An Interesting Find

Having been made aware of the bountiful research on tattoos from an anthropological perspective by my kindred socialbookmarking spirit, I now am at ease about my capability to find interesting topics to discuss. My first "interesting find" I have already mentioned in my selected readings post. However, a mere glossing of the article's content I feel does not suffice. I would like to dedicate this entire post to Mary Kosut's well written and fascinating, "An Ironic Fad: The Commodification and Consumption of Tattoos".

The article focuses on the popularization and consumption of tattoo through the lens of the contemporary media, and in turn, the affect on mass culture. She begins with a few societal statistics, stating "The 2001 MSNBC television special, Skin Deep, which examined tattooing
and other contemporary body modifications, reported that twenty percent of the American population is tattooed. Although the validity of this statistic is speculative, a 2002 survey conducted by the University of Connecticut produced similar findings." Though the population of tattoo bearers is a minority, the consumption of the product of tattoo has yielded a booming industry, attracting consumers cross-ethnically and cross-socioeconimically.

Kosut suggests the popularization of tattoo is attributed to its sheer visibility in the public eye, especially, the entertainment industry. She provides examples from box office movies whose main character's are ostentatiously tattooed (anti)heroes. The movie industry is not the only form of popular culture to take on the tattoo craze, high end retailers like Versace and Chanel are using tattoos to promote their companies in advertising campaigns. These ads are "being used to target the present-day leisure classes" and in doing so "indicates an elevation in their (tattoos) cultural status."

Though, as Kosut points out, the product of tattoo is an interesting commodity, simply because of the corporeal character of the product itself. "Tattoos simultaneously decorate the body and permanently modify it. For this reason, tattooing can be conceptualized as an ironic fad-a popular cultural trend that, due to its permanent nature, cannot be as easily discarded as a pair of jeans." Kosut also suggests the danger of the popularization of tattoos, in that like other subcultural turned popular-cultural trends, they run the risk of becoming trite.

The article ends by recognizing the growing interest in tattoo by cultural institutions such as art museums. Through the help of the mass media who contemporaneously portray tattoo as art with aesthetic value, these cultural institutions have accepted tattoo, "blurring the distinctions between high and popular culture".

I will most definitely be using Mary Kosut's concept of the "ironic-fad" in future tattoo research endeavors.