Social Acceptance and Tattoo

I have reflected before on my own expectations for my service learning experience, and   I thought I would be able to walk into the classroom and immediately have an effect on the students.  This was foolish of me, because as I began my service a few weeks into the school year (Villa Maria starts the new school year in August), I entered the classroom as a foreigner.  I was new, and did not know the way things worked.  To some students, my presence was distracting, to others I was bothersome, and I'm pretty sure that the rest just plain ignored me at first.  I offered my help quite a bit, but it was mostly turned down.  I had to undergo some sort of change in order to be viewed as a valuable member of my classroom community.  The students needed to respect my opinion, relate to me, or at least find me interesting before they would allow me to be an effective aide in the classroom.

I found my initiation into the classroom in befriending one particular student.  Montrell is the class clown.  The teacher I work with calls him "The Mouth of the class."  He has an opinion on everything, and he is not at all afraid to share it.  I think that he really could talk for hours if he was allowed to.  Montell's role in the classroom is very interesting.  At Villa, the students' emotional and behavioral disorders effect their social lives in a profound way.  They do form friendships, but at times these are very fragile.  They really do have a hard time getting along, even in a class of just nine students.  To further complicate things, bullying is a huge problem at the school.  The students as a whole have extremely low self esteems, largely as a result of their low academic achievement.  They are frequently teasing each other and putting each other down in order to compensate for their own low self concepts.  Despite all this, Montrell has emerged as a sort of class leader.  He can at times command the attention of the group far better than the teacher ever has.  The class really follows his lead.  Because he is so outgoing and friendly, it was a lot easier to get to know him than some of the other, more introverted, students.  I really got to know him by talking about non-academic subjects, and especially by telling him about myself first.  He was particularly fascinated by Loyola, and the idea of going away to school.  Once I had a relationship with him, my role in the classroom changed a lot.  No longer a foreign observer, the students began to call on me for help, rather than just waiting for their teacher to come to them.  They saw how Montrell and I were getting along, and began to follow suit.  It was almost as if once I had Montrell's stamp (or tattoo) of approval, I could go about as an active member of the students' community.  

I might be stretching this a little bit, but I do relate this experience to role of the tattoo in some cultures.  Tattooing the World, particularly in the Introduction chapter, discusses how James O'Connell's tattoo made him a complete member in the Pacific culture he was visiting:  "O'Connell had to receive the Pohnpeian tattoo, the pelipel, before he could enter into the life of the community" (Ellis 3).  Before receiving the tattoo, O'Connell has a "lack of awareness" as to what is going on, and what the islanders are asking of him.  He travelled to live with a culture completely unlike his own, and had to undergo some type of conversion or experience before he was able to live there as a full or complete citizen.  The traditional tattoo converted O'Connell from a foreigner to a member of the Pohnpeian community.  The tattoo gave him the approval of the community, therefore giving him a place and a role in the community.

The Introduction to Tattooing the World also talks briefly about the experience of the English missionary George Vason, who "failed to convert a single Tongan but obtained a full tatatau" (26).  Vason was accepted into Tongan society, but let go completely of his purpose for traveling there.  Whether his purpose, as a missionary, was right or wrong, I think there is a fine line between how much we should hold on to and how much we should let go of.  Ellis writes, "while Vason converted to Tongan ways, he and his colleagues failed so signally in their mission that they did no even manage to communicate their purpose" (26).  I would like to stretch these concepts a little, and relate back to my service learning again, in order to complicate things.  In my case, I am not forcing my own thoughts or religion on a group of people who may not want it.  I am, however, making my help available, and the students at first did not want it.  Now that I have earned their trust, I can see how easy it would be to forget my purpose for being at Villa Maria, and simple enjoy my inclusion in the community.  It is tempting to just chat with the students, get to know them, and enjoy our new friendships.  I think that if I did this, however, I would lose my purpose for being there.  I wouldn't accomplish much academically.  This comparison presents an interesting dilemma that I am not sure I can really answer.  When we travel to new places, how much of our old culture or lifestyle do we hang onto?  I think it is clear that there needs to be some sort of compromise, for lack of a better word, between the old and the new, or the familiar and the foreign.  Just how to create or manage this compromise is difficult to figure out.

Surface and Depth

Reflecting upon “Tattooing the World” and many of the recent articles I could not help but think of the following correlations: tattoo, clothing, identity, conformity and rebellion. Within these elements, we have discussed tattoo as clothing, but furthermore, through conformity and rebellion it has also become a symbol of identity. Once I drew this connection, I immediately thought of my students at St. Mary’s. While the eighth grade population does not generally have tattoos, they do however use clothing as “a primary form of signification that indicates who does and does not belong” (6). In short, their particular styles of clothing determine their standing within their “eighth grade culture” just as the tattoo serves as an indicator of social standing in the Pacific.

Especially as a female, I can remember the trials and tribulations of shedding my comfortable “kiddie” clothes and moving on to the more trendy styles, or simply the styles that coordinated with my newer, older, self. I see this again in the students at St. Mary’s who come in each week with new jackets, earrings, necklaces, hats, and hooded sweatshirts- both males and females- searching for their new look, or the look of mature flattery. Similarly, “Tattooing the World” states that the art of tattoo “…was, and still is, about metamorphosis, about change, about crisis, and about coping too; and…is a strategy too, a means of encounter, an expression of self” (11). Therefore, like the tattoo, the students have used their clothing as this right of passage; this metamorphosis into a new stage or era of their lives. Their clothing allows for this change, through a means of substantial transformation on their own terms, by their own means. They may not have the power of preventing growing older, but through clothing they do however, have the power of expressing how they interpret their older self.

The previous analysis leads to my next observation: conformity. Because the students are in fact a part of the eight grade community of St. Mary’s their clothing does rely heavily upon this aspect of their “culture.” The students are then expected to wear their uniforms. This includes, shoes, socks, skirts (for girls) pants, ties, (for boys) sweaters, vests, and belts that all carry the St. Mary’s emblem. Therefore, just like the tattoo, while it is a form of expression, it is also conformity, or paying tribute to community. Thus, clothing like “tattoo involves more than aesthetic. The practice also conveys an ethic…of responsibility to one’s family and community” (12).

After thinking further about the students clothing, I instantly began to recap “flashy” and over-the-top accessories and additions to their uniforms. The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder if these were more than just an expression of ones self, but in fact a rebellion by some to their uniform, or required conformity to their St. Mary’s community. I remembered the discussion of the Moa-e-tahi and others within “Tattooing the World” and how they used “tattoo to defy the new laws and the missionaries who helped introduce them” (25) by using language they learned in the schools their oppressors set up, the same language their oppressors spoke, to write their tattoos. In conjunction with this idea of rebellion I concluded that some of the students were in fact wearing their excessive accessories simply as a “sign of protest, a banner” of the eighth grade, rather than of the school.

These constitute an interesting idea then. It is clear that the students clothing provides for them what tattoo provides the sovereign people of the Pacific. What is additionally interesting is that in their expression of identity they both conform and rebel against one particular community to better exemplify themselves. This then confirms that clothing like tattoo “involves both surface and depth [that] makes visible the simultaneous intensification and joining of the interior and the exterior” (18).

Motion and Language of Tattoos

The greatest opportunity that traveling provides to the participant is the ability to learn new things about the region being experienced. The knowledge that comes with this place will also have a consequent effect on the traveler himself. He will be changed by that which he learns from the place, either knowingly or subconsciously. The place will forever remain with him in the sense that it is absorbed into his memory and will be triggered by various stimuli that he experiences as a result of contact with different people and places. It is in this same sense that the tattoo forever remains with the “wearer.” Moreover, the tattoo will never remain constant. It creates a new type of language each place it goes. O’Connell at one point states, “My tattooing, speaking my relationship to Ahoundel-a-Nutt, was better than letters of introduction” (Ellis 5). Since a tattoo is not a written language in the sense of words, phrases and paragraphs, it has the unique ability to change meanings by crossing any existent language barriers. With regard to this inability to completely define a tattoo comes an inherent trust between the artist and the wearer. The wearer has to place faith in the artist that the vision he has of the tattoo will be echoed in the design with the artist’s final stroke.

One of the most intriguing aspects of a tattoo is its own ability to travel. The character given in the introduction of James F. O’Connell is a great example of the many powers that a tattoo possesses. As Dr. Ellis writes of the origins of Pacific tattooing, “tattoo moved from the Pacific into the rest of the world” (Ellis 1). There is a certain amount of motion attributed to the art of tattooing. The motion of the repeated strokes upon the skin gives the design its shape. The tattoo then relies on the movement of the person. It forever travels with the person, assuming new opinions and definitions, both good and bad, as it is seen in other places. “O’Connell finds in the motifs an identity” (Ellis 3). This is seen in the description of O’Connell’s return to the States. In the Pacific, his tattoo was a sign of adulthood and placement, especially that of a lineage. However, in the States, the tattoo assumed a negative connotation of deviance and “otherness” than that which was accepted in the culture. This shows the enormous amount of power that tattoos have on people’s perceptions of other people. It is a type of language without words that prematurely dictates one’s opinion of another completely by vision without truly knowing that person. The notion of language has been seen before in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. He shows Marco Polo’s initial inability to relate his travels to Khan, ultimately relying on physical action and signals instead of words. In this same sense, a tattoo is an expression apart from words and regular language. It is a visible form of a culture’s effect on a person and that person’s own emotions and thoughts.

The tattoo presents a language in and of itself. One thing that a person experiences while traveling is the many different languages that comprise the world. In my own travels around Europe, I experienced Spanish, French and Gaelic or Irish depending on what region of Ireland you were in. Language is a key component of a region’s dynamic and of its inherent identity. Only hearing a few words from a given language, a person can often be identified with a given region. For instance, if someone overhears, “Gracias” it immediately triggers that person’s Spanish descent or some sort of Spanish influence upon that person. In the same way, a tattoo is a language in itself. Dr. Ellis writes of O’Connell, “He believed that the tattoo formed a text that could be read if only he could learn a new language” (Ellis 1). O’Connell was unable to read his own tattoo regardless of his ownership of it. He traveled back to America instilling upon the tattoo his own ideas of what it meant. This shows a tattoo’s changing nature due to people’s interpretations of what they see. Tattoos are also able to travel with respect to the past and the present. A tattoo has the ability to transcribe a region’s history into the present, thus preserving its past ideals and societal claims. This is seen when Dr. Ellis writes, “Tattoo encompasses history, genealogy, and cosmology, the distant past and the immediate present, and embodies the sacred and the physical” (Ellis 10). In other ways, tattoos are issued to commemorate a journey. Dr. Ellis describes Jerusalem pilgrims who obtained “Jerusalem crosses” as signs of their devotion. In this way, the tattoo remembers the motion of the person.

In my own travels I have come across numerous tattoos and have always been interested in them. I would have one of my own by this point in my life if I felt as though I had something worthwhile-enough to ink. I wanted to get one while I was in Ireland to represent my own “journey” but never came upon anything substantial enough for an act like that. A tattoo that I have seen personally and that fits this theory of its own language and motion crossed my path this summer. I was working in a seafood restaurant when a young man walked in with short sleeves. A few lines of words were seen extended past the shirt. After talking, he lifted up the shirt sleeve to reveal a number of other sentences and designs going left to right, right to left, up and down, and even backwards and forwards. The tattoo was a commemoration for him of the different things he has seen in his life that have affected him in some significant way. It is this type of design that I think expresses a tattoo’s ability for motion as well as for changing language. Depending on the motion of the eye, the tattoo would express a different event or a different story while also assuming a different type of expression of language, some being short phrases with decorations or symbols and others being completely comprised of words making sentences a short paragraph long. This particular tattoo expressed motion, both his own travels as well as the flow of the physical tattoo, while simultaneously creating a new language that describes the importance of the events that each witness views with a different mindset.

Creating Connections

The idea of connections is something that plays an important role within Tattooing the World. As we know, tattooing within the Samoan cultures is not something done for pleasure but as a rite of passage as it connects the individual with their own customs and traditions. As one critic says in this book, “Our culture is based entirely on the connection we have with one another” (23); this is not just true for Samoan cultures and their tattooing practices, but it is true for all cultures around the world. When we travel, we are forced to meet new people, experience new things, and learn about cultures that are completely foreign to us. Making connections is something that I too do in my service learning classes. Because I assist in teaching a very low level class, part of the requirement is that I come every week so as to make sure the students get used to me and feel comfortable with me teaching them. Although this is particularly true when tutoring children, it is true for adults too, especially if those adults cannot speak the same language that you do. The class I teach is challenging because it is not mandatory for the participants, and so the process of making connections is difficult if the same people do not come week to week. Yet there is one man, Roman, who has continually showed up week to week, and is always eager to learn. Although he speaks Spanish with me most of the time, he understands the grammar and the reading exercises that we do in class. It is always refreshing to see him in class every week because he makes my experience more fulfilling, just by being there. Many other students left the class for reasons I am not aware of but each week I look forward to making a deeper connection with Roman.

Just as teachers create relationships with their students, the tattoo itself is a connection to the rest of the Pacific world. As we have seen in other works, tattoos do not die when you die, but instead live on in future generations, as we witnessed in They Who Do Not Grieve. The tattoo is a form of cultural travel as Dr. Ellis points out by saying, “Tattoo pigment reveals one of the earliest kinds of cultural narratives: culture is that which travels” (27). Although I am not traveling far, I do leave my room each Tuesday evening to travel into downtown Baltimore to meet these students. Moreover, it is not an example of just travel but it is truly cultural travel as I am working with people from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. These people could not be more different than me but we are brought together once a week to learn; they are in the process of learning another language and I too am able to learn from them. This is another correlation to tattooing as the tattoo itself tells a story which is, in a way, a form of education. “Tattoo encompasses history, genealogy…the distant past and the immediate present” (10); tattoos represent history, which is another way to teach or to inform. Also, Pacific tattoos do not just relate to one single perspective, as Dr. Ellis points out, but to an entire culture.
Many people who live outside of Pacific cultures are unable to appreciate the significance and beauty of the tattoo, but instead consider them inhuman and profane. The idea of perspective is relevant here as we read about people who are too narrow-minded to understand cultures different from their own.

When I go into the Esperanza Center each week, I have to remember that some of these students have not reached past a first grade reading level in their own languages, let alone in English. I am reminded of the differences among cultures and while I may have been lucky enough to receive an education, many of these men and women unfortunately have not. Just because something is strange or unfamiliar to us does not mean we have to look down upon it. Participating in this particular service learning has broadened my perspective about people who are different from me, just in the same way as traveling to Spain opened my eyes to a way of living other than my own.

The New Tattooed Irishman

While vacationing in Scotland, my friends and I stopped into an Irish bar down the block from a mutual friend’s flat. In no time at all, we struck-up a conversation with an Irishman visiting Edinburgh on holiday. He did not identify himself (aside from his nationality) so I regrettably have no name to call him.

Bolstered by ‘Dutch Courage’ this Irishman soon brought up the IRA. It should be noted that nearly every Irish-American traveling throughout Northern Ireland, and occassionally the UK, will be assumed to be (by Catholics in part, but more generally Protestants) sympathetic to the Irish Republican Army. While I feel that, historically, the IRA was a necessity, its modern incarnation is merely a gang of thugs that terrorizes and abuses the people it was founded to protect and liberate. But despite my political inclinations, our newly acquainted friend was quite comfortable in announcing his own beliefs. And though he was out-going by nature, it was clear that this man was not one to entertain any political sedition, no matter how well meaning. Thus, I kept my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.

To go one further, the man (now totally in the bag) took off his motorcycle boot and showed us a tattoo of the Union Jack. It might be strange that an avowed hater of the crown would get a tattoo of its strongest symbol, but the tattoo was on the bottom of his foot. I’m paraphrasing here but his explanation was as follows: I have this tattooed on my foot so that every waking morning, when I step out of bed, I step on the Union Jack. This was a fascinating revelation to me and seems to synch-up strongly with several of the themes touched on in Tattooing the World’s Introduction.

It is unlikely that the tattooed man intended his tattoo to have any meaning aside from that which he told us. However, there is no denying that his act of getting tattooed and the tattoo itself have many layers of meaning. Perhaps the most obvious theme as relating to Tattooing the World is the idea of protest. It is clear that cultures throughout the Pacific, after being subjected to Western yokes, embraced the tattoo as not just a signifier of maturity, but one of liberation. Dr. Ellis writes, “Tattoo becomes a sign of protest, a banner of a sovereign people of the land” (Ellis 25). The Union Jack tattoo, similarly, is a sign of protest, though not as clearly demonstrated as the Marquesan practices. Rather than demonstrating his protest to the public, the tattooed man is affirming and physically validating his own beliefs. To thine own self be true, as it were.

Furthermore, Dr. Ellis writes, “Tattoo went underground and under the clothes imported by the missionaries” (24).The clothing acted in a way to camouflage the Tahitian tradition of tattoo. The Tahitian people utilized the clothes that were forced upon them in a manner that subverted the missionaries’ message. They turned the tools of oppression into agents of liberation. So too did this Irishman transform what he viewed as a symbol of oppression into one of spiteful rebellion. He took a symbol that is considered by many English citizens as representative of their highest glories and quite literally made it as low as possible.

Finally, the idea of tattoo as analogous to language is important. Dr. Ellis writes, “Despite these rich meanings, tattoo may not be assimilated into any language, whether pictographic, logographic, or script” (12). In this case, not only is the Union Jack tattoo analogous to language, but is in many ways stronger than language. The physical act of marking oneself with a symbol speaks more powerfully than any anti-English literature, be it from the pen of Thomas Paine, Wolfe Tone, or Gerry Adams.

After reading the Introduction, I cannot help but wonder what James O’Connell, the original “tattooed Irishman” (9) might think of this new tattooed Irishman.

Developed Culture

Every time that I drive down to Fells Point for service, I am amazed at the types of students that come for English classes. There are moms with their children, restaurant workers who come in before the lunch shift, and construction employees who just got off the 2am-9am routines. The beauty in their differences resides in the community that is built within the walls of the Esperanza Center. I have begun to notice the “regulars” who come in prepared with their notebooks, worksheets, and freshly sharpened pencils. Last week I watched them filter in as I stood awaiting my group distribution. They all walked in with warm smiles, genial handshakes and an overall positive demeanor among themselves. The men were the most vocal; their actions include backslapping and the occasional discussion about work and “la liga” or the competitive futbol league. While they all come from different walks of life their mission is the same; to learn English to integrate into our culture, to discover and achieve their own American dreams.
It is in this way that their own developed culture is similar to that which is presented in the text surrounding Pacific island community, “Our culture is based essentially on the connection we have with one another, the environment, all living things, the universe, our ancestor connections, and the creator of all things,” (23). While the students are not necessarily family members, or even from the same country (though many of them are from Mexico and Central America), they do have essentially the same mission, and it is their proactive personalities that draw them to the Center in order to better themselves. It is within that environment that the specific and unique culture emerges, and one, which continually improves and grows with each passing week.
Last week I watched the most endearing act of community while I was teaching a large group of 6 beginners. Flora, a woman who has a 2-year-old daughter who she brings to class, allowed her to play with a bunch of Spanish-English flashcards as a way to distract her. Her daughter ran over to another student in the class throwing the cards in a flurry of excitement. The other student, a man around the age of 25 said to her, in the very little English that he knew, “Want to play?” He picked her up and tickled her sides and she giggled in delight. This to me was the exact idea of continued culture and responsible community that is present in the Pacific Islander realm. Dr. Ellis comments, “culture is that which travels, which claims us and which we claim, which incorporates the foreign and the familiar, which we see in other places and in our own faces, reflected in other eyes,” (27).
These people who have traveled so far, leaving family and friends behind are, like the Pacific Islanders, propagators of their own cultures as created through personal experience and the trials of the collective as relative to the individual. While the practice of tattoo is particular to the people of the Pacific, the community that is born through this ritualistic art transcends that region. It is this connection, this understanding of our own humanity that allows such cultures to continue to blossom even within new environments; like the classroom at the Esperanza Center, amidst workbooks and posters and students all individually striving towards a similar goal while simultaneously utilizing the support system of the larger community.

I Call This: "Express Yourself"

At the end of Monday’s class we spent a little bit of time discussing the meaning and purpose of art. I think it is important to note that art can be seen as a form of travel. As everyone knows, art can be expressed in many different forms: literature, music, painting, drawing, sculpture, filmmaking, acting, etc. People often describe anything they are good at as “their art.” Ultimately, art comes down to the representation of oneself. It involves taking one’s skill and sharing that skill with others. Our art allows us to show others a representation of ourselves and allow them to associate with that representation. It allows people to find a common ground and share a common passion. In that way, art is something that transcends cultures, something that all people can share. In addition, art is a way to challenge oneself, allowing a person to stretch his or her abilities. In that way, art is much like travel in that it can help a person identify what essentially represents him or her.

I’ve never considered myself, nor did others ever consider me, particularly artistic in the typical sense. If you were to give me a pencil and a pad and asked me to draw something I would probably give you back at best a stick figure; at worst a broken pencil and a balled up piece of paper. And believe me when I say you would not want me to sing you a love song. However, I was particularly talented when it came to acting. Although it’s something I have pretty much given up now, I was heavily involved in dramatics all throughout high school. When all else failed, I found drama to be the art form through which I could represent myself best.

Throughout my life I have always been particularly outgoing. I love to joke, and I love to put myself in front of others performing and goofing around. I often memorized entire scenes from movies (something that came very naturally to me) and recited them in front of friends and family members in order to get a rise out of them. All of these aspects of my personality incited me to take a particular liking to drama. It is the only art form where I could truly express my outgoing personality to the fullest extent. It let me take on various roles and present them to large audiences. In a way, it allowed me to take something I had done my whole life in front of family and friends and do it on a larger scale.

Furthermore, I think the art of acting is particularly expressive of oneself in that two different people can play the same character in completely different ways. Whenever an actor takes on a role, that character will naturally retain some of the personality traits of the actor, no matter how good of an actor the person is. Therefore, when an audience watches an actor play a particular role, they are not just seeing that character, but they are seeing part of that person revealed through his or her art.