Body art

The impulse to adorn the skin with permanent markers of love or identity has brought adoration and approbation throughout the ages. Today, as fashion increasingly finds itself flirting with the fringes, people of all ages are daring to embrace the ultimate form of bodily decoration.
ON HOLIDAYS in Vietnam last year, my tattoos received quite a lot of attention. I was unprepared for this because in Australia and Europe they are barely noticed. Also, like Vietnamese women, during the day I covered myself against the sun. Come evening, with arms and legs bare, my skin was scrutinised. Some women would sit next to me and touch my hand; they would point to my lobe plugs and labret. Their curiosity was unfailingly polite and warm.
My travelling companion, Jack — also tattooed — stood out less, though he was always uncovered. Most of the white men in Nha Trang, the seaside resort where we stayed, seemed to have at least one tattoo. Nha Trang attracts the most cosmopolitan mix — Russians, Chinese, Koreans, a wide variety of Europeans, Americans and Australians. Most of the tattooed were the latter — and most were men.

Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Young Daughter of the Picts, c. 1585; watercolour and gouache, touched with gold, on parchment, 26x18.6cm. Photo: Yale Center for British Art

Another reason I was surprised at first by the attention is that Vietnam is in one of the richest tattooing regions of the world. Jack's tattoos are indigenous south-east Asian, done traditionally. Pieces from Borneo and the Mentawai Islands were earned by treks through the jungle; others from Cambodia and Laos were done by Buddhist monks. But contemporary Vietnam is fairly unadorned. Traditions, even if extant, are arcane. Gender is a factor, as it is anywhere.
I can forget the tattoo's ability to surprise. I came of age in 1980s subcultures. A tattoo's locus on the body lent it especially to queer expression, the bid for sexual freedom at its most vociferous during this time. The impulse to adorn increased as an antidote to AIDS. In the West, centuries underground had rendered tattooing a tool of empowerment for the disenfranchised in general. It was a working-class art; a codifier for a variety of social groups — soldiers, sailors, criminals, carnies. It was a tool of stigma and punishment, most recently used by the Nazis to mark camp internees.
In prison, though, tables turn. When you have nothing but your body, let it be marked with signs of your own choosing, to augment rather than denigrate; to protest and declaim. The body is our most fundamental identifier. Since the Boer War, the forensics field has been grateful for tattoos.

Tattooed celebrities Tara Moss ... Photo: Eddie Jim

We are living now in the golden age of tattoo. It is probably the oldest and most widespread form of permanent body art. That it has taken off among such a wide range of people is seen by many as tolerance of difference, by others as dilution and appropriation. Jack told me he felt like small fry on a recent trip to the Gold Coast, where the straightest people are tattooed head to foot, with all their work on full display. Like me, he cringed a bit at rampant disclosure.
In 1585, Jacques le Moyne de Morgues did a painting called A Young Daughter of the Picts. It shows a naked woman holding a lance, with sword and scabbard slung around her hips. Wavy blonde hair cascades down her back. She is about as militaristic as a buttercup: one foot is tucked demurely behind the other, the hand on the lance looks as though it's holding porcelain, her body is soft, her pale face devoid of expression. Her skin is entirely decorated with flowers, flat and delicate as wallpaper.
Although he had been an artist on one of the first French expeditions to the Americas, de Morgues wasn't trying to capture a Pict woman with ethnographic verisimilitude. The Picts (Picti – "painted people") were a notoriously fierce pre-Celtic tribe from what is now known as Scotland but anybody could see this flowered blonde didn't go to war or govern alongside her men. And Pictish tattoos were done with woad and so were monochromatic. De Morgues's benign maiden obeyed Christian ideals of the time yet his exposure to the tattooed indigenes of Florida clearly alerted him to this tradition once common in Europe and now relegated to the margins.

... and Reese Witherspoon. Photo: Getty Images

It was the Old Testament Book of Leviticus that famously banned it, probably in reaction to practices in the Middle East and Africa. The edict outlived its context, sedimented by centuries of Catholic horror of the flesh and Protestant damnation of ornament. The northern Americans excited curiosity but it was really with European colonisation of the southern hemisphere that the great tattoo traditions of the Pacific and Asia began to alter irrevocably the way we read and speak with our bodies.
The curiosity articulated by de Morgues's painting manifested in mostly sinister ways. Indigenous people were kidnapped by Europeans and paraded as objects because of their body markings. Many, such as Prince Jeoly (taken from the Philippines in 1691) died of disease or abuse. The disrespect continued in death, most egregiously with the trade in body parts, such as heads with moko (Maori facial tattoos).
People had no qualms in gaping but to regard these adornments with equanimity, let alone respect, wasn't possible. The Kantian decree that moko would have been beautiful had they not been on the face spelt denial on intellectual and religious terms: today's gainsayers, more than religious zealots, are rationalists who denigrate with disregard. Joseph Banks was one of a legion who had the Polynesians tap a design into his skin with bone, wood and pigment but even he was begrudging. "[Moko] has the Effect of making them most enormously ugly," he wrote. "Yet ugly as this certainly looks it is impossible to avoid admiring the immense Elegance and Justness of the figures in which it is form'd." The Picts were long forgotten, or relegated to barbarianism.
Nevertheless, the exchanges that took place between these men and women in the Pacific — on many islands, the tattooists were women — were probably far more complex and equitable than history has led us to believe. Each island had its own unique designs, methods and myths. Tattooing wasn't just an art form, it was a rigorous set of codes describing boundaries, kinship, social status and relationship to the spirit world. Sailors, even when getting totems of their own such as crucifixes or names of a beloved, shared motivations with the traditionally schooled — to mark a moment, pay homage to a deity, to endure a rite that endows strength and knowledge.
Heavily tattooed whites usually ended up in sideshows. John Rutherford from Bristol typically fabricated a tale that he had been captured by Maori in 1816 and forcibly tattooed so quickly he almost died. This earned good money but people soon twigged that Rutherford had left his ship voluntarily and acquired his designs one by one, not just from Aotearoa but also Fiji, Tahiti and Rotuma.
The myth of New World savagery and white victimisation was naturally stronger for tattooed women, many of whom were, ironically, worked on by their white husbands for the sole purpose of profit, such was the appetite for inky display.
It's a question of context; sometimes quantity. The late Amy Winehouse had almost no tattoos when she made her debut in 2003. Over the years, she got more. She also got more drunk and stoned. Her tattoos were often used by the media as symbols of decline. ''Amy's not-so-glamorous display of tattoos and scars,'' shouted the Daily Mail in one headline. The old prejudice of tattooed lady as slattern isn't that far behind us. Office girls, inspired by the likes of Amy, would find that more tattoos equals fewer job options.
Tattoos collapse distinctions between East and West, which is a key to their success in contemporary multicultural societies. Like food, they have the power to teach and give access to the foreign. The bikie with a swastika cannot deny the depth and mastery of Japanese tattoo. Yet the notion of quality can be contestable. For those who just want a mark, maybe just the logo of their football team, the beholder looking for beauty misses the point.
In another paradoxical exchange, Western interest has helped to revive the very traditions it once damaged. East of Vietnam, in the Philippines, the intricate, animist patterns of the Kalinga people are regaining currency. Americans of Filipino extraction figure strongly in this. As in the Pacific, both traditional and modern methods are used.
But in revival is acknowledgment of death. Ernesto, the founder of a popular studio in Sarawak, talks of Iban culture as being dead in many ways.
It wasn't until years after being taught to tattoo in England, and opening a shop in Kuching using modern tattoo irons, that Ernesto went up the river to the longhouses to talk to the old people about their tattoos and traditional methods.
Look at any of the so-called tribal tattoos, such as Lachlan Murdoch's armband: those swirls and points were once Iban designs that referred to the rich flora and fauna of Borneo and to their spirits.
Tattoos are always telling a story, whether obnoxious, bland, witty or sublime. They have ceased to guarantee radicalism but still have the power to excite and intimidate. They can be the most private form of expression, or part of an intimate dialogue with one person or community. The Samoan pe'a is fully revealed only in private. That Gold Coast parade Jack described is probably an exception.
Tattoos might be ''in fashion'' but in a sense their methodology renders them the opposite: fashion is transitory whereas tattoos are forever. Laser treatment is expensive and leaves scars, so if you think you'll regret it, then just don't get it. The act of being tattooed is, as artist eX de Medici says, a pact of pain and always about death.
This is my skin, this is my story, this is my life. Everything is finite.
■ Fiona McGregor's Indelible Ink has been shortlisted in the fiction section of The Age Book of the Year awards, to be presented at the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival on Thursday at Melbourne Town Hall.
■ The Tattoo and Body Art Expo will be held from September 16-18 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. tattooexpo.com.au.
Celebrity ink
NO LONGER the domain of sailors, bikers or subculture minority groups, tattoos are adorning everybody, everywhere. Less a rebellion against traditional society than an expression of individuality and artistic endeavour, they could be considered the new beauty spots. A quick perusal of pop culture references reveals the easing of taboos surrounding the tattoo and their proliferation among some surprising names in film, modelling and literary circles.
Marieke Hardy
Melbourne writer Marieke Hardy is as known for her forthright opinions as she is the dainty intertwine of two oriental lilies and a written scroll tattooed on her right shoulder. ''My own literary tattoo serves as a combined homage to two of my all-time favourite writers - the beautifully poisonous political scribe Bob Ellis, and twisted fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut,'' Hardy has written of the tattooed prose, which reads: ''And So On, And So It Goes''. Her mother may have called her a ''twit'' for adorning her body thus but for Hardy, hers is a celebration of the written word. ''I love books,'' she writes. ''And I'm not afraid to say it.''
Heidi Klum
The former international model, mother-of-four and wife of singer Seal joined the tattooed ranks in 2008 with flowing cursive script forming the word ''Seal'' on her inner forearm, followed by three stars. Klum has revealed that the tattoo artist made the colour of the ink ''in exactly the colour'' of her husband's skin. ''We tried it on his skin and then they put that on my arm,'' Klum said. ''And then we have three stars with the first initials of our children.''
Reese Witherspoon
With her southern charm, blonde good looks, Avon contract and squeaky-clean image, Reese Witherspoon has long been considered one of Hollywood's most saleable good girls. So the entertainment media went into overdrive recently when a family jaunt to a Malibu beach revealed an unexpected side: a gust of wind blew aside her bikini cover-up to show part of a tattoo on her lower abdomen. Though Witherspoon has yet to comment, the gossip rags are gushing over this unexpectedly sexy glimpse into the private world of the southern belle.
Jill Abramson
When Jill Abramson, 57, was appointed as the new executive editor of The New York Times in June, the buzz was incessant. But along with reports heralding her as the first woman to take the paper's top job, her tattoo caused a stir. Hidden behind the corporate dress and neat shoulder-length bob is a picture of a New York City subway token, tattooed on to her shoulder at age 49. It marked Abramson's return to her home city following a long stretch in Washington.
Justin Timberlake
Don't let the clean-cut hair and polite manner deceive you. He may have cut his acting teeth alongside Britney Spears as part of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club but Justin Timberlake has a few secrets of his own in the form of strategically placed tattoos. Not that he has veered towards symbols of rebellion. The cross hidden high on his right arm signals his Baptist faith, while a more recent guardian angel on his upper back carries his mother's initials on the cherub's banner.
Helen Mirren
Consistently voted among the world's sexiest women (beating contenders less than half her age), it should perhaps come as no surprise that Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren sports some secret ink of her own. Mirren has a small design on her left thumb she had done while ''very, very drunk'' years go. She has confessed to being put off by the artwork but not out of regret: she is instead upset that having tattoos is now ''mainstream''.
Marc Jacobs
Conventionally handsome in shirts and jeans, uber fashion designer Marc Jacobs is far from your stereotypical tattoo fan. But the American has more than one tattoo hiding beneath his clean-cut exterior. His tattoo artist, Scott Campbell, is responsible for quirky images that include a Simpsons-style portrait of Jacobs himself. ''Will I regret it someday?'' Jacobs responded recently when asked about the tattoos decorating his arms and shoulders. ''I don't know. But I'm not going to deny myself this pleasure today because of what I don't know in the future.''
Orlando Bloom
As one half of perhaps the nicest, cleanest-living couple in showbiz, Orlando Bloom (whose wife is model Miranda Kerr) does not fit the tattooed stereotype. The 34-year-old joined his Lord of the Rings co-stars in sealing their cinematic bond by having the Elvish word for ''nine'' (a reference to the number of members in the Fellowship) tattooed on his wrist. Along with a sun on his abdomen, there may be more to come. ''I wouldn't say no,'' he said.
Tara Moss
Model-turned-author Tara Moss waited years before giving in to the desire for her first tattoo. A black, three-clawed dragon was tattooed on her hip in 2004 and a writing quill was added to her left arm soon after. ''My tattoos are very much a part of me and I would feel naked without them,'' she has said. ''They are the art I carry with me everywhere I go.''
Winston Churchill
England's revered wartime prime minister had his own secret - a portrait of a ship's anchor on his shoulder. It appears tattooing ran in the family: his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had a tattoo of a snake encircling her wrist that she could conceal with a bracelet.
SARINA LEWIS

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