Tons of people around the world have tattoos. For thousands of years the art of tattooing has been around for people to mark their bodies. In our reading this week titled, Secret Ink there is a mixed message that is still being sent out in our culture. The mixed message our culture sends about tattoos is the fact that many musicians, athletes and artist have tattoo and are excepted widely by the public. Where as average individuals with tattoos are not as easily excepted.
Average individuals unlike many athletes can even get fired for having tattoos, "In addition to private corporations, state and local governments have also terminated employees solely on the basis of tattoos"(Roberts 156). Employees that refuse to cover up their tattoos can be fired if it interferes with the uniform of the job. But for athletes this is not the same. Depending on your job your tattoo may be okay to one employer but not the other. Another way we know that tattoos are excepted in some cases and not in others is from the history of tattoos. Tattoos used to be a sign of wealth but now they are associated with people who have been incarcerated and have a lower social status. "Though tattoos were a fad among the upper class, sailors and soldiers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they became unacceptable by the 1920s, leading to academic research framing tattoos as deviant or symbolic of mental health disorders" (Roberts 154). Tattoos have made a clear shift in society from once being accepted for the wealthy to being unacceptable even today by some people.
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