Tattoo Who?
On Nov. 30, 1981, I skipped school to attend my first Rolling Stones concert at the now demolished Pontiac Silverdome. The band members were then on the cusp of turning 40-years-old and even back then critics were accusing them of being “too old to Rock-n-Roll,” the band was gamely promoting their latest album Tattoo You, which included “Start Me Up,” among other memorable hits.
Thanks to the “festival seating,” my perch was in the upper reaches of the venue, an unheated concrete monstrosity. I had several hours on my frozen hands before the “warm up” act, hometown lad Iggy Pop, entered the stage to a chorus of boos and tossed shoes. (Iggy was not yet an icon; and the next act, Santana, was far better received.) So, in between nodding off and pondering what songs the Stones would play, I contemplated the cover of Tattoo You.
The album’s front cover is adorned with an artist’s rendering of Mick Jagger’s face covered with tattoos, and on the back is a similar one of Keith Richards. (By that time in the band’s history, Mick and Keith must have felt no need for Ron Wood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts to grace the cover, too.) My overriding thought was, “Who would get a tattoo, other than a sailor or a carnival worker?”
Over 40 years later, attending a Rolling Stones concert at Chicago’s Soldier Field, where the band was once more gamely promoting a new album, Hackney Diamonds, my high-school self would have been shocked by the answer: while the album cover did not have any pictures of the octogenarian leaders of the band, Mick and Keith, the crowd was awash in tattoos, especially on the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the Stones’ original Baby Boomer fans.
Growing up as a front-liner in Generation X, tattoos were an uncommon sight. The only time I regularly recalled seeing them was at our city’s annual “Spree,” where they were displayed on the pasty corpuses of carnival workers, usually to announce their alienation from “polite society” and, likely, allegiance to a less than polite subculture, such as a biker gang. While this is a wee bit of an exaggeration, most folks deemed tattoos as something beyond the pale for respectable people (unless, of course, it had been acquired during military service, such as the Marine motto, “Semper Fi,” or a Navy anchor). Obviously, societal disapprobation no longer exists as a bar to getting a tattoo.
So, what changed in those four decades? From political correctness on through cancel culture, the culprit is the same: the left’s war of conformity against true individuality.
True, the left pretends to be the “do your own thing” party, almost libertine in its promises to liberate people from any and all constraints on their behavior. But this is the illusory siren song of phony individuality that, without fail, beckons the naïve into the trap of conformity.
For those who resist succumbing to the temptation of this bogus “liberation,” the left provides indoctrination in their collectivist political ideology via DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) struggle sessions and programs in the private and public sectors.
Finally, anyone opposed to the left’s ideological dictates will face “cancel culture” and sundry condign punishments for not toeing the collectivist line—including the loss of a job, being doxed, to being made a “nonperson.” (The cancel culture has even claimed the Rolling Stones song “Brown Sugar,” which the band has self-censored from its set list.)
In waging its culture war, the left has imposed a kind of collective and conformist “civil religion” on people notably on the Millennials and Gen Z, and this has left people without the ability—let alone the desire—to think independently and embrace the societal consequences for doing so. Doubt this? Ask yourself when the last time someone who resisted the Zeitgeist was hailed as a champion.
Still, among the young especially, the pull of their peers mixes strongly with a desire for individuality. The reconciliation of both, if possible, is the natural urge of their hearts. The desire of young people to “fit in” is what leftist ideology hangs its conformist and collectivist temptations on. Leftists know that they can use that to their advantage and often do. But what of a person’s pesky desire for individuality in a nation founded upon individual liberty and self-government?
Enter the tattoo. For nothing better evinces the sad irony of the leftist’s illusion of individual freedom. No matter how outré the expression of young people’s “originality” and “individuality” may be on their body, their minds remain chained to the dictates of a collectivist leftist political ideology. In consequence, the tattoo constitutes just another mental widget in the left-wing’s conformity factory.
Thus, like the virtue signaling lawn signs emblazoned with progressive commandments, a tattoo for a leftist is not an expression of defiance and rebellion. It is a white flag conceding the loss of a person’s individuality into the collective.
Of course, there are plenty of people on the right who have gotten a tattoo to expresses their due contempt for the left’s civil religion. In so doing, they honor the calling to oppose conformity and collectivism by truly expressing their individuality, and welcoming and embracing the ostracization of the left. These intrepid individuals are the ones who truly follow in the footsteps of the freedom-seeking rebels who, however venal or cardinal their sins, bore their tattoos as an authentic expression of individuality.
As for those old school MAGA and/GOP-populists who grew up thinking tattoos would render one déclassé or who do not wish to be confused with a virtue preening progressive conforming to their collectivist civil religion, there is an easier way than employing body art to assert one’s individuality and embrace of liberty:
Don a red cap and rock on.