WHO in the world gets a neck tattoo? A couple of years back you could have narrowed the answer to gang members, prison inmates, members of the Russian mob and the rapper Lil Wayne. Then something occurred.
In a mysterious and inexorable process that seems to transform all that is low culture into something high, permanent ink markings began creeping toward the traditional no-go zones for all kinds of people, past collar and cuffs, those twin lines of clothed demarcation that even now some tattoo artists are reluctant to cross.
Not entirely surprisingly, facial piercing followed suit.
Suddenly it is not just retro punks and hard-core rappers who look as if they’ve tossed over any intention of ever working a straight job.
Artists with prominent Chelsea galleries and thriving careers, practicing physicians, funeral directors, fashion models and stylists are turning up with more holes in their faces than nature provided, and all manner of marks on their throats and hands.
A year ago, Jenny Dembrow, an associate executive director of the Lower Eastside Girls Club, a Manhattan social service agency, decided to add to her collection of body modifications, which already included a Greek key necklace inked below her clavicle and draped across her shoulders, holes pierced in her cheeks, and earlobe perforations that have been stretched an inch wide over time.
“I’ve always been drawn to tattoos and counterculture,” Ms. Dembrow said one afternoon last week, as she presided over a tea party held for the girls and young women served by her agency. “At this point, though, it almost seems as if you’re more outside the mainstream if you don’t have a tattoo.”
The design Ms. Dembrow chose was a fanciful vine with no real botanical basis; its burgundy colored tendrils twine around her face and down her neck. “For me it’s just very decorative, like a permanent necklace,” she explained.
The effect of the neck tattoo is lovely, if startling. “I have definitely had parents that were taken aback or freaked out about what I look like,” Ms. Dembrow said. “And I have had conversations with the girls where I tell them that it absolutely limits your options and that I’m lucky to have a job where it isn’t an issue.”
Who can say, she added, what would happen if she were thrust back into the work force? “Would I be forced to sell punk rock T-shirts in some horrible shop on St. Marks Place?” she said.
She might. While there is ample evidence of tattooing’s migration from the backwaters of alternative culture into the mainstream (or at least onto some part of David Beckham’s body), we are still a long way from seeing facial tattoos on the selling floor at Bloomingdale’s or the trading floor of the stock exchange.
In case after case, the courts have found on-the-job appearance requirements — including policies forbidding tattoos and body modifications — to be nondiscriminatory.
Among the better publicized cases was that of Kimberly Cloutier, a Massachusetts woman who sued for the right to wear her 11 earrings and eyebrow piercings while at work as a Costco cashier. Claiming membership in the Church of Body Modifications, Ms. Cloutier argued her piercings were a form of religious expression. Although she ultimately lost, her case was soon followed by others in Massachusetts and in Washington State.
“There is a lot of employee activism,” said Laurel A. Van Buskirk, a New Hampshire lawyer who has written extensively about body modification and the law. “And because the cost of defending these cases is quite big, it makes employers a little uncomfortable when they start delving into that sphere.”
One result of “employee pushback,” Ms. Van Buskirk said, is that the shape of that sphere has begun to shift. Defining what the courts in the Cloutier case called a “neat, clean and professional” workplace image becomes more challenging when you consider that in 2006, a Pew Research Center survey found that 36 percent of people age 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those age 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo.
“Popular culture has had a huge effect” on acceptance of tattoos in the workplace, said Alexis Handelman, the owner of Alexis Baking Company, a cafe in Napa, Calif., whose clientele ranges from “banker people to hipster people to gazillionaire people.”
“Watching a show like ‘Project Runway,’ where the guy who won Season 3 had his son’s name tattooed on his neck,” Ms. Handelman added, referring to Jeffrey Sebelia, “I was, like, ‘Whoa.’ It wasn’t a prison tattoo. It wasn’t sailors or criminals. It was this real-life person that you saw being creative and successful, and it really affected your perception about who gets tattooed.”
Not entirely surprisingly, facial piercing followed suit.
Suddenly it is not just retro punks and hard-core rappers who look as if they’ve tossed over any intention of ever working a straight job.
Artists with prominent Chelsea galleries and thriving careers, practicing physicians, funeral directors, fashion models and stylists are turning up with more holes in their faces than nature provided, and all manner of marks on their throats and hands.
A year ago, Jenny Dembrow, an associate executive director of the Lower Eastside Girls Club, a Manhattan social service agency, decided to add to her collection of body modifications, which already included a Greek key necklace inked below her clavicle and draped across her shoulders, holes pierced in her cheeks, and earlobe perforations that have been stretched an inch wide over time.
“I’ve always been drawn to tattoos and counterculture,” Ms. Dembrow said one afternoon last week, as she presided over a tea party held for the girls and young women served by her agency. “At this point, though, it almost seems as if you’re more outside the mainstream if you don’t have a tattoo.”
The design Ms. Dembrow chose was a fanciful vine with no real botanical basis; its burgundy colored tendrils twine around her face and down her neck. “For me it’s just very decorative, like a permanent necklace,” she explained.
The effect of the neck tattoo is lovely, if startling. “I have definitely had parents that were taken aback or freaked out about what I look like,” Ms. Dembrow said. “And I have had conversations with the girls where I tell them that it absolutely limits your options and that I’m lucky to have a job where it isn’t an issue.”
Who can say, she added, what would happen if she were thrust back into the work force? “Would I be forced to sell punk rock T-shirts in some horrible shop on St. Marks Place?” she said.
She might. While there is ample evidence of tattooing’s migration from the backwaters of alternative culture into the mainstream (or at least onto some part of David Beckham’s body), we are still a long way from seeing facial tattoos on the selling floor at Bloomingdale’s or the trading floor of the stock exchange.
In case after case, the courts have found on-the-job appearance requirements — including policies forbidding tattoos and body modifications — to be nondiscriminatory.
Among the better publicized cases was that of Kimberly Cloutier, a Massachusetts woman who sued for the right to wear her 11 earrings and eyebrow piercings while at work as a Costco cashier. Claiming membership in the Church of Body Modifications, Ms. Cloutier argued her piercings were a form of religious expression. Although she ultimately lost, her case was soon followed by others in Massachusetts and in Washington State.
“There is a lot of employee activism,” said Laurel A. Van Buskirk, a New Hampshire lawyer who has written extensively about body modification and the law. “And because the cost of defending these cases is quite big, it makes employers a little uncomfortable when they start delving into that sphere.”
One result of “employee pushback,” Ms. Van Buskirk said, is that the shape of that sphere has begun to shift. Defining what the courts in the Cloutier case called a “neat, clean and professional” workplace image becomes more challenging when you consider that in 2006, a Pew Research Center survey found that 36 percent of people age 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those age 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo.
“Popular culture has had a huge effect” on acceptance of tattoos in the workplace, said Alexis Handelman, the owner of Alexis Baking Company, a cafe in Napa, Calif., whose clientele ranges from “banker people to hipster people to gazillionaire people.”
“Watching a show like ‘Project Runway,’ where the guy who won Season 3 had his son’s name tattooed on his neck,” Ms. Handelman added, referring to Jeffrey Sebelia, “I was, like, ‘Whoa.’ It wasn’t a prison tattoo. It wasn’t sailors or criminals. It was this real-life person that you saw being creative and successful, and it really affected your perception about who gets tattooed.”
