Tattoos, because of their relatively permanent nature, have been seen by many as being antithetical to fashion, whose governing imperative is that of constant change. As David Curry states, tattooing "can never be a true fashion . . . because tattoos cannot be put on and left off by the season." Ted Polhemus concurs, arguing that "any permanent body decoration like a tattoo is as anti-fashion as it is possible to get- literally making change difficult if not impossible". Reinforcing the apparent antithesis of tattoos to fashion is the fact that while they were once employed primarily to indicate one's affiliation with a group, they are now more frequently adopted as individualized statements of personal identity.
Thus, rather than relying on standardized "flash" motifs, today's tattoo wearers are more likely to choose customized designs as a way of signaling their "uniqueness" and lack of conformity. As Susan Benson writes, ". . . central to a lot of contemporary tattoo and piercing talk is the idea of individuation; of the tattoo . . . as a ‘declaration of me-ness'". However, despite their apparent incompatibility with fashion, tattoos are increasingly being promoted and used as fashion items, as evidenced by their growing prevalence in advertising and on the catwalk, as well as their adoption by celebrities in the sports and entertainment worlds. Jean-Paul Gaultier, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, and Katherine Hamnett, for instance, have all recently utilized tattoos in their advertising campaigns. In this article, I am interested in exploring this paradox, focusing in particular on men's fashion. It will be argued that despite their physically permanent nature, tattoos have become popular icons in men's fashion advertising because of their semiotic multivalency.
Whereas once, tattoos were employed as unambiguous affirmations of masculinity, now their relation to traditional notions of masculinity has become much more equivocal as increasing numbers of women and nonheterosexual men have adopted them. It is this very ambiguity that has led to their growing popularity within the men's fashion industry, which seeks symbols that can be made to mean different things to different segments of the male market. As a number of writers have noted, one of the main features of the promotion of men's fashion since the 1980s has been the expansion and diversification of its markets. Whereas in the past, the main target was the white, middle class, heterosexual male, the market has increasingly recognized the economic potential of gay male consumers, who tend to have a greater interest in style and fashion than their heterosexual counterparts. In order to appeal to this new market without alienating heterosexual men, one of the strategies adopted by the men's fashion industry has been the creation of advertisements where signs are employed as relatively "free-floating" signifiers, capable of being invested with a multiplicity of meanings depending on the audience who is responding to them. Tattoos are particularly appropriate in this regard since their meanings over the last few decades have been very labile, ranging from affirmations of traditional masculinity, on the one hand (particularly within the military and biker communities), to subversions of it, on the other (as has occurred within gay subcultures, for instance).
Furthermore, the function of tattoos as markers of individual identity, far from militating against their use by the fashion industry, is the very feature that commends them to it. Precisely because tattooing is seen as a badge of individual identity, it lends itself to advertisers who seek to market mass-produced, standardized items under the guise of them being individual statements. This is enhanced by the tattoo's association with the transgressive, which carries suggestions of rebellion and nonconformity of standing out from the crowd.
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1. The meaning of tattoos is changeable
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