Girls Gone Inked

Tattoos are often met with mixed reviews, but when they are on a woman they cause even more controversy. Why is this so? Tattoos have been a part of history. The art of tatooing dates back over 5,000 years to the "Otzi the Iceman". There has been evidence of women having tattoos since the time of Jesus, everywhere from Greece to China. Some of the earliest known tattooed women were from 2,000 years ago in Egypt.

The first American woman to receive a tattoo was Olive Oatman, born in 1837. When she was 14 she was traveling with her Mormon family when they were attacked by Native Americans. They killed nearly her entire family and took her captive for 5 years. In captivity she was given a blue tattoo on her chin from the Mohave tribe. She returned to civilized life but was forever changed by the experience.

The woman often credited with being the first tattooed American female is Betty Broadbent. The beautiful voluptuous woman nicknamed "The Tattoed Venus" was the first woman to be covered head to toe in tattoos and worked for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for 40 years. She said in an interview "I decided to get tattoos. I want to be independent and take care of myself". In her time, tattoos were almost exclusively reserved for sailors and scumbags. As such she took pains to project herself in a feminine and refined light.

Here is an excerpt from BBC News Magazine entitled "So why do "normal" people get tattoos?" found at the link below.

"For the women milling around the convention the most popular explanation of the motive for getting a tattoo is about "reasserting control over your own body". In a Western world where body image, plastic surgery, anorexia and the depiction of women is a topic of daily debate, tattoos represent a different current of thought.

It is a sentiment that Margot Mifflin, author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, believes dates back to the 1980s.

"In the 1980s it was a real body decade," she says. "There was a lot of body anxiety. Women wanted to reassert control over their own bodies."

Christine Whittington, co-author of Body Marks: Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarification, got her first tattoo in her 40s and traces the change in tattoos to the rise of proper artists in the 1970s. "It was moved out of the danger zone," she says.

But the political thread is still clear at London's convention. Leah Schein, 23, who has a tattoo of a Wiccan moon goddess, says: "It's a lot to do with having control over your own image and control over your own body."

Laura, a student nurse, says it is all about the art for tattooed women. "They don't see it as a sailor tattoo or slaggish. Our culture has changed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7034500.stm