In this article we will explore whether there is a sense of community amongst people with tattoos.
Firstly, what is a community? According to the Oxford dictionary a community is a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. Community can also mean that attitudes or believes that certain people share, bind them together.
Reading and browsing, I learned from the history of tattooing that originally, when people started to tattoo themselves, tattoos was without a doubt a sign that you belong to the community. There would be many reasons why a certain community tattooed themselves.
Tattooing has been practiced throughout the world for many centuries. The oldest tattooed mummy was found in 2015, and it was dated to 3250 BC. Tattooing was most practiced by the Austronesian people- this includes Taiwan, South China, Taiwan, the Micronesians, and Polynesians. To describe how tattooing was practiced in all ancient cultures will fill the whole Tatmag! The point I want to make is that through history, people who lived together in a certain geographical area often were tattooed. And although there seems to be different reasons why people in a certain community would get tattooed, the fact that a community was tattooed in the same manner shows there was a sense of community between the people. Everyone could see that they belong together.
In the period shortly after the American revolution, to avoid imprisonment by British Navy ships, sailors had protection papers to establish their American citizenship. But these papers could easily be faked, and so the sailors started getting tattoos to be identified as a seaman. So, tattoos became popular amongst seamen, but it was not popular in the general population yet. The popularity of Western tattooing owes its origins mostly to Captain James Cook who undertook voyages to the South Pacific in 1770 (although the people of the West have been getting tattoos for many ages).
Tattoos became especially popular in the West with the introduction of the electric tattoo machine around 1930.
But of course, we do not live in an ancient, geographical tribal set up any longer. We live in a modern society, where we are easily be able to connect globally. Especially with the COVID pandemic, it is now easier than ever to find and belong to a group of people with similar values and interests. We are not bound by were we stay any longer.
So, if we say that the tattoo community is not a group of people who stay in the same area (or do the same things like the sailors after the American Revolution)-what are the characteristics of people who get tattoos? What type of traits do people that get tattoos share?
In my first article about the psychology of tattoos I looked at reasons why people get tattoos. Some of those reasons says something about all people that get tattoos, e.g., that they feel something enough is important enough to them to get a permanent symbol (tattoo) representing it on their bodies.
But are there personality differences between tattooed and non-tattooed people? There is not a lot of research done yet to answer this question, but one study (1) described that people with tattoos have high scores on Extroversion, Experience Seeking and a Need for Uniqueness. So, I do not think this helps us to describe the “typical” characteristics of someone with tattoos.
Initially I was slightly disappointed by this conclusion (the fact that it is difficult to describe the characteristics/personalities/believes of people with tattoos), but in retrospect this is significant and positive. This means that tattooed people constitute an extremely diverse group of people. The one characteristic that those of us with tattoos share, is that we are not afraid to show what we believe, we are not afraid to be unique and individualistic.
In conclusion I would say that although people with tattoos are divers in all aspects- geographical location, culture, race, sexual orientation, occupation, socio-economic status (the list goes on), what does give us tattooed people a strong sense of community is our unapologetic desire to express our individuality.
1. Personality differences between tattooed and non-tattooed individuals, Psychol Rep. Aug 2012
