Final Thoughts

My life path is leading me to a place where I will be too occupied to continue this online discussion on a regular basis. For that reason, I want to make a closing statement. The profusion of tattoo in contemporary society is indeed an "ironic fad," that I believe is not going anywhere. Through my own ethnography, and my extensive literature review, I have extracted what I think to be the future of academic research, and that is the paradoxical nature of tattoo. Not only is tattoo an ironic fad, meaning that "fads" are temporal and tattoos are permanent, but also meaning behind tattoo is transient. All the energy placed on "diagnosing tattoo," has not taken into account the complex quality of the art of tattoo, that tattoo is grounded on living flesh. Tattoos become a part of a living, breathing, changing being, and although the design stays the same the meaning can and will change with its bearer. As we live in post-structuralist, post-modern times, we need to focus on the complexity of meaning, and tattoo's multifaceted character where subject and object coalesce into a non-static, unfixed entity.

Thanks for Reading-
Mandarax