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Pagan
Fashion's New Frontier - Facial Tatoos
By A. Clay Thompson, Pacific News Service, June 27, 1996
Once
stigmas of low class status, tattoos -- like body piercing
-- have gone mainstream. But even as a new reverence for pagan
beliefs spreads, facial tattoos remain taboo. Who chooses
to mark their faces and why? PNS contributor A. Clay Thompson
is a 24-year-old writer and former bike messenger whose tattoos
end at his neckline.
BERKELEY, CA. -- At a body piercing studio on Berkeley's Telegraph
Avenue, Brian -- a grimy, dreadlocked, pierced, 18-year-old
punk -- is about to make a lifelong commitment to social deviance.
Brian is tattooing his face.
Black bars will soon cut horizontally across Brian's checks,
forming a geometric pattern with three black dashes that already
adorn his goatee zone. The war paint-like lines will set Brian
apart from other urban primitives, most of whom advertise
their dedication to their subculture on body regions that
don't require 24 hour exposure: the upper arms, torso, back
or legs.
Body modifications like tattoos and body piercing -- once
the stigmas of people at the low end of the social scale --
have now become fashion statements for the mainstream. But
tattooing the face remains taboo. Even the most hardcore,
in-it-for-life tattoo artists refrain from indelibly marking
their own mugs. Not a single Bay Area tattoo studio interviewed
said they were willing to ink up a customer's face. Those
folks who, like Brian, want their cheeks, chin, nose, or forehead
adorned have to look for inkslingers who work out of bedrooms
and vans and, typically, bear facial tattoos themselves. (Brian's
face is being done by a pal).
Why would someone want to take such an extreme oppositional
stance -- displaying the tattoo for all to see, including
employers, landlords, creditors and law enforcers? Why not
settle for the body tattoo that can be covered or exposed
to suit the occasion?
"My
actions are a rebellion against the mainstream," Brian
says. "They let everyone know I'm not a part of your
society. No matter what you take away from me, you can't take
away that."
But more than defiance is involved. Brian believes those who
live in high tech industrial cultures should regain the ancient
pagan knowledge of tribal peoples. One way to spread the knowledge,
he says, is by "forging my own tribe".
Brian's ideas echo those of scores of disaffected Westerners,
from devotees of Eastern religions to the hippies of yesteryear.
But unlike many of the sixties counterculturalists -- who
eventually cut their hair and went yuppie -- Brian will have
a hard time changing his mind and rejoining the nine-to-fivers
with tribal markings all over his face.
That, he says, is the point. "This is a commitment. Someone
could get a mohawk and then grow it out, or cut it off in
a second. I can't cut this off."
As for turning off would-be employers, Brian isn't worried.
" I know people with facial tattoos who have jobs. I
could work at a co-op or a recycling place, or I could deliver
phone books."
Alan, a 21-year-old piercer and sometime inkslinger, also
sports two neo-tribal tattoos. A black diamond graces the
crest of his forehead, and a gray, Native American-derived
design covers his chin. More prominent than the tattoos are
his enormous, Buddha-like stretched ear piercings.
Like Brian, Alan feels a profound affinity for non-Western
traditions. His bookcase is jammed with tomes on Buddhism,
the Quaballah, and Native America. Part Algonquin, he sees
the chin tattoo as a revival of an Algonquin Indian ritual.
But unlike Brian, Alan has no desire to separate himself from
the rest of society. He wants to bring tribal knowledge and
aesthetics to the widest audience possible. With that end
in mind, he did some modeling for Levi's, with his piercings
and tattoos in full view. "I'm using Levi's to assimilate,"
he says. "I'm getting to people through them."
While Brian and Alan are convinced their markings are worth
whatever social price tag they carry, Ben, 25, isn't so sure.
"Sometimes I hate these things," he says of the
black scratch marks he's worn on his face for six years. A
veteran of the New York City squat scene who is currently
traversing the country via various low roads, Ben has found
that facial tattoos don't go over as well in Grain Silo, Iowa,
as they do on the Lower East Side or the Lower Haight. Ben
concedes that he sometimes wishes he could go "incognito."
Brett Reed, the twentysomething drummer for the platinum selling
punk act Rancid, is one tattoo-wearer who has retained that
option. Reed may have a couple of black stars suspended on
his forehead, but they are minuscule and right beneath the
hairline, easily concealed with a comb.
Reed may be wise to hedge his countercultural bets. If the
pagan looks becomes passe, Alan -- who supports himself by
tattooing and piercing his contemporaries -- may have a hard
time finding a new career. And while Brian may feel he's assured
at least a subsistence-level menial job, if corporations keep
downsizing and real wages keep falling, he may find himself
competing with tattoo-free Berkeley grads for minimum wage
work.
Meanwhile, from Brazil to Borneo, the indigenous people whose
low-tech cultures provide inspiration for young Americans
are being driven from their ancient practices. As Brian dons
his cheek marks, the physical and cultural survival of native
peoples is anything but assured. But neither is that of their
young emulators.
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