By Rob Wilson

It’s on the days of senior citizen’s mass outings that I notice it most. The beadie eyes staring at me through the half-glasses, the comments whispered behind hands. The Premier’s Senior Citizens’ Concerts are on in Sydney and my train ride home comes packed to the luggage racks with blue hair, crocheted shawls and clacking brooches.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have tattoos. Visible tattoos. And rather large, rather drastic-looking holes in my ears too. Gasp! But, ladies of the CWA, I’m not a bandit or an escaped lunatic, and sure as the day is long, I’m not alone.

The first time I saw the 1984 Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins film The Bounty, I was around 12 years old. The IMDb synopsis says of the plot:

They were friends through hell. They became enemies in Paradise. After 200 years, the truth behind the legend.

If that’s clear as mud, the movie is about the cruelty of Lieutenant Bligh, a mutiny against him and the ensuing “epic voyage” by Bligh to get his loyalists to safety in East Timor “in a tiny lifeboat”.

Riveting stuff.

I remember little from the movie itself but do recall being curious about the scene where some of the English sailors are tattooed by Tahitian locals.*

Sure, the sailors had been living a fairly debauched lifestyle in the lead up to their island getaway but they were still respectable naval men. Some even wore uniforms. Yet they were being tattooed.

I’d always been lead to believe that only the meanest of hardened criminals would besmirch their flesh with such an act. But there on the screen was Mel Gibson (still ‘our Mel’ back then) happily being pricked at by some Tahitian tattooist’s primitive needle.

I recall my mother piping up from behind us to say “None of you boys are to get tattoos.” I agreed but the image lingered. I was fascinated.

My sister would bring westie boys around after school and I inspected their scratchy Ned Kelly or Holden logo tattoos. Sub-standard or not, I was intrigued. Older kids at school had them too, but theirs weren’t as inspiring: smudged spiders and murky initials in wonky love hearts.

But as the years passed, I started to see what could be done with a tattoo gun in the right hands. Replications of great works of art, photo-realistic portraiture, something your kid drew – basically anything can be tattooed accurately these days and innovations with tattooing equipment mean tattoos stay brighter and maintain their lines. On the flipside, there is still a lot of backyard tattooing going on that is less than beautiful.

As explained by 10 days of science guest blogger Erika Dicker, tattooing is quite a simple practice, dating back over 5,000 years: “An artist injects ink into the skin using an electrically powered machine, or more traditionally with hand tools. The needle penetrates the skin and leaves a drop of insoluble ink in the dermis. The ink is then trapped there, forever. Skin is made up of layers, the dermis being below the epidermis, so when you look at someone’s tattoo you are actually looking at it through a layer of skin.”

While I find society generally is becoming more tolerant of tattoos and other less-drastic body modifications such as piercings (even I find myself with a 9 to 5 job that doesn’t involve animal excrement or tight dark spaces!) the afore-mentioned senior ladies still grasp their handbags a little tighter on my approach.

But who could blame them? The greater part of their lives have been spent in apparently justified fear of people with body modifications. Tattoos used to dictate social status and the boundaries were clearly drawn: there were normal people and there were criminal lunatics baying for blood with FTW tattooed on their faces.

However, though tattooed and a little rough-looking, I have a degree and a job and I may even help you with your wally trolley if you look like you’re going to struggle on those steep stairs at the station.

* The tattoo reportedly originated from the Tahiti islands. The original Tahitian term for tattoo is ‘tatau’ which means open wound.

Find out more about the Powerhouse Museum’s Adults-only Dark Science ‘Flesh’ evening here.

Tags: dark science, tattoo

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