible for many of the tattooed performers that came out of New York; the 43 images they etched onto women like Woodard and Hildebrandt later became canonized within the traditional American tattoo repertory. They passed down their images not only through flash sheets but in training the next generation of tattooists through informal, unpaid apprenticeships, a system still in place in the modem tattoo community. Many of the young men they trained went on to tattoo the next generation of tattooed women that took over the scene at the turn of the century. Despite the fact that many of the images tattooed were clearly born from a white Western imaginary, the idea that Natives were forcibly tattooing portraits of George Washington and European Renaissance era oil paintings continued to captivate audience until after the turn of the century (Benson 239).

By the twentieth century, over

300 tattooed performers were traveling the United States, with male performers having to increasingly supplement their acts by knife throwing, fortune telling, or other oddities (Mifflin 21; Oetterman 203).

During this time, women began breaking into the industry as artists. Fig. 11 Maude Wagner, 1911. Digital image via Mic. Maude Wagner (Figure 11) had been 44 working as a contortionist when she met Gus Wagner at the St. Louis World’s Fair in

1904; Maude only agreed to date Gus after he promised to tattoo and apprentice her; she’s considered to be the United States’ first woman tattoo artist (Lubitz 2016). Their daughter Lotteva picked up the family trade at the age of nine but also had a side gig as a snake charmer (Mifflin 31).

From the turn of the century to the 1930’s, tattooed women typically dropped the overtly racialized captivity narratives from their performances, instead fashioning their backstories to accommodate tropes of the modern woman. While their narratives were not explicitly racialized, the discourses and performances of modernity displayed by tattooed women performers were part of a larger project of constructing the “modern girl” through consumption and racialization (Weinbaum 2009). During the period between WWI and

WWII, the stylish and unrestrained flapper girl became the primary model for young womanhood, displaying an “explicit eroticism and an uncommon power to challenge social conventions” (Ireland 2007). Many tattooed performers of this period perfectly emulated the modern flapper girl, with fashionable and often risque clothing, bobbed haircuts, a penchant for boys, and a disregard for the normative in their bodily adornment and choice of career. Many tattooed women characterized their tattoos as a means of independence and adventure, a sentiment that still echoes in contemporary attitudes. The tattooed women of the early twentieth century can be read as precursors to the modern tattooed women of reality TV, where a similar emphasis on performance, independence and marketability characterize their personas. Modernity was achieved through sexual 45

liberation, economic independence, and the ability to “wear” racial otherness, tasks all

easily adopted by tattooed performers (Weinbaum 121). Some told audiences that they

became tattooed out of love or boredom rather than capture; Lotta Pictoria told her

audiences she was “a foolish girl,” convinced to get tattooed “out of love for a human

fiend with flashing eyes.” (Mifflin 22). By the 1920’s, technical advancements in

tattooing had progressed and social attitudes had become more relaxed; tattooed women

could expand outside the traditional tattoo repertory and began getting inked with more

detailed, personal images. Lady Viola, tattooed in the 1920’s, had six presidents tattooed

on her chest and portraits of Babe Ruth and Charlie Chaplin, framed in delicate floral

borders, tattooed on her shins (Mifflin 22).

Alys Eve Weinbaum argues that women during this period participated in

continuous performances of racial masquerade in order to construct their modernity and

whiteness during a time of strict racial binaries, characterized by segregation, aggressive

anti-Asian immigration sentiments, and deep-rooted anxieties over “race

suicide” (Weinbaum 121). While during Oatman’s era white settlers were wary of

miscegenation, apparent in the deep interest in women captives, during the period of

tattooed performers immigration posed the greatest threat to the white, Christian

American nation. White American women were able to exercise their modernity and

racial superiority by “masking,” or performing racial otherness, through consumption, fashion and beauty practices; of course the ability to both wear and remove any racial masking was reserved primarily for white women or women of color who could 46 successfully pass as white. Not only did female tattooed performers exercise modernity through their discourses on adventure and independence, but through the process of unmasking during their performances. While most modern girls used makeup and clothing to perform racial masking, tattooed women inverted these practices by partially disrobing and revealing their racialized otherness; their tattoos. Central to the tattooed performer’s show was the slow, tantalizing reveal, the clothing and gestures for which were borrowed from flappers and burlesque performers.

While the ability to remove the mask is what ensures the modem girls’ modernity and her whiteness, tattooed women had to strike a more delicate balance. Their promotional photos often had them styled in willful, aggressive poses with their arms crossed defiantly across their chests in order to show off their tattoos and modern attitudes (see Figures 10, 11, and 12). The narratives they told, often fictionalized, echoed contemporary attitudes on sex, liberation, and independence. Artoria Gibbons (Figure

12), working roughly around the same time as Lotta Pictoria, said the following when reflecting on her decision to become a tattooed performer:

When I was fourteen, I decided I wanted to leave home and see the world. I had never been no place in my life, only to the village a couple miles away from our farm and they didn’t even have a motion picture show in it. Well, one day the carnival came to the village, and after I done my chores, me and my sister went to see it. We stood outside the freak show and a nice looking guy starting talking to us... Well him and me got to talking. He told me the show didn’t have a tattooed lady, and asked me if I would like to be one. Said he was the tattoo artist, and if I let him tattoo me, I could join the show and see the world. And that’s what I did (Govenar 225). 47

Artoria told her audience that she fell in love and married her tattoo artist, Charles

Gibbons, and the two travelled the country together. In reality, Artoria (then known as

Annie) had been a living in New York, already married to Charles and the mother of a young daughter. Struggling to make ends meet, Charles tattooed Artoria and the three spent nearly two decades traveling with Bamum and Bailey’s Circus (Mifflin 23). Among some of Artoria’s tattoos were Da Vinci’s Last Supper and Botticelli’s Annunciation.

Annie, a married domestic worker and mother, was most certainly not the ideal modern girl, constrained by traditional economic and familial structures. As a performer Artoria

Fig. 12 Artoria Gibbons styled as a flapper, 1920s. Visible is a portrait of George Washington on her chest and Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper on her back. Digital image via Pinterest. 48 displayed a sense of innocent recklessness and passion, a much more captivating story for her audiences.

Artoria and her contemporary Betty Broadbent were some of the most heavily photographed tattooed women of the 1930’s. Broadbent decided she wanted to become tattooed at the age of fourteen after seeing fully tattooed performers on the Boardwalk in

Atlantic City. After meeting tattooed man Jack Redcloud, Broadbent said she “wanted to be independent and take care of myself;” she was tattooed by Charlie Wagner (no relation to Maud), who had learned the trade from Samuel O’Reilly, and in 1927 made her debut at the Ringling Brothers and Bamum and Bailey’s Circus (Govenar 222). Despite the fact that tattooed women utilized tattooing to launch careers and take control of their economic futures, the lack of women artists made them heavily dependent on male artists and their sensibilities, blurring the lines between agency and economic necessity. Like

Maude Wagner, Betty was able to transfer her career as a tattooed lady into one as an artist, traveling and tattooing in New York, San Francisco, and Montreal.

After the 1930’s, the demand for tattooed ladies dissipated as the modern girl gave way to the strict gendered codes of the 1940’s and 1950’s, and by the midcentury tattooing was again associated with servicemen and marginal, criminal communities.

Tattoo imagery became increasingly racialized and associated with imperial expansion in the West. Despite their disappearance from history, the tattooed women of the turn of the century have reemerged as early symbols of feminist bodily autonomy and reclamation.

During the period between WWI and WWII, referred to as the Golden Age of tattooing, the cultural and stylistic significance of American traditional tattooing reached its peak until tattooing burst into the mainstream in the 1960’s and 1970’s. At this time, the link between tattoos and primitivism was less strong, with tattoos increasingly symbolizing

American nationalism. Still, racialized imagery such as exotic pinup girls continued to form a core part of the canon of tattoo imagery, and by the end of the twentieth century tattoos had once again been rewritten as a mark of the primitive. 50

Chapter Two: Nationalism, Body Modification and Modern Primitives

By the late 1930s, the amount of tattooed performers in the United States had increased significantly, flooding the market and rendering tattooed bodies a less astonishing spectacle; this in combination with the Depression and strict tattooing laws throughout the country diminished the tattoo industry (Govenar 219). The practice popularized again during WWI and WWII, when tattooing became nearly synonymous with sailors and servicemen, signaling “a defensive and bounded masculinity” and a distinctly American aesthetic (Benson 238). During this period, known as “The Golden

Age,” tattooing became deeply tied to patriotism and national belonging; tattooing was not only a means for military men to build bonds and community, but as a way of constructing proper forms of American masculinity.

As I argued in the preceding chapter, during the nineteenth century white settlers utilized tattooing and associations with the primitive and Indigenous Other in order to augment colonial expansion abroad and within the borders of the United States. Tattooing became more conspicuous in the West, with tattooed sailors and dime show performers enthralling audiences with stories of capture and torture by Natives. These narratives were part of a constellation of propaganda that naturalized the violence of colonization and the settler state, drawing from discourses that drew strict binaries between natives and settlers, men and women, the primitive and the civilized. By the end of the tattooed attraction era, settlers were using tattoos to support western imperialism through the 51 imagery itself. During the midcentury, American sailors and military men invigorated the bourgeoning tattoo industry by increasing the demand for patriotic and nationalist tattoos, as well as through highly sexualized renderings of Native American, Hawaiian, and tribal pinups. This period produced some of the most overtly imperial images from the

American Traditional tattoo canon. Tattooing was incorporated into militaristic disciplinary practices at home and abroad, reconceptualizing tattoos to fit within an evolving white settler colonialism. By the end of the twentieth century, tattooing exploded into the mainstream and mostly white, middle class Americans began indiscriminately appropriating from Indigenous body modification practices.

Fig. 13 Traditional Flash Sheet with Suzy Wongs, Jerry Collins, 1965. Sailor Jerry Tattoo Flash Vol. 1. 1996. 52

While this turn may suggest an embrace of Indigeneity, in contrast to its destructive incorporation as implied by the militarized images of the Golden Age, this progression is still distinctly entwined with hierarchies of race and settler colonial power.

Just as tattooing was incorporated and reworked as a manifestation of American nationalism, tattooing was commodified and reworked for a broader American market during the end of the twentieth century as a way of organizing a renewed, more subtle form of settler colonialism. In their postcolonial critiques of white settler subjectivity,

Scott Lauria Morgensen and bell hooks dissect the ways in which cultural appropriation serves as a continuation of the erasures of Indigeneity as well as a method for white settlers to reconcile their geographical and symbolic inheritance of Native lands

(Morgensen 16). Seemingly well-intentioned practitioners of body modification and members of communities such as the Modem Primitivists utilize colonial conceptions of the primitive in order to form an identity in opposition to “normative” culture in late capitalism; as I will argue throughout this chapter, while these practices are in many ways subversive, they also participate in recycled colonial logics, augmenting settler colonialism and white supremacy.

During the 1940’s, tattooing became a heavily masculinized practice. Some former performers such as Australia’s Cindy Ray and San Francisco’s Bobbie Libbary were able to quit the stage and open their own shops, but they were few and far between

(Mifflin 32). Some women carved out particularly subversive spaces; Ruth Weyland, a

San Francisco based tattooer, specialized in large-scale, lesbian imagery (Mifflin 41). 53

While some women were tattooed during the forties and fifties they were not the industry’s preferred clientele, and social stigma towards tattoos and unconventional women remained a powerful deterrent. In explaining his reluctance to tattoo women, longtime tattooer Samuel Steward said:

When I finally discovered the trouble that always surrounded the tattooing of women, I established a policy of refusing to tattoo a woman unless she were twenty-one, married and accompanied by her husband, with documentary proof to show their marriage. The only exception was the lesbians, and they had to be over twenty-one and prove it. In those tight and unpermissive 1950s, too many scenes with irate husbands, furious parents, indignant boyfriends, and savage lovers made it necessary to accept female customers with great care (DeMello 61). Fig. 14 A tattoo by Ruth Weyland inscribed “Hazel Mackly Tattooed for Dorothy Jean Ellis Mv Love.” 1933. Mifflin 2013. The era of the tattooed woman and modem girl was over, and the adage “nice girls don’t get tattooed” became the norm.

Even gay women were received with hesitation by tattooist like Steward because

“whenever they came in they scared the sailors” (DeMello 61). Steward later went on to describe the women he tattooed as “large lank-haired skags, with ruined landscapes of faces and sagging hose and mn-over heels.” This remark is in stark contrast to the 54 meticulously crafted images of tattooed ladies in the preceding decades, who were admired not only for their tattoos but for their beauty and proper performances of heightened, delicate femininity.

Despite the drop in tattooed performers, the Golden Age from the 1940’s to the

1950’s was one of the most prolific in American tattoo history (DeMello 63). Servicemen were the largest population of tattooed Americans at this time, and their aesthetic tastes are what cemented the styles and motifs within the traditional tattoo canon. Traditionally clients select from pre-drawn designs, displayed on flash sheets along the walls of the shop. Designs were typically straightforward in interpretation, composed of thick black lines and color pallets limited to red, blue, and olive green. In his ethnographic study of eighteenth century naval tattoos, Ira Dye divided tattoo motifs into nine subcategories:

Initials, names, and dates (particularly common for identification purposes), things of the sea, patriotic symbols, symbols of love, religious symbols, people and animals, and finally trees and florals (Burg 70). Many of the images that made up these categories, such as anchors, flags, eagles, and ships remained popular for servicemen through the twenty-first century. Patriotic imagery such as military or navy insignia are still among some of the most popular designs, as well as pinup or “girl head” tattoos. Common pinups include cowgirls and sailors, as well as heavily racialized designs such as geishas and “Suzy Wongs” (DeMello 64). Traditional folk motifs commonly found on turn of the century tattooed performers, such as flowers, roses, daggers, birds, hearts, and scrolls were also common on servicemen an civilians and continued to become more refined in 55

Fig. 15 Traditional Flash Sheet with Girl Head and Peacock, Jerry Collins. Sailor Jerrv Tattoo Flash Vol. 1.1996.

their execution (Govenar 218). Pop culture designs such as Bettie Boop and Felix the cat

were also popular; Mildred Hull said the most sought after tattoo among her female

clients was of Mickey Mouse (Mifflin 35).

Some of the designs popularized, such as roosters and pigs (placed specifically on the top of each foot) held superstitious significance and were meant to protect the wearer,

indicative of their folk roots (DeMello 64). Other images could only be tattooed after the

completion of specific military training programs or tasks, a standard heavily policed by peers within military communities. Men were often “worked over” by their peers if they got a tattoo meant to mark a specific accomplishment too soon; as Ohio based tattooer

Stoney St. Clair put it, “the tattoo was a mark of accomplishment, and if you hadn’t accomplished anything, you didn’t deserve the tattoo” (Govenar 228). Tattooing then was 56

Fig. 16 Traditional Flash Sheet with Native Americans, Jerry Collins, Sailor Jerry Tattoo Flash Vol. 1,1996. seen as a privilege, further entrenching the association with national belonging. Only through proper moments of accomplishment and imperial masculinity could a tattoo, and communal belonging, be earned.

Tattoos also served as a means of memorializing loved ones back home (mom and girlfriend tattoos are some of the most classic and classically regrettable designs) and also helped in developing solidarity among servicemen (Govenar 226). Tattoos also served as tacit signs of colonial conquest and imperial rule; as tattooing became more popular among sailors and servicemen, racialized images of colonial subjects became more common. Figure 16 is a consistent example of not only the style of traditional American flash tattooing, but exemplifies the racialized imagery common to the tattoo canon. The 57

image is deceptively simple in its composition and limited color palette; the images of

Native American men, symbols, and a Native girl speaks to the objectification and

possession inherent in imperialist tattoo imagery; by wearing these images white men

tacitly laid claim to Indigenous culture, naturalizing their settler status on Indigenous land

(Morgensen 16).

The themes and motifs that dominated the tattoo community during the 1940s, as

well as the suffocatingly masculine and militarized spaces in which they were most

legible are significant for their individual and broader implications. Coinciding with

Cesare Lombroso’s study, Susan Benson argues that the spaces in which tattooing

becomes most common are those wherein the state has significant amounts of control

over the individual and collective body (Benson 238). Both Benson and Lombroso noted

that tattooing was also significantly more common among women sex workers,

suggesting that the communities that are particularly subject to “corporeal vulnerability”

are more likely to engage in a tattooing subculture. For Benson, this suggests that tattoos

provide a symbolic, protective layer for those most marginalized or subject to state

systems of power, while simultaneously answering a need for belonging, camaraderie,

and “a defiant acceptance of misery and ill fortune” (Benson 239). Tattooing speaks to a

claiming of the body; marginalized populations like those of the prison and barracks not

only claim their own bodies but claim national belonging through their tattoos. By tattooing colonial and imperialist imagery, these populations align themselves with 58 whiteness and imperial expansion, augmenting settler colonialism and distinguishing themselves from racialized others.

For sailors and servicemen, tattoos most saliently externalize a sense of brotherhood with their peers, build solidarity, and make visible internal bonds. They also paradoxically symbolize a deference to American military institutions, while asserting the individual body’s independence from those institutions. Military tattoos signal both communal belonging and bodily autonomy. Overtly nationalist designs, such as flags and straightforward Navy, Army, or Marine tattoos, are blunt testaments to patriotism and

American ideology. Slightly less subtle are the highly racialized images of Native women, Hawaiian hula-dancers, and seductive geishas, which speak to the more insidious imperialist tendencies of American military institutions. Even rendered with overtly

Americanized tastes, tattooing in the midcentuiy was still firmly associated with primitivism and racialized others. While the American military operation spread its tendrils across the globe and international power dynamics were restructured through

WWI and WWII, sailors and soldiers permanently etched their own spoils of war into their flesh, as if each Hula dancer or Indian princess represented his personal conquest over unruly racial others.

Figure 17, an original flash sheet painted by Sailor Jerry, one of the most influential artists of the Golden Age, is an exceptionally striking example of the overtly sexual and racial images that saturated the tattoo industry at this time. The painting 59

Fig. 17 Pinup Flash Sheet, Jerry Collins. Sailor Jerry Tattoo Flash Vol. 1, 1996.

depicts five women in traditional pinup poses and costuming. Their skin tone and facial

features are nearly identical; their distinction comes from the color of their hair and

clothing, a clear marker of race on otherwise ambiguous figures. From left to right the

sheet shows a brunette Native American woman, a blonde in typical 1940’s clothing,

another blonde dressed as a cowgirl, a redhead in a sort of pirate-inspired bikini, and

another brunette in an ambiguous tropical dress with a red flower in her hair. While all

the women are scantily clad, the blondes are covered the most; the Native American

woman is the most exposed and placed in a more overtly sexual posture than her

comrades. Unlike most of the other women, her hands are disappeared entirely, hidden behind her body. The cowgirl is the most prominent figure, centered in the middle of the page and flanked on each side by sparrows; the most clearly racialized women, the 60

Native American and ambiguous tropical woman, are pushed to the edges of the sheet.

This image suggests an entitlement on the part of tattoo artists and clients; not only can

they claim a sort of ownership over these female archetypes by having their images

permanently marked into the flesh, but the composition of the piece tacitly speaks to the

ideologies of western imperial expansion. The white woman, playing cowgirl, takes

center stage as the racialized women, more noticeably sexualized, are pushed to the

periphery.

Figure 18, another Sailor Jerry flash piece painted while he lived in Hawaii during

the 1940’s, is less sexualized but speaks to the intense nationalism and imperialism that

marked the Golden Age. In typical flash sheet fashion, several small, badge like images

decorate the page, all within the same color palette and motif. The paintings include a

ship with a banner reading Homeward Bound, island scenes labeled as South Seas,

Honolulu, and Hawaii, and a heart with a banner for a loved one’s name. In the center, a blonde pinup wearing a red bikini bottom and green scuba flippers wrestles a shark, dagger in hand. She is topless, but her nakedness is covered by the long, sword-like snout of the shark she wrestles with. In contrast, the only other woman on the page is a dark haired woman lounging against a palm tree and overlooking a pacific sunset, naked except for a grass hula skirt. The image is reminiscent of Theodore Galle’s 1580 engraving America (Figure 19); while Galle’s piece depicts the initial moment of contact between Natives and settlers, both images utilize the same discourses on Indigenous populations and colonial conquest. Both the Native women are depicted as sensual, at one 61

Fig. 18 Hawaii Flash Sheet, Jerry Collins. Sailor Jerry Tattoo Flash Vol. 1,

AMERICA Anurictn ^Amrricus ntexti Sand vfftmit exntam Fig. 19 America, Theodor Galle, 1630. Digital image via Wikipedia. 62 with nature, free from labor or any signs of western progress or civilization. In Galle’s rendering, the white settler is presented as her benefactor, there to pull her out of savagery and into the progressivism of the west. Much like in Sailor Jerry’s other flash sheets, the women’s skin tone and visages are nearly identical, their positioning and costuming defines their difference. The woman in the grass skirt is not marked as a racialized Other solely by her costuming and dark hair; her positioning as demure and receptive indicates an openness to conquest by either an individual or state colonial powers. In contrast, the clearly white pinup is centered and enlarged, not only in a position of action but in one that clearly places her as agential; the act of subduing and killing the shark can be read as her conquering the pacific itself. In this way, she becomes a proxy for her wearer, a symbol for his triumph through his complicity in American militarization and imperial expansion. Likewise, each island tattoo, most likely acquired after landing, serve as reminders and signals of the spaces white settler colonists are able enter, conquer, and claim.

Margot DeMello has argued that the association with servicemen and patriotism may have made tattoos more socially acceptable in the midcentury than at any other previous time in American history (63). They certainly represented a sense of national belonging at a time when white Americans were particularly attuned to race and immigration. Nationalist and military tattoos continue to be popular among tattooed

Americans, their popularity spiking in times of war or crises. However, during the 1950’s tattooing was still typically associated with sketchy men and criminality, and generally 63

Fig. 20 Flash Sheet with Archer and Big Cats, Holly Ellis, 2015. The Girl Book, 2015.

considered the mark of anti-authoritarianism (Mifflin 26). Tattooing was banned in some

cities, and outbreaks of hepatitis due to poor hygiene in tattoo shops were known to occur

(Govenar 232). While tattoo shops eventually began following hygienic standards thanks

to the work of industry titans like Ed Hardy and Charles Wagner, the association with

anti-authoritarianism remained well until the end of the twentieth century, when the tattoo

industry burst into the mainstream and the “tattoo renaissance” began.

While traditional style tattoos continued to be popular within the tattoo

community, by the 1960’s the industry and imagery were rapidly changing. Increased globalization, health regulations, technical improvements, and an influx of tattooers with fine art backgrounds had the combined effect of drastically changing the clientele and 64 possibilities of tattooing (Benson 240). Efforts by artists and old-school tattooers to make tattooing a reputable industry and more familiar to broader audiences resulted in the development of magazines, books, and conventions. These changes are inextricably linked with the increased commodification of tattooing; formerly the practice of marginalized groups, over the past fifty years tattooing has become another outlet for late capitalist consumerism and identity formation. The increased commodification of tattooing and appeals to broader audiences have led to an explosive expansion in the types and styles of tattooing; now traditional Japanese, celtic, tribal, new school, black and grey, and photo-realistic tattoos are as common as traditional American flash (Benson

240). Historically tattoo enthusiasts would be subject to their artists pre-made designs with little room for customization; now tattoos are endlessly customizable and clients frequently seek work specifically tailored to their unique tastes and personalities.

After the sexual liberation and feminist movements of the sixties and seventies, it became relatively more acceptable for women to become tattooed. Much of this was also due to the expanded commodification of tattooing, which was becoming increasingly fashionable. San Francisco based artist Lyle Tuttle, who counted among his celebrity clients Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, and Cher, credited the women’s movement with revitalizing the tattoo industry after the postwar decline (Mifflin 55). Women had more financial independence, social norms were more lax than they had been in the 1950’s, and books like Our Bodies Ourselves encouraged bodily autonomy and self determination.

The influx in female clientele had a deeply influential hand in shaking up the traditional 65

tattoo repertoire. Not only did the imagery change, but the application as well; thick black

outlines and bold fields of color was no longer the norm as softer lines, shading, and

color palettes became available for intricate floral designs and fine art portraiture. Like

the servicemen of the forties and fifties, women often got tattooed to externalize the

internal and sometimes build community; remembering Joplin, Tuttle recalled “I put a

heart on her chest, and the day after her death there was a girl standing in front of the

shop wanting the heart I put on her, in remembrance. Hundreds of them got the same idea

at the same time.” Despite the increase in tattooed women, successful women tattoo

artists were still far and few between.

Just as influential to the tattoo community as the influx in women members was

the increased interest in non-Western tattooing, particularly traditional Japanese and the

catch-all style known as “tribal.” Tuttle, partially responsible for mainstreaming tattoos

by inking celebrities like Joplin and Cher, also introduced Samoan tattooing to the U.S.

Daniel Rosenblatt argues that the acceptance of tattooing in Polynesia, Borneo, and

Melanesia may have been inspiring to Westerners typically abjected for their tattoos; this

is perhaps one reason “primitive” styles have been appropriated by American clients

(302). These traditions, including traditional Japanese tattooing, are often described by tattoo artists and enthusiasts within the context of their historical longevity; this is

intended to underscore the authenticity, as well as the historical and cultural significance of certain forms of tattooing. Under settler colonialism, indigenous cultures and communities are often perceived as temporally behind their western counterparts; the 66 emphasis on “ancient” body modification practices contributes to these colonial logics by situating Indigenous practices as part of the past. Furthermore, it erases the Indigenous populations that continue to struggle to reclaim their customary practices, nearly wiped out because of colonial violence and missionary work. Nevertheless, the attraction to non-western tattooing took hold, and tattooists who were trained in traditional American tattooing like Tuttle and Ed Hardy were the primary engineers of the tattoo renaissance and introduction of non-Western styles.

Since the seventies, tattooing has been a maelstrom of appropriation and cultural intermixing. Hardy, who appropriated and mainstreamed traditional Japanese and

Chicano black and grey tattooing, argued that the authenticity of American tattooing is in fact derived from this cultural blending, saying that “tattooing is the great art of piracy... it’s a totally bastardized art. Tattoo artists have always taken images from anything available that customers might wanna have tattooed on them” (Benson 242). This seemingly innocent remark and the use of the word piracy reveals the deep roots of colonialism within American tattooing; the practice itself is compared to imperial acts of theft. Hardy’s influence reveals the ways in which tattoo practices are not only appropriated from cultures outside the United States, but from abjected communities within the United States as well. This “bastardization” and appropriation in the broader tattoo community lead to the formation of smaller subgroups and tattoo styles, most notably Modem Primitives and tribal tattooing, which haphazardly appropriate from

Indigenous and “tribal” body adornment practices. These practices in turn have been 67

commodified by the mainstream, with individuals who are most likely entirely unaware

of the modern primitivist movement sporting tribal tattoos and piercings. In examining

the modem primitive subculture, Rosenblatt wrote:

It seems as though the whole history of Western speculation about other cultures has been tossed in a blender with more than a little New Age mysticism and some contemporary sexual radicalism thrown in besides. Indeed, I cannot avoid the sense that this is some sort of funhouse mirror image of the mobilization of ‘tradition’ that are such a striking feature of the contemporary Pacific (Rosenblatt 288).

The modern primitivism movement emerged out of California in the 1970’s and

coincided with various other subcultures, including the queer, neo-pagan, new age, and

BDSM communities. Modem primitives distinguish themselves as those who answer

“primal urges” to modify the body, in practices that founder Fakir Musafar (Figure 21)

calls “body play” (Klesse 2007). According to practitioners, these customs transcend

temporal and social boundaries. Tattooing and piercing fall under the subcategory of play

by “penetration” or “invasion;” other practices include piercing, branding, scarification,

corsetry, and suspension. Klesse cites spirituality, rites of passage, sexual enhancement,

aesthetics, and group affiliation as some of the motives behind intense body modification

practices. These practices have varying intentions and effects; often they are ritualistic in nature, and are meant to encourage spiritual awakening and communal bonding. They can also be helpful in overcoming trauma, exploring sexuality, or forming identity, perceptions that are shared by some tattoo enthusiasts in the mainstream. Rosenblatt argues that even though these practices are discursively considered “primitive,” the ideas concerning the fashioning of identity and binaries between the self and society they are intertwined with are explicitly Western in origin (298).

Victoria Pitts argues that body modifiers like the ones found in the primitivism movement can be categorized within the context of “body work,” a term that envelopes working out, alternative health, and plastic surgery, the practices of_ which ,. , FakjfFig. 21 Musafar Fakir as , g59the Perfect Th|s |mage Gentleman, Qf Musafar practicing corsetry exhibits one way in which facilitate individual-self expression, modern primitivist practices can subvert traditional gender and beauty norms. fulfill identity needs, and mark one’s affinity for, relationship to, or rejection of mainstream culture within a widening set of identity options” (Pitts 445). What Pitts does not explore further are the differing intentions and cultural reactions to the practices listed; while non-mainstream body practices like heavy tattooing, scarification, and branding are similar to cosmetic surgery and yoga in that they are an aspect of identity formation, cosmetic surgery and fitness have the intent of normalizing the body and attaining culturally idealized beauty standards. Transgression and nonconformity are at the heart of nontraditional modification practices, particularly modem primitivism; modem primitives commitment 69 to alternative forms of sexual freedom and bodily adornment is their primary mode of rejection of modem society, “coded in a naive longing for the ‘authentic primitive’” (Klesse 18). The stigmatization of the practices not only derives from their extremity but in the ways in which they reject normative ways of embodiment (Pitts 444).

The transgression modem primitives strive for is predicated on Western constructions of the primitive, particularly as the binary opposite of “civilized” culture. Benson rightly points out that practices like tattooing, piercing, and branding are already considered oppositional; as these practices become more mainstream, the association with primitivism and atavism is what allows these practices to be read as transgressive (242).

Most significant to the modern primitivist movement is the appropriation of

Indigenous rituals and customs in order to subvert normative perceptions of embodiment, beauty, and sexuality (Pitts 443). These practices are typically a pastiche of traditional

Indigenous practices, Western perceptions of embodiment, or primitivism as imagined by western settlers. In closing her historical tracing of primitivism, Marianna Torgovnick argues that “the west seems to need the primitive as a precondition and a supplement to its sense of self; it always creates heightened versions of the primitive as nightmare or pleasant dream” (246). Since the seventeenth century, body modification practices have always been utilized by Europeans to shape perceptions of the primitive, whether they be pleasant or nightmarish. Traveling performers who spoke of capture and torture at the hands of Natives conjured violent images of Indigeneity that supplemented justifications for imperial expansion into the West, while modern primitives imagine Indigeneity as 70

earthy, pure, and spiritual. While both perceptions seem drastically different, they are the

intimately linked, stemming from the same binary colonial discourses of civilized and

primitive. Susan Benson argues that the interest in Indigenous body modification

practices signals a turn, primitivism as desirable rather than abject (242). Modern

Primitives certainly see Indigeneity as a pleasant, coveted dream; primitivists utilize an

essentialist conception of Indigeneity, shaped by the colonial discourses of the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries, as a way of rejecting modern society (Klesse 18). For theorists

like Klesse, the recycling of these colonial discourses is precisely what makes modern

primitivism ineffective; they produce the gendered and racialized hierarchies of power

they supposedly intend to reject. In his book Playing Indian, Philip Deloris critically

examines the ways in which Americans have historically appropriated Native attires and practices to resolve crises of identity and paradoxically reject and claim settler hierarchies

of power. This type of appropriation is an especially insidious form of settler colonialism; it contributes to the erasure of Indigenous ways of being by rewriting them as part of white settler subjectivity (Morgensen 18).

Ethnographic studies have shown that while participants within the modern primitivist community often have diverse conceptions of the movement and differing socio-economic backgrounds, they are primarily white (Klesse, Pitts, Rosenblatt).

Nonconformity and transgression of a normalized American culture are the core appeal of modem primitivism; this transgression arises from the deconstruction of gender, sexuality, body and body-image within body modification performances and rituals 71

(Klesse ). Notably absent from these practices is a deconstruction of race; while modem

primitives subvert hegemonic notions of sexuality and gender, whiteness and its ability to

function as normative or as the absence of identity remains untouched. Furthermore, the

lack of awareness of the violent colonial discourses practitioners borrow from, or the

ways in which modern sexuality and gender have been shaped by colonialism

(Morgensen; Stoler) diminishes any possibilities for subversion.

The concept of the primitive has long been hailed in Western culture as an avenue

for socio-cultural criticism and as an analytic tool for white Euro-Americans to navigate

the racial and gender ambiguities of the modern era (Klesse 1999). The modernist work

of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Gauguin all exalted the “irrationality” of the primitive in

order to critique the suffocating nature of industrial capitalism and the artistic standards

set by bourgeois academics (Rosenblatt 295). The modernist art use of primitivism to

reject Western culture is dependent on Western culture’s construction of indigeneity as

irrational and highly sexualized; this is apparent in such works as Picasso’s Les

Demoiselles d ’Avignon and Gauguin’s Spirit o f the Dead Watching (Figure 22). Picasso’s

piece uses Africanized masks to explore the dangers of excessive sexuality, while

Gauguin’s portrays his barely pubescent Tahitian wife as irrational, superstitious and

sexually available for the white male gaze. In the same way that modem primitives collapse and homogenize “tribal” practices from various cultural, geographical, and temporal contexts, artists like Gauguin and Picasso produced pastiche works that also homogenize various non-Western techniques and visual styles (Connelly 2). While modernists used the

primitive to reject the

type of art expected

by the bourgeois and

the academy, modem

primitives use body

modification to reject

the type of subjects

expected within a late

capitalist culture. For Fig. 22 Spirit of the Dead Watching, Paul Gauguin, 1892.

both modernists and Modem Primitivists, the specificity of various non-Western cultures

and communities is irrelevant; the concept of primitivism is the driving force behind their

ideology. As Connelly puts it, “primitivism” was born from the eyes of the European

beholder (3).

The construction and romanticization of the primitive stretches as far back as the

Enlightenment; modem primitivism relies on the augmentation of binaries that compose

Western thought, specifically male/female, nature/culture, self/other, and primitive/ civilized (Klesse 1999). These binaries are central to the formation of Western identity and justifications for colonial expansion, which is illegible without the construction of a racialized and abjected Other. The emphasis on the sexual freedom of primitive cultures is in itself constructed as oppositional to the Western belief that civilization is elevated 73

through the containment and regulation of bodies and their sexual excesses (Klesse 24).

Klesse argues:

It was in the gendered and sexualized images of the ‘sensual oriental’, or the ‘natural’ and ‘primitive African’, that the ambiguities of the situation of Western men and women were worked through. The colonial imaginary and the colonial context provided the space where uninhibited sexual relationships, based on the idea of an unproblematic and free body, could be fantasized... Shifts toward ‘primitivism’ thus, are no singular phenomenon in history; the ambivalences of the Enlightenment and the naturalism and anti-rationalism of Romanticism were the precedents of contemporary Modern Primitivism (Klesse 25).

The imagined sexual excesses of non-Western cultures is what justified colonial violences

abroad and increased policing of bodies in the West as explored in Foucault’s Discipline

and Punish and The History o f Sexuality.

It is precisely this colonial foundation that makes the work of modem primitivists

inadequate when it comes to radical cultural criticism. That is not to say that modern

primitivists do not achieve some of what they set out to do; as highlighted by Pitts,

Klesse, Benson and Morgensen, body modification practices like those within the modem

primitivist movement and intersecting cultures have the ability to undermine and

deconstruct normalizing concepts of gender, sexuality, and the body. In this way, modern

primitivists can be subversive. Modern primitivists often intersect with queer subcultures;

for Pitts, intense body modification practices are akin to performance art, drag, and anti- aesthetic cosmetic surgery. The “spectacularly queer bodies” draw attention by transgressing bodily norms and embracing non-normative desires and identities (446). 74

Many body modification rituals utilize performativity in their deconstructions of hegemony. Performativity and a communal audience is one of the defining characteristics of modem primitivism, and these practices are at times characterized as rites of passage

(Rosenblatt 316). The emphasis on rites of passages and communal engagement stem from Western conceptions of indigenous social structures and a sense that contemporary

American culture lacks these bonds and identity forming moments. Similarly, the spiritual emphasis on these practices derives from the assumption that “ancient” and

“primitive” cultures are more intuitive and esoteric, attributes devalued by Western society (318). This perception has outlived the modem primitivist movement, with contemporary tattoos such as dreamcatchers and kanjis falling under the rubric of both spiritual and appropriative. The act of becoming tattooed has the effect of allowing the wearer to feel a connection to nebulous indigenous ways of knowing. Central to this is the communal and ritualistic aspect, distinguishing modern primitivists from those who engage in these practices in privatized, consumerists spaces like mainstream tattoo and piercing shops (Torgovnick 1995). This emphasis on the spiritual and cultural significance of ancient and traditional non-Western tattooing practices is somewhat paradoxical; enthusiasts use the historical grounding of the practices to imbue them with concepts of authenticity and higher meaning, yet they also rely on Western conflations of tattooing and deviance to maintain their intended differentiation from mainstream society; appropriated tattoos can then harbor a multiplicity of meanings and intentions. 75

While many proponents of modern primitivism recognize modification practices

are not largely accepted in the West, they seldom acknowledge how Western intervention

and colonial violence systemically criminalized indigenous tattooing practices. In Vale

and Juno’s Modern Primitives, Vale commented that Christian intervention and the

destruction of indigenous culture made the world “a much less interesting place” (95). As

I discussed in Chapter One, while tattooing became more familiar to the west, colonial

expansion was drastically reducing traditional practices in Indigenous communities.

Colonists used corporeal violence to discourage tattooing, scarification, and other

practices, or removed Indigenous children from their homes as a way to cut off the

genealogical passage of traditional customs. Modern primitivists ignore the violences that

made the world “much less interesting,” instead opting for a form of nostalgia that

absolves them of responsibility in inheriting the legacies of these violences (Torgovnick; hooks), bell hooks argues that this longing for a primitive erased past, without an adequate acknowledgement of colonialism’s part in the destruction of that past, constitutes what she calls “imperialist nostalgia” (hooks 369). She argues that this nostalgia manifests itself in a longing for nonviolent contact which “assuages the guilt of the past, and even takes the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection.” hooks’ analysis echoes Morgensen’s argument that the destruction of Indigeneity and construction of settler ways of being requires from the white settler a degree of intimacy, even desire for the Indigenous Other (17). Modem primitivists express an affinity and appreciation for the primitive that manifests itself in haphazard 76 appropriation with the intention of rejecting the subjectivity and behavior required of late capitalist, neoliberal culture. In rejecting this culture without fully understanding the tools they use, modem primitivists reproduce settler colonial violence and reaffirm their positioning as privileged subjects within the very culture they supposedly reject.

At the core of modem primitivist ideology, and perhaps even tattooing itself, is the belief that when the body is modified, the inner self becomes modified. This phenomenon is naturalized in the contemporary moment, when body projects are consistently viewed as an avenue for forming identity and as body modification becomes enveloped in modern consumerist culture. Modem primitives believe that the modifications they participate in not only form identity against the normative but subvert and destabilize normative Western culture as a whole. Placed within the context of hooks’ analysis, by appropriating indigenous modification practices white participants are able to feel as if they are not complicit in the historical or contemporary violences caused by colonial domination. As Klesse and Pitts have argued, this assumption is unconvincing because of the way modem primitivists rely on colonial discourses on race and indigenous culture to formulate their ideology. In this context, extreme body modification does little more than augment individual identities in crisis. As hooks argues,

Masses of young people dissatisfied by U.S. imperialism, unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, afflicted by the postmodern malaise of alienation, no sense of grounding, no redemptive identity, can be manipulated by cultural strategies that offer Otherness as appeasement, particularly through commodification... When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of 77

dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other (hooks 367).

Despite their good intentions, primitivists participate in American commodification, consumerism, and discourses of neoliberal multiculturalism, claiming the Indigenous practices granted by their privilege in a settler colonial state. In this sense, modem primitivism does not wholly subvert Western society but reaffirms the typically white participants hierarchal position within it. While body modification practices are transgressive in that they engage with normative perceptions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment, they affirm white settler colonialism.

While the modem primitivist movement has receded, and tribal tattoos proved to most definitely be a passing fad, there is still an overtly racialized element in tattooing. In many ways, the ideology of the modern primitivists has been absorbed and depoliticized in the mainstream, with tattoos of dreamcatchers, Native headdresses, om symbols, mandalas and other appropriated imagery becoming some of the most common designs.

Traditional flash designs are experiencing a resurgence in popularity as well, with sexualized and racialized images of Hula dancers, Native women, and “gypsies” still in circulation. Appropriation and racial insensitivity is not confined solely to traditional flash; the popularity of Chinese and Japanese characters, mandalas, faux henna designs, and dream catchers all speak to the ways in which whiteness is still reiterated by borrowing from indigenous cultures as a way to formulate identity. Contemporary interest in dream catchers and Native pinups suggest that Americans are finding newer ways to 78

“play indian.” Furthermore, the increasing commodification of tattooing, coupled with neoliberal discourses on individuality and self-possession, obscure the hierarchies of power that characterize contemporary tattoo culture. 79

Chapter Three: ’May the Best Woman Win:’ Ink Master, Political Activism and Commodity Feminism

For the first time in history tattoos have moved from the margins of American culture into the mainstream. Women in particular are becoming tattooed at rates higher than that of their male counterparts, with twice as many millennial women getting tattooed as millennial men. Tattooing is becoming normalized and far more acceptable within the United States as a result increasing commodification by the fashion and television industries as well as the mainstreaming of the field by artists like Ed Hardy and

Sailor Jerry. Although more women are getting tattooed and perceptions towards tattooed women are certainly becoming more accepting, these attitudes are still tenuous. Tattooing is a highly masculinized field, and there’s roughly only one woman tattoo artist for every six men (Baritaux 2017). Women tattoo artists and clients experience sexism and discrimination, and with no formal workplace structures to provide assistance most women find it easier to either look for a new tattoo shop or a new artist. Furthermore, an overall lack of women within the field can make it more difficult for other women to find compatible artists to apprentice them, compounding the already difficult task of breaking into the industry and building up a clientele. In addition to these industry barriers, tattooed women are typically overly sexualized, and media representations exacerbate this viewpoint. While reality television shows such as Ink Master, LA Ink and NY Ink are making female tattoo artists more visible, they also represent these women as sexualized 80 models, suggesting a delicate balance between traditional and non-traditional beauty standards.

Even with the overt sexualization of tattooed women, many young women are getting tattooed and often associate the choice with feminist attitudes towards body autonomy, agency, and empowerment. In recent years, pop culture feminist sites such as Bust,

Bitch, and Broadly have been Rg 23 GRL PWR Digital image via Pinterest. increasingly putting out articles with titles like “13 Feminist Tattoos That Will Make You Want to Get Inked Right Now” and

“23 Feminist Tattoos That are Perfect for Permanently Smashing the Patriarchy.” Just in recent months, politically charged tattoos have gone viral, with women getting phrases like “Nevertheless, she persisted” and “Nasty Woman” permanently etched into their skin. As a will discuss further at the end of this chapter, tattoos are becoming increasingly associated not only with women, but with feminism, with countless young women sharing how their tattoos reflect their politics on social media platforms like Facebook,

Instagram, and Tumblr. Furthermore, artists and activists are working to carve out spaces for female, queer, and non-binary tattoo collectors both online and in tattoo shops. With 81 the help of social media, the future of the tattoo industry is undoubtedly looking more inclusive, feminist, and queer. But this brings us back to the question I posed in the introductory chapter; is getting a feminist tattoo really an act of feminism? Perhaps it can be, or perhaps it’s simply an empty gesture, akin to wearing a safety pin meant to signal racial solidarity.

When we consider tattooing’s racialized past within the North American context, the question of the feminist possibilities of tattooing become more tenuous, particularly considering the ways in which this past continues to encroach on the present. Traditional

American tattoos, cemented in style and content during the Golden Age of the mid­ twentieth century, are increasing in popularity once more, meaning that the racist images

of the 30s and 40s are in

circulation once again. The

most popular of these images

continue to be pin ups of

Hula dancers, geishas, and

Native American women, not

to mention the ever popular

“gypsy girl-head.” Even non-

traditional tattoos can reflect

Fig. 24 Safety Pin via Pinterest. colonial ideologies of race and imperial conquest; essentialist and ambiguous “tribal” tattoos borrowed from the modern primitives are still in circulation, as well as the increasingly popular dreamcatcher and mandala tattoos. As I will discuss at the end of this chapter, online activists are finding more and Fig. 25 No Means No, Ashley Love, 2014. Love donates proceeds from her Still Not Asking for It flash sheet to anti sexual violence organizations more ways to call out and like The Joyful Heart Foundation. deconstruct the racial dynamics of contemporary tattoo practices; websites like the Tumblr site Permanent Racism and the blog Hanzi Smarter provide spaces for intersectional feminist debates on the racist history behind tattooing, indicative of the ways in which digital media is shaping contemporary feminism. Hester Baer argues that the emergent relationship between digital feminisms and representations of female (or genderqueer) bodies suggests “a risky and provocative space for an emergent feminist politics that moves away from an emphasis on equality and rights pursued through conventional legal and legislative channels” (Baer 18). This turn is indicative of an overall change in feminist activism under neoliberalism; the state is becoming increasingly unreliable in adequately addressing inequality, with more 83 activists individualizing protest and activism through their own bodies within a capitalist system (Kantola and Squires 389). Despite the changes happening due to social media, the mainstream tattoo industry is slow to change, particularly as it continues to become commodified and normalized though pop culture and reality television.

As I have argued in the previous chapters, attitudes towards tattooing in the

United States have always been intimately linked to perceptions of gender and race. Prior to the twentieth century, tattooing was associated with spectacle, the primitive, and imperial contact with exotics Others. In the first half of the twentieth century tattooing became increasingly associated with militarism and hyper-masculinity, but by the turn of the century tattooing and extreme body modification, often still associated with the primitive and Indigeneity, were co-opted on a mass scale. While this co-optation seemingly signified a rejection of neocolonialism and exploitative transnational capitalism, it often reaffirmed the white supremacist hierarchies of race and gender that are the foundation of the modern settler colonial state. A characteristic of capitalist neoliberalism is that it results in a “commodification of dissent,” wherein social justice movements become increasingly dependent on either corporate or government markets

(Kantola and Squires 391). Tattooing as a practice of dissent and a refusal of the normative has itself gone through a commodification; once reserved for marginalized communities, tattooing is now a mainstream industry and appears to have lost its edge.

The hierarchal perceptions of gender and race that characterized perceptions of tattooing in the past three centuries are still present in the contemporary sociopolitical 84 landscape. As Jodi Melamed argues in Represent and Destroy, since the global restructuring and increased calls for decolonization that occurred after WWII, race has been presented as a “contradiction to modernity rather than one of its structuring conditions;” the anti-racist, liberal discourse that create the aura of contemporary neoliberal multiculturalism in fact “revises, partners with, and exceeds the capacities of white supremacy without replacing or ending it” (Melamed 7). Under the normative powers of neoliberal multiculturalism, inequality is rendered as natural and justified, culture, politics, and economics are viewed as distinct, and individual value is derived from one’s ability to successfully navigate free market capitalism (Melamed 2011;

Duggan 2007). Under neoliberalism, institutionalized discourses produce “permissible narratives of difference” wherein certain subjects gain access to rights and freedoms as the “normative model” legibly incorporates them (Melamed 14). This incorporation is signaled through discourses on inclusion, diversity, multiculturalism, and similar liberal buzzwords.

Feminism itself has undergone a quiet cooptation within neoliberalism, with discourses that emphasize independence, individual empowerment, and self-esteem neatly fitting in with neoliberal capitalist frameworks. This cooptation has resulted in the naturalization of a depoliticized neoliberal feminism, wherein discourses that support equality through the free market are encouraged while overt politicization is repudiated

(Baer 20; Rottenberg 2014). Neoliberalism produces it’s own psuedo-feminist subjects, augmenting a depoliticized feminism that does not seek to dismantle but in fact supports 85 systems of oppression such as capitalism, white supremacy and settler colonialism. Lisa

Duggan argues that “in practice contemporary neoliberal policies have been implemented in and through culture and politics, reinforcing contesting relations of class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, or nationality” (Duggan 7). In other words, the cultural landscapes through which we define and engage with feminism, tattooing, and empowerment are in fact the very spaces where neoliberalism is augmented. In this chapter I argue that Spike’s competition show Ink Master produces institutional discourses on tattooing within a neoliberal capitalist sphere, shaping “permissible narratives of difference” within the tattoo industry, and that season eight’s winner is herself an example of feminism as produced by neoliberal capitalism. Through a close reading of the eighth season of Ink Master, I will examine the ways in which race and gender are confronted within a framework of neoliberal multicultural politics that encompass the show and other contemporary media representations of the tattoo industry.

While gender plays a significant and highly visible role in the eighth season, I argue that the possibilities and limits of neoliberal attitudes towards race and multicultural inclusion are also visibly present yet seldom addressed on and offscreen.

Under neoliberalism, white supremacy and racism are naturalized or viewed as a problem of the past; this perception is apparent in contemporary studies of tattooed

Americans, many of which focus on attitudes towards tattoos based on gender and marketability (whether they interfere with employment) but ignore race. While countless studies focus on sexist perceptions towards tattooing women, few consider attitudes 86 towards racialized tattooed subjects. The fact that most studies of tattooed Americans focus on gender and attractiveness rather than race suggests that tattooing has only become generally acceptable for white people, and that tattoo cultural is still viewed under the whitewashing lens of neoliberal multiculturalism. This attitude is apparent in

Season Eight of Ink Master, where discussions of gender discrimination take the forefront and racism is never addressed, despite their being instances of racism on the show.

As was made evident in earlier chapters, the American public has always had a fascination towards tattooed women. Of the few contemporary studies gauging attitudes towards tattooed women, generally they find that while more women are becoming tattooed they are still perceived in a more negative light than their male counterparts.

Overall, American women with tattoos are perceived as more masculine, less honest, less generous, and less intelligent (Mehta 2013, Hawkes et al 2004), as well as less competent and socially equipped (Gueguen 1518) than their non-tattooed peers. Based on the findings of their 2004 study on perceptions towards tattooed women, Hawkes, Senn, and

Thorn argue that tattooed women are more likely to be regarded with negative attitudes because of their combined disregard for conformity in appearance and subversion of traditional gender roles (595). The researchers found that tattooed women were viewed negatively by both men and women, particularly women who wear larger, more visible tattoos. In addition to this, the researchers found that women without tattoos are viewed as more passive and less powerful than their tattooed contemporaries, an association that is related to the perception of tattooed women as more masculine and independent. The 87 researchers also found that participants who were more likely to exhibit positive attitudes towards feminism were more likely to be more accepting of tattooed women (601).

Psychologist Nicolas Gueguen found that while men view tattooed women as less attractive, they also typically view them as more sexually promiscuous and available.

Furthermore, Gueguen found that women with visible tattoos were twice as likely to be solicited by men out in public than women without tattoos, and that men typically considered tattooed women to be more likely to agree to a date (Mehta 2013). Gueguen argues that the perception of tattooed women as more promiscuous, less competent, and of lower socioeconomic status all contribute to this increased pursuit of tattooed women by men (1523). His results certainly contradict the findings of previous studies that suggest tattoos are viewed as unattractive on women, suggesting that attitudes are either in flux or paradoxical.

While rarely addressed by contemporary and ethnographic studies on women with tattoos, race also plays a significant factor in the ways in which tattooed women are perceived. As Xuan Santos points out in his study of Chicana tattoo cultures, authors like

Margot Mifflin often only read Chicana tattoos in relation to their boyfriends, children, gang affiliation, or time spent in jail rather than as distinct cultural markers (Santos 104).

Santos argues that racialized women who are tattooed are more blatantly associated with prostitution and criminality than their white counterparts; tattooed men of color are no doubt more likely to be read as criminal than their white counterparts as well, an assumption that dates back to Cesare Lombroso’s highly racialized assessment of 88 criminality as discussed in Chapter One. While white women’s tattoos are read through agency and sexuality, on Chicanas they are read as markers of subordination to either male partners or the state.

Given all this, tattooed women are subversive in some ways, particularly women who opt to become fully tattooed; the ability of women to successfully navigate and take ownership of that subversion can often be dependent on race and class, with white women often having more space in terms of acceptability. Becoming marked in this way speaks to a disregard for normative femininity, and an ownership of the body. Studies on tattooed women that engage with sexual attractiveness diminish this agency. These studies do little to actually interrogate the sexualization of tattooed female bodies; rarely do they examine the ways in which media representations of tattooed women effect or are influenced by these perceptions. While they often ask both men and women to assess the attractiveness of tattoos on women, rarely are either asked to gauge the attractiveness of tattoos on men. Furthermore, these studies augment the idea that the female body can only be knowable through the sexual desires of men, contradicting another common perception: that women getting tattooed is an inherent assertion of bodily autonomy.

The contradiction found in contemporary studies concerning attractiveness and tattoos comes from researchers misconceptions of the increasing fetishization of women and tattoos. I argue, based on the research previously addressed and my own personal experiences, that while many Americans actually do view tattoos as attractive, it is largely an attraction predicated on taboo. Overt or unconscious associations between tattoos, the 89 primitive, sex work, and society’s margins all float together in a constellation of unconventional desire for the mysterious and quite possibly dangerous tattooed woman; she may be fun to fool around with but not someone to bring home to mom. This attitude is of course compounded by the overt sexualization of tattoos that are traditionally considered to be more feminine, resulting in iconic monikers such as the “tramp stamp.”

Two out of three of the top results for a Reddit search of “tattooed women” are essentially softcore pom, while publications like Suicide Girls have compounded the fetishization of tattoos. Needless to say, attitudes and reactions towards men with tattoos are typically outside the realm of sexuality entirely.

The intersections of the modern primitivist community and alternative sex communities, both of which utilized a Western perception of Indigenous peoples and practices as more sexual than westerners, contributed to the sexualization of tattooing, but the fetishization of tattooed women goes back further. The sexualization of tattooed women is historical, partially stemming from Cesare Lombroso’s nineteenth century association between tattoos and sex workers, along with the sultry tattooed ladies of the early twentieth century. Tattooed performers often wore clothing typically reserved for brothels and vaudeville shows in order to properly display their tattoos and draw in crowds; audiences came for the double tattoo of viewing flesh that was both naked and unnaturally marked. These practices ensured that becoming a tattooed lady was a lucrative career up to a point; though Nora Hildebrandt was a trailblazer as the first fully tattooed lady, she was quickly replaced by the younger and prettier Irene Woodward 90

(Sokol 2015). While the risque presentation of tattooed ladies ensure the industry was a

robust one, it cemented the association between tattooed women and promiscuity, an

attitude that clearly has changed little in the following century.

Tattoo historian and collector Anni Irish (one of her tattoos is of the word

“verbose” written across her knuckles) argues that the influence of these early women

performers can be traced through to the contemporary moment, in particular to the

current tattoo reality TV trend. In her 2013 article “The New Tattooed Lady: A Social and

Sexual Analysis of Kat Von D and Megan Massacre,” Irish argues that reality TV

trailblazers like Von D and Massacre are essentially the contemporary equivalents of the

tattooed ladies of the 1900s. Like Nora Hildebrandt, Maude Wagner and Artoria Gibbons,

Von D and Massacre offer tattoos and entertainment to middle-class, mainstream

audiences, all through a highly crafted media personality and a carefully deployed use of

sexuality. As Irish argues, the hyper-visibility of tattooed women/artists/entertainers like

Von D, Massacre, and as I argue Ink Master season eight’s first female winner, Ryan

Ashley Malarkey, compounds the sexualization of tattooed women.

Both Kat Von D and Megan Massacre got their start in pop culture after appearing

as tattoo artists on TLC’s reality shows NY Ink and Miami Ink, with Von D launching her

own shop and show in LA in 2005. Von D, tall, slender, and almost completely covered in tattoos, has managed to extend her celebrity beyond tattooing, marketing her own line of clothing and makeup through Sephora. Massacre, petite, heavily tattooed, and typically sporting neon orange hair, has also managed to carve out a space for herself as an 91 alternative model and has recently launched a makeup line and a tattoo shop in Australia run entirely by women. Both women have capitalized on their non- normative appearances, often doing provocative promotional photo shoots.

As Irish points out, quite possibly because of her more established career,

Von D’s promotional photoshoots are generally less sexualized, though still sexy. Massacre on the other hand Fig. 26 Kat Von D, 2016. augments her career as a tattooer through modeling, and fits the typical Suicide Girl format, and generally opts for more provocative styling (Irish 50).

Drawing from Mel Chen’s Animacies, Irish argues that women like Von D and

Massacre are in fact engineering and operating within a queer space where the majority of bodies are non-normative, signifying a “veering away from dominant ontologies” when it comes to adorning the body (Irish 39). While the women’s appearances may be read as “queer” under a certain light, their television shows reinforce heteronormativity within a neoliberal framework; while there are certainly queer characters, both women actively participate in compulsive heteronormativity by using their heterosexual 92

relationships as plot points during the shows. Von D was married to tattooer and Ink

Master judge Oliver Peck for a portion of her series, and in an early season of NY Ink

Massacre’s blossoming relationship with a particularly chauvinistic coworker (“That’s a

big tattoo for such a little girl” was one of his more memorable lines) provided much of

the show’s conflict. While the women certainly engage in “alternative” forms of beauty,

the word “alternative” itself seems to have lost it’s potency, and they balance their

transgression with overt embraces of traditional femininity. Irish’s analysis does little to

convincingly show a queer ontology at work in the tattoo shops of LA and NY Ink, and the

political ramifications of such a concept go unexplored. Furthermore, Irish seems to

contradict herself by arguing that while Kat Von D and Megan Massacre promote a non-

normative beauty they still capitalize on the stereotypical fetishization of tattooed

women, engaging with the commodification ingrained in neoliberal acts of resistance.

Furthermore, their whiteness augments already racialized perceptions of tattooed women;

while women of color who are heavily tattooed are often read as prostitutes or criminals

(Santos 2009) Massacre and Von D are read as provocative and agential, empowered

through their sexiness.

Von D has openly identified as a feminist, tweeting on March 8, 2017 “The

feminist in me feels so damn lucky to have been born on #IntemationalWomensDay,”

though she has shed the label when it hasn’t served her marketability. Von D came under

fire in March 2015 for marketing a lipstick for Sephora called “Underage Red.” In a post on her Facebook page, Von D justified the naming of the lipstick by situating it within her 93 own personal background, emphasizing the fact that she is marketing herself as much as any lipstick. She then goes on to deny any intent to overly sexualize anyone while refusing to overtly admit why the name choice was criticized in the first place, calling the shade “feminine rebellion.” Von D then goes on to assert that she places human rights above feminism, and without actually calling out feminists argues that her critics are the ones who did the over-sexualizing. She ends by thanking her fans and letting them know that while the lipstick had sold out, it would be back on the market soon, leaving them with a close up glamour shot of her modeling the shade. In this context, Von D is participating in neoliberal discourses in a variety of ways; she declines to discuss the controversy in any overtly political way, instead disavowing feminism. Furthermore, the emphasis on her personal relationship to the name (stemming from her being refused entry to concerts because she was “underage”) and her disclosure that the lipstick sold out suggests that the controversy was doing little to harm her economic success. Given this, it is understandable that as a neoliberal feminist subject Von D would refuse to apologize or stop selling the lipstick; her ability to market herself unfettered superseded any overt discussion of gender and sexual violence that may have alienated her fanbase. In personalizing the lipstick, she in a sense privatized the conversation on the term

“underage,” making it about her personal background rather than a broader feminist political issue.

In her analysis of reality TV through neoliberal frameworks, Louise Woodstock argues that these televised spectacles are successful not because of any queering they 94 might be doing, but because of their intentionally apolitical nature and the ways in which they actually enforce normalcy. All of TLC’s tattoo reality television show follow the same format: documenting the day to day activities of a tattoo artist, focusing on two or three tattoos per show and giving the meanings and backstories behind each tattoo.

Central to the show is the development of individualized narratives developed through conversations between the tattooer and the client during the tattooing process. These stories typically involve themes of hardship, recovery, and identity formation. Woodstock argues that in many ways participants in tattoo reality shows actually reinforce normalcy by developing therapeutic narratives that “have little or nothing to do with otherness, deviancy, or radical political expression” (Woodstock 780). While these narratives typically involve stories of individual hardship and triumph, they rarely engage with the social structures that shape this suffering, fitting within neoliberal frameworks that privatize hardship, emphasizing the individual ability to overcome, and discouraging overt politicization of injustice (Woodstock 782). Tattoos as representations of triumph over hardships then become symbolic of not only perseverance but of neoliberal discourses; not only the experience but the reconciliation is privatized.

The individualism and performativity of a marketable persona that characterizes neoliberalism in the reality television era is apparent in both TLC’s tattoo shows and Ink

Master, a reality TV series where tattoo artists compete for a hundred thousand in cash, a feature in Inked Magazine, and a guest spot at either of two legendary tattoo shops, Elm

Street Tattoo in Dallas or Handcrafted Tattoo in Miami. An emphasis on individualism, a 95 strong work ethic and past hardships serve to humanize the contestants while adding narratives to the show. The show’s most recent season is a particularly interesting example of the apoliticism of neoliberal reality TV; the politics of gender was central to the eighth season of the show, with women contestants banding together to form what became known as “the female alliance.” Girl power aside, the word feminism wasn’t uttered at all during the entirety of the season, nor was there any critical discussion of the overarching structures that make the tattoo industry a difficult space for women to navigate, such as the mostly male presence and small-business nature of tattoo shops with no corporate safety nets for dealing with sexism and discrimination. Furthermore, while discussions of gender took center stage during the season, race was not mentioned at all.

Ink Master premiered on Spike in January 2012, garnering 2.4 million viewers worldwide and boasting 55% female viewership (spike.com). The eighth and most recent season, the first to have a woman win the title, boasted a 66% female viewership (Pohle

2016). The sixteen episode season began with eighteen artists, only five of whom were women. In the series, tattoo artists compete in weekly challenges designed to test a variety of creative and technical skills, as well as their ability to handle any style of tattoo. Whoever has the worst tattoo of the day goes home, and whoever has the best gets a hand in deciding who will tattoo what designs in the next challenge. Hosted by musician Dave Navarro and judged by industry giants Chris Nunez and Oliver Peck, along with guest judges from the tattoo industry, the show follows the basic formula for contemporary competition docu-dramas. Participants undergo grueling challenges and are 96 regularly up for elimination, while the usual amount of infighting between competitors serves to give each season a narrative arch. The eighth season of Ink Master is distinct not only in that the first female winner was crowned, but in that the show runners employed a new formula wherein competitors are split into teams until a the final few remaining artists compete one on one. The formula proved ineffective as the four women on the show (one competitor, Caroline, was eliminated after the first challenge) bucked party lines and created their own coalition, intent on at least one of them making it to the final.

Up until Anthony Michaels’ season seven win, all the winners of Ink Master had been white men; the fact that there had been no female winner became a rallying cry during the season. This emphasis on having a female winner ensured that gender became the primary topic of the entire season, often foreclosing on any discussions of race. Under depoliticized notions of neoliberal marketability, Michaels’ win perhaps suggested that the tattoo industry had finally opened itself up to black artists and clients, despite the fact that racism is still evident within the industry, as I will discuss further on in this chapter.

The four women that made up what came to be known as the “female alliance,”

Kelly Doty, Gia Rose McGee, Ryan Ashley Malarkey, and Nikki Simpson, all characterized their coalition as forming organically. The group is composed entirely of white women; before the official start of the show, when thirty artists competed for a slot on the season, the only three women of color were eliminated. The group developed somewhat early on in the series, after teammate Ryan Ashley and Gia Rose were undercut in the first challenge by one of their own teammates, Dave. Against the advice of Nikki, a 97 member of the other team, Dave assigned both Gia and Ashley full color, rib to knee length peacock tattoos, a project that would typically take up to twelve hours but under the competition guidelines had to be completed in five. Dave argued that his decision was strategic and that it was foolish to play teams when they’d end up competing against one another later Fig. 27 Wonderful Magical Witch Bitch Sisters, on; the women read it as sexism. Jeremy Saffer, 2016. Digital image via Instagram

The women barely made it past the elimination, and after a brief discussion all four of the women (Kelly and Nikki on team Nunez, Ryan and Gia on team Peck) decided they’d be better off banding together. The alliance proved to be influential in shaping the outcome of the finale; early on the women made it clear they were more focused on at least one of them becoming the first woman to win the title of Ink Master than anything else. After talking about her experiences with sexism as a tattooer in an interview with Navarro,

Doty said “It would be great to see a female Ink Master. So if one of us can get there, that’s kind of a victory for all of us” (Ink Master Season Eight, Episode Twelve). 98

During the series, the alliance proved difficult for some of the men to take, even irritating the judges at times, with Nunez telling the women “You can bro down as much as you want, but only one of you is gonna win.” Throughout the season, male participants accused the women of “playing the vagina card” and whining too much about the difficulties of being a female tattooer. Some of the men were vocal about believing that the women were only succeeding in the show because of the power of their coalition.

Doty, Simpson, and Malarkey routinely won challenges and were rarely up for elimination, and as early as the second episode Nunez predicted they would be the toughest competitors to beat. The women worked to make sure their comrades were assigned the best tattoos, continuously spoke up for one another during critiques, and mentored each other during each challenge. In an online article for Wired written just before the season finale aired, Emily Drefuss argued that the tactics used by the women of Ink Master echo the amplifying tactics women in the Obama administration used to make sure their voices were heard. The key to employing successful amplifying tactics is to have enough women in the room to participate, something not possible in earlier seasons of the show with fewer female contestants (Drefuss 2016). In an interview with

Vice, Gia said “We all highly admire and support each other knowing that, as women, our experiences coming up in the industry are unique and tough. We honestly stuck up for each other when we found it to be appropriate, because as women we do very much know how our voices can be silenced, dismissed, or drowned out” (Pohle 2016). The tactics employed by the women on the show have been met with delight by female viewers and 99 characterized as “a dope feminist coup” that struck a blow not only to the gender politics on Ink Master but to the macho, hyper-masculinity of reality TV competition shows in general (Aran 2016). While the tactics employed and the clearly authentic respect the women have for each other are inspiring and would make any feminist proud, it is significant that white women were given the space and air time to speak about their experiences as women, when the majority of tattooers of color on the show are rarely afforded moments to speak on their own experiences of silencing and erasure.

Gia was eventually eliminated in a bid to break up the female alliance, which only served to strengthen the bond between the three remaining women. During a break period when contestants hash out issues in their shared living room during the ninth episode,

Ryan remarked “Gia went home yesterday. That lit a fire inside of me and I wanna beat the shit out of these boys.” This prompted an intense debate among the contestants about the gender politics of the show, the significance of having a female winner, and gender in the tattoo industry as a whole. While the sides of the debate were generally split along gender binaries, one of the contestants, Mike, made a point to bring up the sexist attitudes he had witnessed in his own shop, particularly towards younger women and female apprentices, much to the chagrin of other men on the show. The debate during this episode came the closest to an explicit feminist critique, the moment culminating in the following exchange between Kelly, Ryan, and a particularly anti-alliance contestant named Sketchy Lawyer: 100

Ryan: “This is the eighth round of this competition, and there hasn’t been a female to win this yet”. Kelly: “Yeah, you don’t really know what it’s like.” Sketchy: “Dude, stop playing the fucking vagina card.” Ryan: “I’m not playing the vagina card.” Sketchy: “Seriously, y’all are pulling the vagina card. I’m not cool with that dude. If y’all win, then congratulations, it doesn’t matter if it’s a guy or girl.” Kelly: “Says a white man. Captain privilege.”

The conversation abruptly ended when Sketchy added “You know why a girl hasn’t won?

Because you guys get too fucking emotional” before leaving the room. This heated exchange, along with many others that occurred throughout the season, is indicative of one of normalizing aspects of neoliberalism; gendered inequality is not indicative of sexism in the tattoo industry but is trivial and naturalized (Duggan 6). Doty, in evoking the word privilege, nodded to a feminist sensibility but otherwise declines to overtly call the problems in the tattoo industry a feminist issue. She also significantly draws not only to male privilege but to white privilege, a moment of clarity that did not appear at all throughout the remainder of the season even in the face of overt racism. While the women engaged in feminist politics for the duration of the show, the fact that they sought to change the tattoo industry by proving their marketability suggests that any changes in the industry will still occur within neoliberal, market-based structures.

Throughout the season, the judges were well aware of the power of the coalition, but consistently insisted talent and the ability to meet the challenges were the ultimate factors taken under consideration during the critiques, emphasizing individual ability rather that difference. This in itself is an aspect of neoliberalism, which refutes difference 101 as an influence when it comes to individual success (Woodstock 783). Nevertheless, the performative and constructed aspects of reality TV shows leaves room for speculation. It seems important to note that Nunez and Peck are at the time of this writing litigating a sexual harassment claim made by an assistant on the show, which has prompted calls for boycotts among some feminist groups on the internet. Though cynical, it is also entirely plausible that producers encouraged the girl power narrative in order to capitalize on their majority-female audience. This highly visible push towards equity and inclusion is undoubtedly a means for improving marketability familiar within neoliberalism capitalism.

Despite the personal disagreements and increasingly aggressive nature of the show, as the season progressed Simpson, Doty, and Malarkey continued to outperform their male counterparts in creativity and technical application, showcasing their individual styles and ability to make their clients happy. The power of the female alliance derived not only from their shared experiences as women in a male dominated industry but from a genuine admiration of each other’s talents and work. Kelly Doty, well known in the industry for perfecting her own distinct style of new school tattoos, had been an idol to both Ryan and Nikki since they began tattooing. Perhaps just as significant as the power of the female centric coalition building displayed in this season of Ink Master are the truly genuine friendships the four women developed, which have continued beyond the show. In the fourteenth episode, right before a head to head elimination challenge between Kelly and Nikki, consisting of traditional gypsy girl-head tattoos, Kelly told the 102 camera “I don’t want to do a face-off tattoo against Nikki. She’s kind of my ride or die bitch.” While waiting for the judge’s critique after their elimination challenge, the two had a moment to talk about their relationship as friends and colleagues:

Kelly: “We wanted a battle, and you gave everything today, and if it sends me home, then that’s a tattoo to get sent home by.” Nikki: “I mean, this may be cocky, but I really think that you and I were the best people here. You know, a lot of times, I’ve met a lot of my heroes and been disappointed, and I had no idea that you would not only be as amazing as you are as a tattooer, but like, you became such a good friend to me. And I don’t know how I would have done here had I not had that friendship. I’m excited to see just how everything turns out for us.” {Ink Master Season Eight, Episode Fourteen).

This is a touching and seemingly authentic moment; the women were clearly friends throughout the show. Even before the gender war began and the two developed a friendship, it was clear through their interactions with other contestants that they were already aware of and deeply admired each others work. Nikki lost the challenge and was sent home in what was clearly one of the most difficult critiques for the judges and the contestants; both tattoos where beautifully executed with little to no flaws and the final judgement ultimately came down to aesthetics. Kelly made it to the finale with Ryan and one other contestant. Ryan ultimately won by showcasing her signature style; highly contrasted black and grey ornamental pieces with intricate detailing. Doty and Simpson’s final challenge, a gypsy head, speaks to the ways in which tattooing is still a highly racialized industry. The gypsy head motif represents both a lack of cultural awareness and sensitivity as well as a fetishization of a marginalized group; while the two contestants 103 made each design their own it stems from the racialized imagery of the Golden Era.

While the gender politics of the show suggest the tattoo industry is willing to incorporate

(some) women, racialized Others are still objects rather than subjects.

While gender politics are the focus of much of the season, race also plays a critical if unacknowledged role in the series. Throughout the show, the women that form the female alliance often utilized the power of their coalition to target male contestants for elimination; while the men actively fight against the women, they failed to form any type of productive coalition to limit the women’s influence. Several times throughout the season, two of the three black male contestants were targeted by the coalition; one competitor, Boneface, was targeted by the group after he made a derogatory comment about Simpson’s appearance in front of the entire cast. Boneface outlasted much of the competition despite the women’s attempts at forcing an elimination, but one particularly stark example of the racial divide within the tattoo industry was apparent in one of these attempts. In episode seven the players were tasked with doing “new school” tattoos, which consist of bright poppy colors, cartoonish exaggerations and heavy contrast. Nikki

Simpson was tasked with assigning the “canvasses,” and in an attempt to undermine

Boneface assigned him a black client under the assumption that “dark” canvasses are harder to tattoo. Simpson is not only explicitly arguing that tattoos don’t look good on black people, ignoring the possibility of a black tattoo culture, but implicitly suggesting that black tattooists are not as skilled or innovative as white tattooists. Here is a stark example of the way subjects are given differential value, in this instance through skin tone. In any other setting this exchange would be considered blatantly racist, yet within the neoliberal capitalist system prejudice based on skin color is naturalized.

Furthermore, Boneface can be read as racially stigmatized and justified in elimination for his refusal to be a proper multicultural neoliberal subject in his overt sexism towards

Simpson (Melamed 2).

Ink Master is arguably a mainstream institution of the tattoo Fig. 28 Ryan Ashley Malarkey for Inked Mag, industry that produces and shapes Mark Mann, 2017. discourse and perceptions towards tattoos and tattooed people. Season Eight suggests that while the discourses on gender within tattooing are being contested with some success, the tattoo industry is still mostly white. The inclusion of women into the industry is itself not entirely unproblematic, and speaks to the increasing marketability of feminism with neoliberal socioeconomic systems.

Only five years before she won Ink Master, Ryan Malarkey had been working in the fashion industry in New York, focusing on detailed lace, embroidery, and beading. 105

These design elements are apparent in her tattooing, adding a beautifully subversive element to the traditionally masculine black and grey tattoo. Much like Kat Von D and

Megan Massacre, Malarkey employs a careful balance of sexuality and traditional and non-traditional beauty practices. She adds to her already considerable height by wearing heals through nearly the entire season, and sports inch-long, weaponized nails that seem incredibly difficult to draw with let alone tattoo. Her flowing hair, which she often tells her fans via Instagram is almost all extensions, is a bright silver. Covered in more tattoos than most of the men on the show, Malarkey has nearly head to toe black and grey work that covers even her hands, fingers, and neck, with ornamental beadwork tattooed around her temples.

Unsurprisingly, the Inked magazine article she won is composed in traditional

Suicide Girl style, with Malarkey posing provocatively in various types of lacy lingerie.

In the article, Malarkey speaks to the power of the female coalition, but stops short of speaking overtly about feminism or discrimination within the tattoo industry, refusing to overtly politicize the season or her win. Generally, the interview is limited in its appraisal of girl power, making Malarkey seem less equity-inclined than she did throughout the season. This may be strategic on her part; much like Von D and Massacre, Malarkey is not only a tattooer but an entrepreneur, marketing herself by focusing on empowering other businesswomen and female entrepreneurs. Her decision to use vague empowerment language, easily accepted by any brand of feminism (or even anti-feminism) may be a lucrative choice intended to reach the largest audience possible. Any overt whiff of 106 feminism might send legions of her newfound Inked magazine fans packing. Malarkey is in effect a product of neoliberal feminism; she utilizes discourses on self-reliance, finding gender equity through marketplace feminism and subscribing to a benevolent yet toothless political outlook that centers empowerment in its broadest terms (Kantola and

Squires 390). The racial politics of the show, apparent though unaddressed, as well as

Malarkey’s emphasis on neoliberal marketability, suggests that any feminism she does engage with falls under the rubric of White feminism: essentially a middle-class feminism that is focused primarily on economic equality and generalized empowerment but does not engage in anti-racist and anti white supremacist ideology. While gender discrimination is an acceptable topic, her privilege as a white woman is unaddressed.

Through a significant social media presence, Malarkey follows in Kat Von D’s footsteps by essentially marketing herself while furthering the commodification of her industry, their celebrity status adding a new desirability to tattooing (Woodstock 787).

The influence of tattoo-centric reality television shows on America’s perceptions towards tattoos is undoubtedly significant. Obviously, the visibility garnered by artists like Malarkey and Von D is significant for women who may be watching at home, uncertain about trying to break into an industry that is heavily characterized by masculinity and bravado. These television shows not only serve to normalize tattoos and the different types of people who get them, but also influence the ways in which white

Americans relate to and perceive their own tattoos. The narrative structure found in shows like LA Ink and Ink Master that focus on attaching meanings to tattoos based on 107 individual experiences and conceptions of the self are very similar to the narratives average tattoo wearers utilize in talking about their tattoos (Woodstock 782).

Ink shows usually feature artists and clients from a variety of racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, a testament to the multicultural aspects of neoliberalism in the contemporary moment. The eighth season of Ink Master not only featured more female competitors than any previous season, but it was one of the most racially diverse seasons as well. Significantly, the women contestants were the only ones to utilize their otherness in an attempt to garner more leverage in the game; towards the end of the season when commenting on the politics of the show, contestant Kevin reflected on his struggles as “not a black thing, not a gay thing” but just the nature of the game. Perhaps

Anthony Michaels’ previous season win foreclosed on the idea that the tattoo industry or the show is significantly harder to navigate for participants of color, leaving little space for black contestants to call out discrimination as the white female contestants did.

As the season progressed and the number of contestants dwindled, the show began exploring the remaining player’s backgrounds and lives outside of the show. Ink

Master employed many of the same narrative structures as TLC’s Ink franchise, with contestant’s histories often being framed through struggle and overcoming hardship

(Woodstock 782). On the show and in her subsequent Inked interview, Ryan reflected on growing up in a trailer park with a single mom who put herself through school, emphasizing how her mother instilled in her a sense of dedication and hard work.

Similarly, Kelly spoke about being raised by her grandparents while her mother worked 108

three jobs. Other contestants spoke up about overcoming drug addictions, incarceration,

and growing up in poverty. In their reflections, none of the contestants related these

hardships to institutional structures that augment economic inequality. These hardships

are spoken of as difficult but formative in positive ways, resulting in dedication and a

solid work ethic; hardship then is overcome when one becomes a proper neoliberal

capitalist subject. The prize money is viewed as economic security, a way to outsmart the

inequalities inherent in neoliberal capitalism.

The themes of friends, family, and the self are the most common in the therapeutic

narratives deployed on tattoo inspired reality TV (Woodstock 793). In their 2012 study

Tattoo and the Self, Mun, Janigo, and Johnson found that the average white, female

undergrad often discuss their tattoos through narrative frameworks very similar to the

ones seen on LA and NY Ink. The researchers divided most common narratives into five

groups; the self, life event, relationship, spiritual, and no assigned meaning (139). Tattoos

often are meant to signify the inner self or reflect personal ideology; categories like family and relationships confirm that tattoos are also used in mediating the individual self

and the larger social world. Life events are often discussed in relation to tattooing, with

tattoos often memorializing loved ones or expressing devotion. Tattoos that are more

appropriative or racially insensitive tend to fall under the spirituality bracket, with kanjis,

mandalas, dream catchers, and om symbols being some of the most common designs. In this way, the same hierarchies of power that were evident within the modem primitivist movement are still at play, only now within the mainstream; settler colonial subjects 109 utilize indigenous culture and ways of being not only to reconcile their inheritance of colonial oppression, but also in defining themselves within neoliberal commodification

(Morgensen, hooks).

The researchers cited above argue that women who didn’t attribute any meaning to their tattoos seemed generally more dissatisfied with them, even actively constructed meaning after the fact (140). It seems that the heavy emphasis on having a narrative arch or higher significance behind a tattoo is central to the practice, perhaps partially stemming from the emphasis on narrative and meaning that characterizes most tattoo related television shows (Woodstock). Tattooing and narrative have always been intimately linked, with tattooed performers sharing stories as early as the eighteenth century. This was in part to remove white tattooed performers from responsibility in an era when tattooing was directly linked to primitivism and savagery. The tattooed female performers of the twentieth century paired their narratives with new attitudes towards modem womanhood and asserted their independence by talking about their tattoos. This attitude may have developed in the contemporary moment for women who feel they need adequate justification for getting tattooed to curb any stigma or social disapproval; a reflection of family or spirituality is arguably more acceptable than something chosen in a moment of influence or inebriation. Narrative has been an integral part of tattoo culture since the nineteenth century, when performers like Nora Hildebrandt and Irene Woodard were using fabricated tales of capture to justify their tattoos. In this way, narratives used to instill meaning in tattoos continue to augment a white settler respectability not afford to racialized counterparts.

The assertion of the self and one’s outlook as integral to the tattooing process continues into the present moment, perhaps with more significance than previously considered. In the aftershock of the 2016 election, more and more women are getting politically charged tattoos meant to signal solidarity and make explicit one’s political ideology. After the Fig. 29 Fuck the Patriarchy. Digital Women’s March on Washington in January image via Refinery 29.

2017, a march signifying a rejection of the Trump presidency, #feministtattoo went viral on social media, with women sharing their tattoos on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Tattoos include a stick of dynamite with the words “Fuck Patriarchy,” the quote “deeds not words” and of course the venus symbol, sometimes strategically placed on the middle finger (Stalder 2017). After comments made about Elizabeth Warren in the U.S. Senate, dozens of women across the country had Mitch McConnell’s words “Nevertheless, she persisted” tattooed, with some of the proceeds going to local women’s political organizations (Wulfhorst 2017). Again, this exemplifies the ways in which narrative plays an integral role in establishing meaning and affect when it comes to tattoos. I l l

Undoubtedly, the increased

popularization of tattooing in the

media as well as the celebrity

garnered by tattooers like Kat Von D

and Ink Master’s Chris Nunez and

Oliver Peck, results in an acceleration

of the commodification of tattooing;

articles and news outlets like the ones

Fig. 30 Set Your Pussy Free. Digital image listed above work in a similar way by via Buzzfeed. conflating the commodification of tattooing and commodity feminism. Feminism can be bought; one’s credentials stamped permanently on the skin. Despite their problematic aspects, feminist and politically charged tattoos do have the effect of creating solidarity and perhaps even augmenting political belief, and it undoubtedly feels good to have a symbol of something so important permanently with you. Just as tattoos served to assuage past hardships on LA

Ink, “She persisted” and “Nasty Woman” tattoos serve to lessen the blow of 2016.

Politically charged tattoos can promote change, and social media platforms make it much easier for individuals to find tattoo pages entirely dedicated to body positivity or the promotion of queer and indigenous tattooers. However, the fact remains that many contemporary tattooing practices are appropriative, and much like the politics of the primitivists of the 1990’s as of yet there is little evidence to suggest the uptick in feminist tattoos will produce any radical social change. Websites like permanentracism. tumblr. com critically examines some of the most common racially charged tattoo motifs, including gypsy heads and Native American women pinups. The site runners post images of racist and culturally appropriative tattoos with links to blogs and websites run by

Indigenous activists, as well as Fig. 31 A white woman with a back tattoo wearing give thorough histories of a Native headdress. Digital image via permanentracism. tumblr. racialized terms like “gypsy.” The continued presence of these tattoos, as well as their increasing use by young white women with ambiguous relationships to feminism suggests that the politics of neoliberal multiculturalism continue to be the politics of colonization, appropriation, and erasure of

Indigenous practices and ways of being for white settlers. The image on the right (Figure

31), from the Permanent Racism tumblr, depicts a white woman with an intricate back tattoo, wearing a Native American headdress. The woman appears to be nude and in a sexualized position, compounding the sexualization of women and Indigeneity. Below 113

her the author of the post has listed links to several blog posts that discuss cultural

appropriation, the use of headdresses as fashion by white people, and why identity is not

costuming. The image speaks both to the the ways in which white settlers still participate

in appropriation to define sexuality, as the modern primitives did, but also to the

alternative online spaces that are confronting white settler heteropatriarchy through

online communities.

As the threshold between ourselves and the outside world, tattoos hold incredible

power. As feminists continue to utilize tattooing in practices of protest, activism, and

disavowal, it becomes imperative to critically interrogate the frameworks from which

contemporary feminism and contemporary tattoo cultures are produced. The stakes for

both feminism and the tattoo community are high, as neoliberal ideologies continue to co­

opt and depoliticize these communities and as tattooing and mainstream feminism

continue to participate in settler colonial hierarchies of power. In reflecting on the

questions I posed in the introduction to this exploration of American tattooing, there

seems to be no single nor straightforward answer. However, as a start, it seems essential

that those who identify as feminists and carry feminist tattoos begin by speaking about

our tattoos in more conscientious ways. Speaking for myself, this comes from the ways in

which I choose to present my problematic tattoos to the world; instead of presenting Frida

Kahlo as a romanticized figure of tragedy, I work to break free of the frameworks white neoliberal feminism has set for her. Instead, I speak of her as one of the great modernist painters, as a fierce Mexican nationalist, and as a dedicated political revolutionary. It also means intentionally speaking about my feminist tattoos in an intersectional way, highlighting the need to move from a commodified feminism that bolsters the status quo to a more radical anti-racist vision. The possibilities for recognition and inspiration afforded by feminist tattoos are endless, as long as those who wear them continue to do the work of responsibly and thoughtfully sharing them with the world. 115

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