MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2021 TATTOOS

 MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2021  TATTOOS

Last week, I berated scripture on the basis of cultural biases.  Women must be silent in churches, women must wear hats (or, cover their hair), men can’t have long hair.  One that I didn’t berate at that time was “tattoos”.  

Leviticus 19:28 “‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.”

When I was a kid, the only people with tattoos (that I remember anyway) were veterans.  And, of those, it seemed like sailors (ex-Navy) were maybe more tattooed than others.  

I understood (and may have been mistaken), that the peer pressure of serving on a ship was such that getting a tattoo was a “rite of passage” for those sailors in World War II.  So, grandpa (or maybe great-grandpa) got a tattoo.  Common tattoos might be an anchor like “Popeye the Sailor Man” had on his arm.  (But, of course, Popeye was okay because he ate his spinach and beat the bad guys around him!!!)

According to a document about the Tattoo Industry: “According to the latest tattoo industry news and market analysis, the tattoo industry is still going strong in the US, with no signs of slowing down. Body ink has become much more mainstream thanks to celebrity trends and the overall higher visibility of tattoos in society. Tattoos and body piercing businesses have relatively low start-up costs, so tattoo business industry experts believe that tattooing is here to stay for the time being.”

Note - an alternative term is body art - and for some people, a goal seems to get most of their body covered by such art.  For some, it still is a ‘rite of passage’.  Mike Tyson has tattoos (or body art) that include his face.  I’ve seen some really nice, really thought out body art - that can really be called ‘art’, and some that looked (excuse me), like maybe the person had been drinking and peer (or other) pressure was upon that person to get a tattoo!!

I have girlfriends that have nice, appropriate tattoos.  One friend has a ladybug on her hand, another has a small rose on her ankle.  

MarketResearch notes that tattoo industry revenue has nearly doubled since 2007. 

The tattoo industry has been increasing by nearly 10 percent every year for more than a decade now. Industry analysts believe that this trend will continue well into the 2020s

“A 2012 poll found that more women than men have tattoos!!!”  (really?)

But, as Mifflin told Motto, that changed in the 1970s when the counterculture and feminist movements led to a spike in the number of women getting a tattoo.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, tattoos became less of an act of resistance and more of a permanent part of pop culture.

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So, back to the verse: “Leviticus 19:28 “‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.”

I don’t know anybody who cuts their body for the dead (but, that must have been an issue in Leviticus as the Israelites traveled from Egypt to Canaan).  Was the prohibition on getting tattoos cultural in nature?  Health-oriented?  Could people who got tattoos in those days be more easily infected with germs since they lived in the desert for forty years?  Is it like the prohibition on pork (that was frequently the source of tapeworms)?  

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I know many who do have tattoos - and I know some who are adamantly against getting a tattoo.  Personally, I think I have better things to do with my money than getting a tattoo.  But, the economic argument also blends with the pain argument.

“Tattooing involves repeatedly piercing your skin's top layer with a sharp needle covered with pigment. So getting a tattoo is generally always painful, though people may experience different levels of pain. ... The most painful places to get tattooed are those with the least fat, most nerve endings, and thinnest skin.”

Some have normally hidden parts of their bodies tattooed (like women who get tattoos on their breasts).  

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A cartoon some time back poked fun at women and tattoos by suggesting that little old ladies in nursing homes will have tattoos.

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So, what do you think?  

Do you have tattoos?  Why or why not?

If you don't, might you consider one someday?

But, tattoos or not, LOVE WINS!!!

Karen