people. It symbolizes one final attempt
to blast away the ideal their unwanted
tattoo stands for.

A popular alternative is the cover-up;
you can hide your heartache in the
folds of a Grim Reaper’s cape! Actress
and comedienne Roseanne had her
ex-husband’s name, Tom, covered up
with a butterfly. Cover-ups constitute
over fifty per cent of the work of many
tattoo artists—that’s a lot of regrets
and poor workmanship, and another
factor that deters first-time buyers.

7. Compulsion is not uncommon.
Like Roseanne, who boasts of four
tattoos and has vowed not to get any
more for five years, some people get
hooked on tattoos. The release of the
body’s natural opiates or painkillers
during tattooing may be responsible for
the habit-forming euphoria people
often experience.

from previous page...
old age. The ability to
endure the pain of crude
needle and thread
repeatedly penetrating
their tender flesh was a
vital sign of manly
fortitude essential, they
believed, to life in
warring communities.
Girls in some tribes were
encouraged to mark
figures of men on their
arms to help them get a
mate. Fidelity and
enduring love, today
symbolized by bride and
groom exchanging rings
at a wedding ceremony,
was in some cultures

 

The pinch of pain and permanence
of the badge left behind can some-
times become opiates of their own,
symbolic of past abuses or losses.
Consider, for example, a Vancouver
youth with an abusive family back-
ground who has numerous tattoos on
his body and six rings pierced through
his penis. It lends new meaning to the
word “dysfunctional.” Or how about the
attractive Vancouver businesswoman
who has had her entire body below the
neck tattooed; she returns now and
then to have sections re-worked for
purely aesthetic reasons. Have you
ever wondered what it’s like to wake
up every day wearing the same
“dress?”

8. Shop for the best and ask a lot of
questions. You will find tattooists
today with university degrees in art,
and then there are “scratchers.” Watch

N
to

Phi

OP File

 

symbolized by each partner
tattooing a matching sign
upon the other.

Tattoos held special social
distinction too. Often, to be
unscarred was to be
ostracized, unable to
participate in women’s or
men’s special customs,
whether bread making or
warring against neighbour-
ing peoples. Without
scarring, the Bafia people of
Cameroon believed they
were indistinguishable from
pigs or chimpanzees. Maori
women felt that without
tattoos they were the same
as dogs. Some traditions
held that the ability to alter