INDEPTH: TATTOO
Skin Deep
CBC News Online | October 21, 2004
Reporter: Dan Bjarnason
Producer: Alex Shprintsen
Be forewarned: this is a world of discriminating taste and particular elegance. And it's not for everyone. It's half about art, half about fashion, and all about self.
"Tattoo shops are opening faster than Mexican restaurants," says one tattoo artist.
"I've tattooed Catholic priests, I have arbitrage attorneys who are handling multibillion-dollar deals, who under their $2,000 Armani suit are covered with tattoos," says another.
"Show me a man who has a tattoo and I'll show you a man who's led an interesting life," Vince Hemingson says.
So, mark down Vince Hemingson's life as "interesting."
We pick up on Vince's tattoo odyssey at a boot store in suburban Vancouver where he's now manager.
It's been a winding road – university, an interest in history, a stab at writing, then TV production – but somehow, none of this was him.
"You know, I was in my mid-30s. I'd just gotten divorced. I'd just had back surgery. I was kind of in a transitional period. You know, a life that's unexamined is probably a pretty boring life," Hemingson says.
Along with Vancouver tattoo artist Tom Lockhart, Vince ventured deep into headhunting country on the so-called River of Death.
The result was a documentary on the vanishing tattoo culture of the people of Borneo.
Vince's body already had made a good start back home on becoming a billboard, but it was tough to resist adding to the collection.
For the traditionalists out in Borneo, none of those fancy-shmansy, high-tech electrical gizmos. They like getting their tattoos the old-fashioned way.
When the locals want to make an impression, they aren't kidding.
"It's a very compelling story where you have men and a culture where the individuals are all in their 70s or 80s and have these incredible body suits of beautiful tattoos, and yet none of the younger generations were really interested in the tattoos," Hemingson says.
"Tattooing in the West – and this is what most people forget nowadays – came back with the sailors after Captain Cook had been to the South Pacific. And he actually presented a Tahitian chief… at court, and King George V, Edward VII, all kinds of people in English aristocracy, had tattoos. In fact, at one point in time, most of the crowned heads of Europe had tattoos. So it was very much in vogue and it was very much something that was done by the upper classes."
But tattooing somehow slipped from being a statement of high fashion and lapsed into a trademark of lesser folk, bikers, criminals and the like.
"For many people there's a lot of egoism involved," Hemingson say. "They want to appear to be interesting and draw attention and seem mysterious. It's the same reason people wear sunglasses in nightclubs. And drive Mercedes down Robson Street. It's all about ego.
"Of course, now we have this resurgence in tattoos and that kind of starts in the 1960s. And what's happens is you get rock stars and supermodels getting tattooed, which is our new modern royalty, and once those people get tattoos then everybody else wants to emulate them to a certain degree."
They're an unlikely grouping from Britney Spears to Sean Connery to Cher to the former American secretary of state George Schultz to the writer John Irving.
Back in Vancouver, it's another day at the office – West Coast Tattoo – for Tom Lockhart. Tom himself, a vivid exhibition of his own art form, is Vince's tattooer of choice. Today, it's just for a pit stop and tune-up.
Isn't one of the first things people ask, is it going to hurt?
"Well, first they ask how much is it going to hurt. And that's very subjective," Lockhart says. "Yeah, it hurts. Maybe seven on a 10-point scale if we have to arbitrate it like that.
"A typical tattoo's usually under a hundred dollars and I say half of that's just eaten up in brand-new needles every time and all the sterilizing and the ink, stuff like that," Lockhart says.
A $100 tattoo takes an hour, perhaps less, Lockhart says.
The tattoo resurgence means not just more tattooing but also more tattooists.
"I would say that the market's probably saturated by now, you know, starting, say, in the mid- to late-'90s," Lockhart says. "We have something like 45 shops in Vancouver and its environs now. When I first opened up here there were only two other shops in the entire province."
"I do a lot of dragons, you know, because of the Japanese motif," Lockhart says. "They're great, too. They blend easy, bend them around [the arm] you can put things in their claws. You can do them in black and grey. You can do them in colour. You know, they're by far the most popular, I'd say."
There are two basic philosophies of tattoo-ism. There's the make-a-statement school:
"Something changed in my life, so I decided to get a tattoo," one man says. "It's a special thing for me. It's a Japanese sign for dragon, and it's the year I was born."
And there's the it's-my-little-secret school: "My tattoo is 10 years old, nearly 11 now," one woman says. "And I wanted to have something that lasts forever. And it's a rose because I like flowers… I want to have it in places which can't be seen by everyone. Tattoos are personal. It's something intimate for me."
But largely, the whole point of being a walking art gallery is, if you've got it, flaunt it.
"There isn't really any meaning for me," another man says. "It's all about artistic expression. People are always looking for meaning in tattoos that there is some story behind it. For me there isn't. Just about the art … I got my tattoos, I'm excited about them, I love them. Get lots of attention, too. People are always stopping me and commenting, it's a conversation piece as well…. I love it, just love it. I get lots of stares sometimes. I have actually been stopped many times by tourists to have photos taken. Especially, down here at the beach – older couples would stop me and ask to have their photo taken with me, which is cool, nice."
And guess what they've discovered in tattooland? Men and woman are different:
"I think tattoos for women are much more emotional commitment and it's of a more intimate nature," Hemingson says. "They tend to get tattoos on pretty sensual parts of the body and there it's … and women get tattoos for themselves and for the other people in their lives. Men tend to get tattoos to show off to the rest of the world."
Vince Hemingson insists there are tattoo personalities – and his radar can pick them up, no matter how well camouflaged the fuselage.
The resurgence of tattoos is remarkable. It's estimated that in the U.S. more than a third of the population between 25 and 29 now have at least one tattoo. It's a growth industry. There are some 15,000 tattoo parlours in the United States.
Type in "tattoo" on Google and you'll get 10½ million hits.
However flamboyant your nature, some caution is needed. As in real estate, location is important. As Norman Rockwell told us, a tattoo decision is one you'll be stuck with for a while.
San Fransisco's Lyle Tuttle is an icon of the tattoo world and probably its most famous artist – he counts Cher as among his canvasses. His – and Norman Rockwell's – rule number one: names are no-noes.
"Names aren't smart. Put 'honey' or 'sweetheart' or a nickname, but don't just blatantly put 'I love Mary' or something," Tuttle says. "What's gold today is brown tomorrow."
Brown tomorrow maybe, but no longer brown forever. If you change your mind, you can now change your body décor. Vancouver doctor Martin Braun, for example, uses new laser technology to make them history.
Katie White got tattooed when she got married. Her husband is now an ex-husband, and she wants her tattoo to be an ex-tattoo. With Braun's new laser, the artwork literally vanished into thin air.
While tattoos have become quite up-market and hip, there are still grumpy islands of resistance. Pity poor Justin Miller of the Toronto Blue Jays who sports some handsome artwork, indeed, during practice. But come game time, he's forced into a great coverup.
In the States, UPS fired a driver who had a tattooed arm for a sort of a violation of a dress code.
And when the union appealed, who gets called up at the hearing as an expert witness, but our Vince Hemingson, now clearly seen as a tattoo-ologist of international stature. The man's tattoo, said Vince, met acceptable community standards, and artistic freedom won a round.
"And I said, well, you know, I was always under the impression that you couldn't even be a Teamster unless you had a tattoo and you could kind of see the air go out of the … the UPS … legal team and the Teamster driver in the end ended up getting rehired," Hemingson says.
The sort of sleazy, dark, back-alley reputation connected with the tattoo culture is fading. Instead, tattoos are now stepping out into the full sunshine of mainstream society. Increasingly, for ordinary people, it's becoming an ordinary thing to do.
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