Inscribed to the body but shadowed by judgments
Works of art inscribed into the body, ranging from a black and white scale to the vivacious colors of life, symbols or sayings of all meanings, full of connotation, or perhaps simply just a cool design that appeals to the human eye; what am I talking about? Tattoos. It may appear more recently that this type of body modification is a new “normal” in our society, when really the ideas of tattoos date back to the days of ancient female mummies. A movement of tattoos occurred in the United States when the first woman to be tattooed displayed her body commercially. There was an era when people paid to see women covered in tattoos, days in age when women with ink were part of the freak show at a circus. Now we see women of all ages with tattoos today as a commonality. What has gone from taboo is now mainstream. Although body ink is becoming increasingly more socially acceptable, tattoos will always still hold those distasteful stereotypes that flood individual’s minds when they see a tatted up woman. I can attest to this as my parents were not the happiest of people when they found out I had gotten a tattoo within the first two weeks of college; classic. These opinions formulated by the misjudging, about women with tattoos, have ranged from seeing the inked as protectors of children, freaks, uncivilized, sluts, heavy drinkers, and unprofessional. These stereotypes are fading though. Although in some cases the tattooed woman is still scrutinized and negatively perceived, the general population today is evolving to be more open-minded towards the idea of the human canvas, which is how it should be.
Flashback to c. 2000 B.C. in ancient Egypt. Bodies preserved in a wrapping, some with traces of ink, only left to help unroll the story and evolution of tattoos. Researchers of the British Museum utilized a computed tomography to further examine the reminisce of a tattoo found on the body on a female ancient