Tit for tat

On other occasions I could expect to hear their boorish yells to a similarly tramp-stamped girl: "Oi, love … show us yer tatts!", or let my mind hark back to Cole Porter's classic: "I've Got You Under My Skin".

What we see today has grown out of history. Tattooing was rife in early Greece, the Holy Land, and later on in Europe where it was an expensive and painful process indicating a sign of wealth and prestige for royalty.

Nowadays, skin signages are more accepted and popular than ever before with many being considered "fine art." They have crossed social boundaries from "low" to "high" class, at the same time changing the dynamics of gender as they become icons of fashion. However, the majority of bearers appear to come from the lower socio-economic psychographic. Usually it is under-achievers, desperate for social recognition and status that resort to them.

Others display their body art as signs of resistance to the values of the heterosexual, middle-class. Over the years the original clientele has changed from sailors, bikers, and gang members, now to include a wider range of society. It is rare to see the highly educated, the wealthy, the professionals, or people in leadership roles, sporting tatts.

Sporting tatts- now that phrase is an apt nominative determinant!

Although tattooing increased in popularity when the electric tattoo machine was created in the 1890s, it was not until the 1960s that the role, scope, and speed of tattooing radically shifted. Designs are often plain, sometimes elaborate, but always personal - an expression of some attitudinal statement.

In some ways they serve a similar branding purpose as bumper stickers and personalised number plates. They can advertise attitudes and outlook, whimsically or seriously, such as "Honk if you like noise", "I had a job but my life ate it", or registration plates such as HOT BOY, orGR8R.

Tattoos sometimes indicate a fellowship which the wearer wants known, perhaps to aid identification by others belonging to the same group who may not know the displayer. For example, Buddhist devotees taking advanced vows have three small incense burn marks placed discreetly on their forearm, whilst ordained monks receive three similar incense marks on top of their head.

Over the years, some tattoos served as amulets, status symbols, and adornments, declarations of love, signs of religious beliefs, marks of social positioning, and sometimes as a form of punishment for wrongdoers.

But not only wrongdoers have been unwillingly marked. I recall a delightful elderly European Jewish member of a social club to which I belonged who, when talking about his life's experiences, would show the number tattooed prominently on the back of his hand. He had been able to survive an horrific existence in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, thus I felt that this tattoo was a stark reminder to him of a being's ability to transcend some of the worst experiences of life.

That revelation, and the anger created by the extreme suffering of millions for whom a tattoo was a passport to extermination, made my reaction to present day tattooing turn to laughable derision at the casual markings of modern whimsical wearers,.

Since the 1970s, tattooing has become a part of global and Western fashion, common among both sexes, and to age groups from the later teen years to middle age. For many, it has taken on a decidedly different meaning than for previous generations, shifting from its previous sign of social deviance, to an acceptable form of expression. In 2010 Australia, twenty five percent of under thirty year olds had tattoos which stay with them for the rest of their lives, regardless of whether they were sincere in how they adorned themselves, or got marked as a result of fashion perception, peer group pressure, or simply the need to be noticed.