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Tats lose lustre in long march to fashion foible

Helen RazerPublished: September 23, 2010 - 8:40AM

Once a sign of deviance and criminality, they're now more Chadstone.

Its newest dress code notwithstanding, this week's Brownlow Medal still gave a good shoofty of flesh. TheAFL's leggy escorts did not fail to disclose their assets. But, this year, it wasn't the chicken-tikka tans of

the women that provided all the most interesting glimpses. Many eyes were fixed on the skin of illustratedCollingwood midfielder Dane Swan.

Broadly tipped to be awarded the fairest and the best, the elite player fell short of umpire votes. Thisshocked sports journalists and added to the chagrin of Arch and Theo, the two Collingwood fans whorecently painted my home.

The theory among Pies supporters, both in and out of the house-painting profession, currently holds that it

is Swan's tattoos that keep him out of favour with the umps.

While it is true that Swan's body of work, which includes a Shinto temple, a snake and a portrait of Satan,

is chaotic, it is unlikely that it is to blame for his Brownlow count. Sure, the result was surprising. But thislikely has more to do with Swan's brusque return of the ball than with the honking, big picture of the devil

on his forearm.

Everyone has tattoos these days. I live near Chadstone shopping centre and every time I visit, I see enough

ink on eastern suburban housewives to out-do the collection in Risdon Prison.

Since newsreaders, sitcom stars and Chadstone shoppers began to draw roses, skulls and Latin phrases on

their flesh, the power of ink has diminished. The deviant nature of the tattoo has faded like, well, a tattoo.

It was not always so.

From the nativity of our culture, tattoos almost always meant trouble. First the Greeks and then the

Romans inked the unconsenting backs of prisoners and slaves. The practice continued in Europe

throughout the Middle Ages to mark the deviant and the incarcerated.

The indelible cruelty of the penal tattoo can still be seen living in the flesh of those who survived the deathcamps of Word War II. There is little that suggests the horror of this genocide more than these numbered

tattoos. The proprietary mark of Auschwitz reminds us of the horror of the human body as an effect of the

state.

For millennia, and with few exceptions, ink on the body signified ownership and brutality. This external

mark was an indication of control; a sign that its bearer had a value that hovered somewhere betweenchattel and machine.

When something is imposed without our consent, we humans tend to develop a strong sense of satire.From at least the 18th century, those who had been marked by the state as "deviant" began to create their

own tattoos.

Australian convicts were known to make a mockery of the king by etching the words, "Property of Mother

England" into the flesh on their backs. By these means, their floggers were reminded that they werevandalising the property of the crown.

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Just as homosexuals appropriate the language of their tormenters, and just as many Auschwitz prisoners

elected to live with the proof of their survival, so it went with "criminal" tattoos. Many consigned to thescrap-heap were drawn to tattoos. These marks, now consensually acquired, lampooned the arrogance of a

state that presumed to own the bodies on which they were drawn.

These were the traditions of defiance that saw a tattoo artist set up shop in every Australian shopping

centre in the 1990s. And it was in one of these new body modification boutiques that I, and many otheryoung women, dared to "defile" our femininity. Back then, a handful of us angry young things had

symbols of our gender affixed to our own bodies. Our theory went that these marks were lampooning thearrogance of a state that presumed etcetera, etcetera.

Of course, ink for women quickly morphed from rebellion into a distant cousin. Tattoos became sexy andadorned the limbs of Sarah Palin's daughters. Personally, I find this profoundly annoying. Here I am stucknot with a real memory of my feminist youth but an indelible kinship to Bristol.

And, for all the Magpies' rough-and-tumble braggadocio, all Swan is stuck with is indelible kinship to

Chadstone. He can have 10 more Satans etched on his trunk and a pair of prosthetic horns affixed to his

head. The fact is, body modification has become little more than a laughable logo.

The tattoo has been commodified and now performs, more or less, as it originally did; it is fashion's

proprietary mark.

It's difficult, of course, to imagine a time when a tattoo marked anyone, man or woman, as an eager freak.For a brief moment, however, I did feel Carnivale unfolding on my skin. And now, I look at my Angry

Woman symbol and I see an ornament as ordinary as any other cosmetic quirk.

I wonder if Swan will ever feel the same about his Satan.

Helen Razer is a Melbourne writer and broadcaster.