The History of Tattoos and Women

Tattoos are not a new idea in regard to being a way for people to be individuals. The thing that has changed in regards to tattoos is why people are getting them. This is especially true for women. The first tattoos were put on people to tell other people information about them, whether the information is good or bad was based on the person and society. This was especially true for women because women have always been seen as submissive in society.

It is because of this that women could be made to mark their bodies, even if they didn’t want to.

Because of this tattoos have been a way for women’s right activists to show their disdain for Victorian family values (the man being in charge of the women’s life). Tattoos have been a way for women to become individuals, whether they were forced to get them based on the society they lived in, or chose them based or their beliefs.

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Women of ancient times have had proof of tattoos. While today, tattoos are put on people by choice; at this time tattoos were used to label women. Tattoos date back to 5,200 ago; the earliest tattoos on women have been dated back to 2000 B. C. which have been found on Egyptian female mummies. In this culture it was only the women that were tattooed. Men were not tattooed, probably because men did not need to be labeled for people to know what their attributes are. (Lineberry) At first it was thought that tattoos were to mark prostitutes and differ them from other women, but excavators have found tattoos on women that were very affluent for the time.

While the first tattoos were mostly of dots and lines, pictures were also added. (Lineberry) It is one thought that tattoos were used to help women through the birthing process.

Dots would be draw on a woman’s stomach and upper legs, and as the woman grew the dots would turn out looking like nets. Also, tattoos were used to tell men information about the women in their culture. Egyptian culture was the oldest example of women that were tattooed. But there were other cultures that were tattooing as well. Some of these cultures include the Japanese, Chinese and Polynesian cultures, as well as the Indian Culture. One reason the Indian culture had tattoos was because of the Hindu belief in the caste system.

Hindu’s believe that once a person’s life is over they are reborn into a higher or lower caste based on if they were a good or bad person in the prior life. Many times women were tattooed to show men certain aspects of themselves. For example some of the symbols that were tattooed on women shower fertility and subordination. Another type of tattoo that is popular in the Indian culture was a dot, thought to be a third eye to ward off evil. A type of tattoo that is very important in Indian culture is henna tattoos. Henna tattoos were used on weddings days.

It was a belief that the darker the henna tattoo, the more the mother in law would like her new daughter. In the Indian culture henna is used to mark all sorts of happy events. The only time women in India do not do henna tattoos is when they have been recently widowed and are in mourning. (The history of henna tattoo) While in the beginning history of tattoos was very demeaning to women, this started to change in the beginning of the 19th century. This was a time of great women’s rights growth, and with that growth grew the popularity of the tattoo.

Tattoos were a way for women to speak out against male dominated society, and also express their beliefs. In the late 19th century women had begun getting tattoos. One reason for this was for women’s rights. Women, such as Irene Woodward started to get tattoos after she found out how much P. T. Barnum was making each week in a circus’ freak show. Women were looking for work so they could be more independent and not depend on a male for their livelihood. Many women found their husbands while they were working in the freak show and their husband’s encouraged them to keep working knowing that the extra money coming into the household would help.

Also, women were working in the freak show also needed to keep working after world war one. During the First World War, many women went into the work place after the men left the countryside for the war over seas, women had to step up and start working in factories and stores. After the war, men came back, and women wanted to continue working for themselves. In the 1870s the bloomer fight began, this was a women’s right issue in which women wanted to wear pants, or bloomers named after Amelia Bloomers (the first lady of the movement). Tattooed women jumped right over this movement, starting to wear short pants, and small shirts. Read a history of tattoos and piercings

These women were not trying to show a lot of skin, they were just showing their tattoos. This is one reason women were so popular in the freak shows, not only were they covered in beautiful art but they wore less clothes then a lot of other women. (Mifflin) After the first women’s right movement, there was a decade where there were not a lot of women’s rights activists fighting for rights. The time between the ratification of the eighteenth amendment, which granted women the right to vote, there were the roaring twenties and prohibition, then the Great Depression and America’s entrance into a Second World War.

It wasn’t until the women’s rights movement grew again in the 1970s. “…Tattooed women fulfilled the ideals pursued by feminist body artists…women tattooist were approaching their medium as a highly-charged personal statement and rejecting its male legacy. ” (Mifflin) Tattooed women, as well as women performing artists were fighting against he male dominated ideas of beauty. The women of the 1970s enjoyed new sexual freedoms. It was because of this new freedom tattooing of private parts became more popular, and sexual themes showed up more often then the religious or nationalist themes of before.

Also because of this new freedom, women’s tattoos became more vivid. Women that were getting tattoos, as well as tattoo artists were experimenting with new colors and new types of tattoos. Some women artists starting taking out the heavy black lines of tattoos in lieu of pastels to make tattoos more feminine. Also tattoo artists starting taken the curves of a women’s body into account when tattooing a woman. Women tattoo artists also found themselves fighting for the same rights in the work place as all other women. Women of the time were fighting for equality in the work place.

Vyvyn Lazonga experienced sexism and prejudice in her own workplace, and had to fight, just like all the women of the time for working equipment, and worth while clients. At the time, the push for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would have affected all women. The amendment would make sure women were treated completely equal to men. Meaning they could go to war, they would get paid the same amount as a man, and could not be denied of any benefits as a woman. Tattoos became an outlet for a lot of women that supported the movement, but could not speak out against the society all the time.

Women from all walks of life started getting tattoos, from the blue-collar factory worker to the female executive, women were enjoying getting tattoos. (Miffin) Tattoos have now become very popular. It has been estimated the one in every ten people have some form of tattoo. Tattoos have become a type of expression that many people use to express their ideals. This is one of many ways people choose to express themselves. A tattoo started off being negative for women, but as time has progressed tattooing has become more popular.

Something that has shown to be popular is different style of tattoos. Henna tattoos are still being done today, but not only on women of the Indian culture, the popularity has grown throughout different cultures. This is also true for traditional Japanese and Samoan tattoo styles. Women getting tattoos for pleasure has become more socially acceptable. At one point when the women’s rights movement was not as popular a certain stereotype had evolved in that women with tattoos were dirty, or problematic. Today, that is not the case; many women from all types of lifestyle are getting tattoos. Davidson) Today women are getting tattoos for their own enjoyment, but in the earlier times, such as the 1970’s, or earlier as in the early 20th century, women were getting tattoos to show society that women should have the right to do what they felt they needed to do to their own bodies. While women of the Indian and Egyptian cultures were punished, or told to put tattoos on their bodies, as time went on, and women’s right grew women got more and rights women felt tattoos were a perfect way to express their rights.