December 2, 2014 • 39 mins
Tattoos allow us to make the outer body reflect the inner self. In a life of flux, they allow us to make names, symbols, gods and ideas a semi-permanent part of corporeal form. Then again, they also allow others to mark us as "criminal" or "outsider." Join Robert and Julie as they explore not only the science of tattoos, but also a bit of their rich and varied history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your relationship with tattoos? Do you have tattoos? Is
anyone close to you have tattoo? Well, I don't have
a tattoo. I'm noncommittal by nature. And this is how
(00:24):
I found out is by pondering like, well, maybe I'll
get a tattoo. What tattoo would I get? And then
just be like, I can't commit. Um, my husband is tattooed,
and I like them. I parturefually, like chef tattoos that
exalt like their favorite kind of food or their favorite night.
Oh yeah, I like that. There's the guy on Mind
(00:46):
of a Chef the second season who has the one
arm is sleeved and different vegetables and ingredients. My apologies
for not remembering his name, but check out the second
season of Mind of a Chef too, good stuff. Yeah,
but that's can be really kind of fascinating. What about you, Well,
I do have one tattoo. And to your noncommittal thing
that you brought up, indeed with me. It was like
(01:08):
a long sort of deciding process because I always kind
of wanted one, but I wasn't impulsome enough to just
go out and get like some stupid tattoo in junior
higher high school. So I I spent a lot of
time thinking, all right, if I get the one tattoo,
get one one mark of my body that's gonna be permanent.
You know, what is it gonna be? Where am I
gonna put it? It It has to have some sort of
(01:29):
um you know, it needs to be a potent enough symbol.
It needs to uh to to to mean something to me.
Because if you get a whole bunch of them, if
you just get sleeves, and you can afford to have
some duds in the mix, right, and you can cover
them up later on. But if you're just gonna get
the one, you gotta really hit it out of the
park so that it's you know, you can argue that
(01:49):
maybe I didn't hit it out of the park with this,
so it's um. I had the design done by an
artist by the name of Michael Manning, and it's it's
on my my ribs and it's the Yeah, it was.
It was probably not a great place pain wise for
a first tattoo, but it's essentially the spear wound of Christ.
But it's also kind of like um a volva and
(02:12):
also kind of like an eye. So like, I had
those three requests because I'm always I've always been fascinated
with with some of the Stranger Christ imagery, particularly images
such as the you know, the with the finger is
going into the whole and the resurrected Christ's body, and
the idea that that the spear of wound and the
resurrected Christ is not only like yonic symbolism but is
(02:34):
all but it is ultimately about combining masculine and feminine
aspects of God into one body. So I was always
interested in all that stuff. So I thought, well, hell
I would just get a tattoo that kind of encompasses
some of those ideas. And uh is kind of a
you know, a shifting, amorphous symbol of something. Well, I
was just about to say, you really nailed it, but
that's not a choice of words. But really, seriously, I
(02:56):
mean that is a thoughtful tattoo. Well, thank you. Yeah,
And plus it's out of the way, so nobody sees
it unless I'm you know, swimming or something so works
on all accounts. Now, a two thousand and twelve Harris
poll found that twenty one percent of American adults have
a tattoo. That's one in five, which is a lot
higher than I thought it would be. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
I guess you know. Part of it is that you
(03:17):
don't necessarily have to see tattoos. I've I've I've seen it.
When I was researching this, I kept coming across I
don't know something in the keywords I was throwing in.
I kept finding an article about Dolly Parton being secretly
covered with tattoos. I think she's a butterfly or something
emerging from her boosom. But I mean, I've never seen it.
So so so everybody could essentially have butterfly tattoos on
(03:41):
their stern ums, have been Lessia at the beach with them.
You're just not gonna know. Oh you're gonna call it
this sternum the sternum. Yeah, I alright. Um. You probably
are familiar with all sorts of sites that celebrate the good,
the bad, the terrible of tattoos, because one of the
intriguing things about tattoos is that they can be permanent.
(04:02):
Although we have technology now to get rid of them.
But essentially what you're doing is you're trying to immortalize
some sort of idea. So when you see some bad
grammar in a tattoo, then it's especially mortifying, right, Yeah,
bad grammar, just weird, perplexing imagery. Particularly one that I
(04:23):
was come back to was the one of the dolphin
setting on like a lazy boy recliner smoking a ball.
That's one of my favorites. Um, and really that's that's
That's not even like one of the worst tattoos. It's
not like it's not really offensive to anybody. Uh, it's
just strange that someone was like that, that's going on
me and I'm going to take it with me to
(04:43):
the grave. It's gonna last longer than my life. That tattoo. Now,
there's one I saw that was super earnest and kind
of sad only because of the way it turned out.
But um, it was a bat tattoo that said only
God can judge me. The problem with it is that
it had super fancy scroll so that j look like
an f and so it turned out essentially looking like
(05:06):
only God can fudge me, fudge me. Okay, all right, Uh,
it's yeah. I mean that's the power of tattoos though,
is that it's it's the the the permanence or the
the ideal permanence of the thing. It's what may can
make a tattoo uh inspiring and empowering. It's what it
can make a tattoo uh dehumanizing and uh. And we've
(05:29):
seen examples of both ends of the spectrum throughout human history.
I mean, you go back in time, you look at
some of our earliest examples. We found, Um, we found
them etched in the flesh of the five thousand, two
hundred year old Ootsi the Iceman. This was the Iceman
that we found on the Italian Austrian border back in
nine And we also find very early examples of tattoos
(05:54):
among the Egyptians, the only the females. This is a
really interesting They this to date them back to around
two thousand year two. This would date them back to
around two thousand b c. E UM. And these were
these women were probably they think royal Cortisan's dancers, ETCETERA.
Archaeologist Johan Fletcher theorizes that these tattoos had a therapeutic
(06:16):
role and functioned as a permanent form of amulet during
the very different difficult time of pregnancy and birth, and
these would have been placed on the abdomen um around
the breasts and uh. And so in this we see
the idea of the the tattoo is is is a
is almost a magical spell as a protective uh feature.
(06:37):
And and really you see that again through throughout human
history even today, A lot of times we get those
those tattoos on us um to immortalize some some spirit
that we aspire to, or some person that means a
lot to us, some deity, some supernatural force, whatever, some
sort of symbolics, some symbolism that we wish to take
(06:58):
into our flesh. One of the more interesting ones to
me that I ran across was from a archaeological dig. Uh.
These archaeologists were working in an icy plateau in eastern Russia,
and they stumbled upon a burial chamber of a mummy
who became known as the Siberian Ice Princess, and her
(07:21):
year old body was incredibly well preserved in the permit frost,
and it had elaborate tattoos on both of her arms. Now,
her head was shaved, and she wore a wig and
a tall wooden head dress decorated with cats and swans,
and they think she goes a princess or someone who
of elevated status, because not only that she was surrounded
by six horses that were saddled and bridled they were
(07:44):
supposed to be They think her spiritual escorts into the
other world. And she also had a little um container
of cannabis, which they then found out maybe had something
to do with alleviating her pain, because she did have
some cancer growth in her body and she had some
form of osteoporosis too. So, um, what I thought it
(08:04):
was interesting in terms of the tattoos is that the
person who lead this Natalia, Paulice Max, says that compared
to all tattoos found by archaeologists around the world, those
on the mummies of the Pazarik people whom she was
a part of, are the most complicated and the most beautiful.
And so what's interesting about this tattoo is that they're
(08:25):
they're the sort of language that they deal in is
of animal imagery, and so they had a kind of
animal based language, which is really cool. And Paul's Max
says that these tattoos were used as a means of
personal identification, So think of your own passport. This idea
is that this would tell the story of who you were,
(08:47):
so that in the afterlife you could meet up with others. Interesting,
there's a reminds me of an old Eastern saying that
I ran across that said that if if you do
not have a tattoo, did it's almost like you don't exist,
Like you're you're basically invisible of the tat. By tattooing
something into your body, um, like you're making yourself more real.
(09:09):
I'm thinking about that all right. Now. You mentioned that
the sort of medicinal aspects of that tattoo, I should
go back and mentioned that on our our friend Ootsi
the iceman uh Ootsies tattoos consisted of dots and small
crosses on his lower spine and right knee and ankle joints,
and those correspond to areas of scrain induced degeneration uh
(09:30):
with the suggestion here being that they may have been
applied to alleviate joint pain, and therefore we're essentially therapeutic essentially,
and again you're getting also probably into a certain amount
of magical thinking as well and ritual but but ultimately
an early form of of a medicinal tattoo. Now you
had mentioned Egyptian women and um tattoos that would help
(09:53):
as sort of talisman's And there's one example that the
British Museum looked at. They had scan and ripped the
mummy of an Egyptian woman dating back to seven hundred CE.
They found a tattoo on her thigh and as just
deciphered by the curators, the tattoo, written in Ancient Greek,
is transliterated as m I x A h A or Michael.
(10:15):
So the idea here's that its thought that the the
name was referring to the archangel Michael, and because it
was placed on our inner thigh, that it might have
been a protection not just for the birth of a child,
but maybe even against a sexual violent act. Interesting. Here's
(10:36):
another interesting religious tattoo. And I do want to point
out that we're not going to attempt to chronicle every
fascinating tattoo tradition that's been passed down through human history,
because there are many whole books have been written about this.
But we're just hitting some high points here. For us
Um during the Crusades in the eleven and twelfth century,
Um Christian warriors identified themselves with the mark of the
(10:56):
Jerusalem Cross, so they could be given a proper Christian
burial of died in battle. And that that one is
kind of interesting because on one hand it's a religious tattoo,
but it's also it also is sort of like some
of the modern models of medical tattoos that will touch on. Basically,
it's saying who and what you were for anyone that
would come across your body. All right, we're gonna take
(11:17):
a quick break and we get back. We're gonna talk
prison tats. All right, we're back now. Earlier and we
mentioned the the power of tattoos. The permanence of tattoos has,
of course the positive and empowering side, but also a
negative into humanizing side. You do see a long tradition
(11:39):
of penal tattoos uh throughout human history, particularly uh. You
see it in Chinese, see it in Japan, you see
it in the Hellenistic period. And this is the idea
that you have, You have your your criminals, and you
want to mark your criminals. So what do you do.
You tattoo them and you let everyone know then from
you know, ideally for the rest of their lives. We're
(12:00):
dealing with someone who committed this act. So that's taking
the permanence of that tattoo and using it in a
very very negative manner. Yeah, but now you know, fast
forward to today and you see prison tattoos more of
aspect of prison culture. And to be clear, according to
the Federal Bureau of Prisons, having a tattoo kit is
considered contraband for a number of reasons the US as
(12:23):
a weapon, it could spread infectious disease. And yet, as
we know, contraband gets through the gates, and in fact,
there's an entire prison economy based on contraband. Yeah, I
think we went into some of this in our did
we go into this in our our our episodes about digestion?
Because I know Mary Roach went into the prison wallet
a lot in her book Prison Wallet. That's right. I
(12:45):
cannot imagine smuggling a tattoo machine into my prison wallet
based on some of the other things that get smuggled in.
The tattoo gun is probably not the worst. But but indeed,
I mean, you could you look at a prison environment
and you have so many there's it's it's almost a
perfect model for why a lot of people get tattoos.
(13:06):
Because you're cut off from people you love, so you
might get a tattoo uh of some reminds you of
somebody outside. You also have to in many cases bond
with a different cultural group you're you know, you have
prison gangs, for lack of another word, prison cultures, and
that you want to show that you are a part
of that culture. You make that that culture a part
(13:27):
of your flesh. Also, it's a it's a place where
some inmates find religion, and you want to show that
that this deity or this uh, this model of faith
means a lot to you, so you put it into
your skin. Retired law enforcement official in prison culture expert
Richard Lichton says, quote, I've talked to many inmates, and
tattoos are always about what's important to them. It can
(13:47):
be something personal likes about this name or a Bible quote,
or to belong to a group, to intimidate others, or
to tell a story. So I think that's really important
to uh. And we'll talk a little bit more about this.
But you know, if you're in prison and you, as
you say, you want to bond with a certain group
or identify with the group, the easiest way to do
that is to have a permanent tattoo inked on you. Yeah.
(14:09):
I mean it kind of comes back to the basic
idea that as humans, we we all look kind of
the same on the outside. You know, there's not there's
nothing on the outside that necessarily gives a lot of
depth about character. And the tattoo is an ability to
take our inner world and make it a part of
our outer world. Well. And in terms of prison culture too,
it's a bit of survival, right, especially if you're trying
(14:32):
to join a group or you know, get protection from
that group. So, um, let's get to the tear drop tattoo.
Shall we kind of get that out of the way,
because there's always that always comes up, and I feel
like there's no definitive answer for this. This is the
idea that you have a tear drop tattoo you've killed
somebody in prison. Yes, okay, that's usually there. I should
(14:56):
say that most people associate it with, you know, the
fact that the wearer has killed someone, but it can
also mean that the wearer has served a long prison
sentence or is mourning the loss of a family member,
And a clear tear drop can mean that the wearer
has committed an attempted murder or alternatively that a close
(15:18):
friend was killed and the wearer is seeking revenge. You know,
we haven't even touched on this, but just as a
call back to our episode The Zen of Pain and
to a listener mail that we received and I believe
red in our recent episode, getting a tattoo stings a bit.
And Uh, it's depending on on your means of of
of actually uh, putting the tattoo in your flesh. Um
(15:42):
it it becomes a ritual, it becomes an experience of pain,
a rich wolf pain, and so you have that whole
dynamic going on as well as you say, get in
the name of a departed loved one put into your flesh. Yeah.
And I think that the reason why that tear drop
one is appoignant or so trouble link to so many
people because it's such a mark on that person and
(16:05):
in such an outward expression of the angst or sadness
that that consumes them. Presumably. Yeah, because when you get
a facial tattoo, you're changing the way that you communicate
with the world. Um. I think we've discussed before on
here that, uh, when a when a hominid species such
as humans have faces that kind of all look alike.
It's because the more the more like we are, the
(16:29):
more nuance comes out in our expressions, the more that
we're better able to communicate with one another because we
have kind of a similar facial recognition cognition system in place. Yeah,
so so, yeah, the idea of facial tattoo is often
kind of kind of frightening, kind of intimidating. Um. And
of course you see a great tradition of a facial
(16:49):
tattooing with the Maori people, really beautiful facial tattoos, but
in particularly with the men, it's it's often you know,
it's about uh, putting on this this impressive usual display,
this aggressive display intimidation. Right, So it's sort of a
kind of embodied cognition, which we've talked about before with
the old lab coats, that people dawn sometimes and they
(17:10):
feel more important or more proficient. In the same way,
if you're altering your face to look more intimidating or
to express express your grief, then you are embodying that
that is changing the person that you are expressing to
the world. Now, speaking of gangs and cultural tattoos and
and about the hour display, sometimes it's about the hidden
(17:31):
display as well, because I think one of the most
remarkable examples of like a gang cultural tattoo is of course,
the the the body tattoos of the yakuza, the Japanese
gangster class. We have these elaborate designs that they generally
have themes of of unresolved conflict and also symbols of
(17:51):
of character traits that the the wear wants to aspire to.
For instance, the carp often shows up as a representation
and of strength and perseverance. Yeah, and then there's also
you know, sort of the the language behind them, So
it's not just the bonding, but it's also sort of
again embodied cognition in a way of saying, this is
(18:13):
the life that I have chosen for myself. When it
comes to gang tattooing, the Canada Border Services Agency document
Tattoos and their Meetings says that the three dot tattoo,
usually in a triangle configuration, it signifies prison, hospital, cemetery,
and that represents the path and the ultimate end of
a gang lifestyle. So it's the kind of commitment to
(18:36):
that lifestyle to to have that tattoo and say that
I accept of these maybe the terms of of uh,
my employment or the culture that I'm entering into now.
We mentioned medical tattoos a little bit earlier, and of
course we we still see the use of tattoos in medicine,
though not as a mystical curative factor, but you do
(18:59):
see them. For instance, is to indicate a medically relevant
condition on a body of your location, kind of like
those Crusader tattoos we mentioned earlier. Essentially would would let
someone know this person has this condition, please treat them accordingly.
You have in some cases, US soldiers have a tattoo
version of their dog tags that are sometimes called meat tags,
(19:19):
and this is essentially the same thing as the crusader
tattoo that says this dead body was so and so
and this is where they were formed, that is their unit, etcetera.
But then you also see um medical tattoos uh used
in radiotherapy. You're using a radiation to to treat a
very particular part of the body. You want to hit
(19:39):
the same part, the same area each and every time.
You need a permanent marker of where to to apply
that radiation. Yeah, and usually it's just for like freckle
sized dots, and you know, in sort of a square
configuration that's mapping out that patch of tissue that needs
to get hit over and over and over again. And
(19:59):
the more accurate you can make that and the faster
the process, especially for people who are going through say
six weeks or more radiation treatments, this can be really
really helpful. Indeed, also you'll see medical tattoos sometimes used
for aerola replacement or parvy a replacement at following them assectomy.
So again this dude, those are just some some quick
(20:20):
points on the long, rich timeline of human tattooing. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to talk about the actual mechanics of tattooing. Hey,
we're back. So we've talked about the history of tattooing,
culture of tattooing, and it brings us up to the
(20:42):
modern day. Yeah, and before we really talk about the
more of the modern aspects of tattooing, including the invention
of the tattoo machine, we should say that, um, the
reason why tattooing became so popular, or one of the
reasons is people like Joseph Banks, who was naturalist aboard
the British ship Endeavor and According to a Smithsonian article
(21:05):
by Abigail West, he was one of the first to
record encounters with the Polynesian practice of tattooings or tattoo um.
And again we're talking about seventeen sixty nine when Banks
was watching a twelve year old girl being extensively adorned,
and then he wrote about it, and it really captured
(21:26):
the imaginations of a lot of people, and they then
wanted to also participate with tattoos, and indeed we have
a rich tradition of sailor tattoos um. I think probably
some of my first encounters with tattoos were individuals saying
a church environment who were veterans and had been sailors
or otherwise engaged in the Second World War, and they
(21:48):
would have these sort of faded miss shape and tattoos
that may have once been mermaids or or or just
naked ladies or whatever, but had slowly turned into more
sort of green blurs on their arms. And you can
see the appeal because you know, here you have back
in the day someone looking at these tribes, and you
can see how sailors who consider themselves a community and
(22:11):
to themselves like a tribe might want to use as
bonding as well, or to tell stories about their travels. Yeah,
and and they're of course engaging and often risky employment
out there on the on the high seat. So you
have every reason to want to make something a little
permanent in your flesh when you're dealing with all of
this uncertainty. So you won't be surprised to know that
(22:33):
it became so popular that in December eighth eight someone
by the name of Samuel F. O'Reilly received a patent
for the first tattoo machine, a two coil electromagnetic tattoo needle.
His invention was actually a modification of Thomas Edison's eighteen
seventy six electric pen patent, and O'Reilly saw how Edison's
(22:56):
methods of ink transfer using a stencil and ink pen
could be adapted for use in tattooing. And so what
you have is this machine that just gets improved over
and over again to the point where they get lighter,
easier to handle, safer, and less painful, and you get
better inks. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the ink, because
(23:17):
because the ink has has has varied a lot, it's
pretty uh, it's pretty stable. These days, it tends to
be more of like a vegetable based pigment. But in
the past you've seen him seen it made from anything
from from soot to metal salts um. But again, nowadays,
you go into a tattoo parlor, if you're getting a
you know, an on the level tattoo, it's probably gonna
be something more vegetable based, unless it's something super cutting edge,
(23:41):
which we'll talk about in the next episode where we're
talking about the future of tattoos. Don't want to give
that away, but the tattoo gun, Yeah that the technology
basically hasn't changed all that much. It's it's got there's
been a refining process over the years where it gets
gets better and better because you can still build a
very crude tattoo gun and uh and do the work
yourself or have your cellmate do it, which we don't recommend,
(24:03):
do not recommend even getting into a situation where you
have a cellmate in the first place. Yeah, it's worth
pointing out. I believe the FDA does not technically approve
of tattooing or even Hannah tattoos by the way, they say,
hinna really, because I was I was looking at one
of the um the more cutting edge techniques it will
discuss later. I saw a note that it was not
approved by the FDA, so I kind of looked into
(24:25):
a little bit as well, what does the FDA approve of?
And uh uh, it seemed to indicate that the FDA
is really does not approve any of the tattooing. So
there you go. Huh, they're kind of old school like that. Yeah,
I mean, you are talking about putting ink into your skin,
so you can't really expect the FDA to be two
behind that. Yeah, let's talk about that. This machine is
moving a solid needle up and down to puncture the
(24:47):
skin between fifty and three thousand times per minute. The
needle penetrates the skin by about a millimeter in deposits
a drop of insoluble ink into the skin with each puncture.
And now, when those tattoo needles are punching the skin,
they're going through the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin,
and then they drive into the dermis, which is the
(25:08):
second layer of the skin. And that layer is modeled
with nerves and blood vessels. And if the tattoo artist
is shading the design, then they're using this um shader needle,
which is comprised of several needles in a single bar.
Otherwise they're just using one single line needle. So again,
(25:29):
epidermis is the outer layer. Dermos is the second layer.
So when you're looking at a tattoo, you're looking through
the epidermis into the dermis. That's where the actual ink
is contained. And that's really important because that has a
lot to do with why they don't fade in the
first place. Yeah, because you know, obviously there can be
It depends on where you get the tattoo, depends on
(25:50):
the wear and tear, depends on a number of factors.
Tattoos do fade over time. If you were some sort
of you know, I would love to see this attack
in some sort of fiction where there's an immortal character,
be it you know, kind of like a highlander or
a vampire situation. What happens when they get that tattoo
and they actually live five hundred, six hundred years. How
(26:10):
awful would that tattoo look over the course of centuries? Yeah,
sort of, I love mom. It would just be like
our mom um. Yeah, because if it were just up
to the epidermis, that first layer, they would slaw off.
Now consider that we shed fortyo skin cells an hour.
That's about a million a day. Yeah. In fact, that
the body replaces itself with a largely new set of
(26:33):
cells every seven years to ten years. Uh, and some
of our most important parts are revamped even more rapidly.
So we have red blood cells live for about four months. Uh.
Those poor cells that line your your acid filled stomach,
they're lucky the last like five days. Meanwhile, cells in
the sculptal system are consistently regenerating, but a full turnover
(26:53):
takes a full decade. So you know, we're constantly rebuilding
our bodies as we as we go through live we're
consuming food and we're consuming nutrients, and we're building everything
back up again. And yet the tattoo remains mostly stationary,
right because it's part and personally because it's sort of
trapped in the dermist, that second layer, but also because
(27:16):
of your immune system. And what I mean by that
is that every puncture signals to the body to begin
the inflammatory process. So you have immune cells racing to
those puncture sites, and then you have special cells called macrophages,
and they begin kind of while saying quotes, eating the
dye in an attempt to clean up the inflammation that's
(27:37):
causing and then the rest of the dye gets soaked
up by skin cells called fibroblasts. In the fiber blasts
along with a lot of those macrophages, they kind of
they suspended in the dermists in perpetuity. And so that's
what you have showing through the skin. And of course
the dermist is is more stationary than the epidermis. The
(27:58):
epidermis is constantly slapping off, but but the dermist is
uh is a little more set in stone, if you will.
And I really think what's interesting about this is it's
a story about the immune system helping this process to
keep the ink in place in your body. Yeah, and
then ultimately you have that you have inc that's just
not it's not small enough to be a factor for say,
white blood cell. So you know, their University of Pittsburgh
(28:20):
Medical Center dermatologist James B. Bridenstein pointed out in Scientific
American article the tattoos remain in the skin because the
ink particles are too large to be ingested by the
white blood cells that patrol the body in caraway foreign bodies.
So you know, it's it's kind of like you know,
police officers walking in front of some graffiti art on
a wall. It's not their jurisdiction to to deal with
(28:43):
it's removal. They're not going to remove, and the white
blood cells are saying, hey, it's not my problem. This
thing is too big to be an issue to me anyway, right,
And that's why I think it's interested with macrofacies are trying,
and some of them are successful in carrying away the
die particles. Well, others they just kind of sit there
with it and their their bellies really, yeah, suspended forever
in the dermis. Alright, So this of course brings up
(29:03):
the question, how do we remove tattoos? How do you
get rid of this this this awful tattoo that you
say got on spring break back in n Or or
a lover's name that no longer seems uh, seems appliable,
like one that comes to my mind as a as
a wrestling fan. There's of course the wrestler uh that
goes by the name the Undertaker, And for a while
(29:24):
he had like one of his past wives, her name
was Sarah, and he got her name tattooed on his throat,
so it was very, very prominent when you would see
him perform that that Sarah meant a lot to him
because her name was on his throat, and then eventually
the name was gone and uh, and he was no
longer married to her. So you you might wonder, how
do you get rid of Sarah? How do you rid
(29:46):
her name from your throat flesh? I wanted to mention
that tattoo regret is actually fairly common. According to the
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the number of people
undergoing laser tattoo removal increased or be three percent from
two thousand and eleven to two thousand and twelve. I
don't know, just like a bad year for for tattooing.
And there's a two thousand and twelve British Association of
(30:09):
Dermatologist survey that found that nearly one third of people
suffer they say suffer from tattoo regret. To be fair,
this survey was really small, like respondents men, women, and
the most tattoos were done by a professional, but half
of the patients were over forty, which tells the story
that a lot of these tattoos were done in the
(30:30):
younger years, between eighteen and twenty five years old. See,
it was a youthful indiscretion that they want to to
actually erase from their flesh when they're an adult. Yeah,
and then occasionally to you'll have medical complications. Um. The
New England Journal of Medicine described contaminated inc causing infections
of non tuberculosis myso bacteria. It's really difficult to treat
(30:54):
and really the only option is removing that tattoo. I've
also heard that sometimes tattoo removal is useful for people
who are who are very much still into their tattoos,
but essentially becomes a tool of retouching past tattoos. So
you you have some sort of you know, star or
name or an emblem, and it's maybe it's faded a
(31:15):
little bit or just not maybe it wasn't of the
same quality as you. You want your other tattoos and
you you don't want to raise it completely, but you
want to touch it up, and tattoo removal techniques can
be used to essentially make it look better. Indeed. Um, now,
when we get to the actual mechanics of tattoo removal,
just remember about the macrofishes and this, you know, the
(31:37):
dyes being too large right to break down in the
dermis and recall the information because when you are trying
to remove a tattoo, what you're basically doing is aiming
a laser at it and breaking it down into tinier
and tinier particles so that those macrofiges can consume it
and take it away into the bloodstream to be flushed
out of your body, break it down to a level
(31:57):
that they can handle it, and to a level to
where it their business to handle it. And most tattoos
require at least three to four treatments. They're spaced about
eight weeks apart to remove. The cost can range from
several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the size
and the location of the tattoo. And it turns out that, um,
(32:18):
just black and white tattoos are the easiest to remove
because those that black dye is easier to break down
with a laser. It's interesting. I would have thought that
maybe some of the other colors would be easier to
break down, but I guess the black is really stark,
and yeah, it's just it responds better to the laser. Now, um,
the removal is described as someone snapping a rubber band
(32:41):
at your skin over and over again, so it's it's
another sort of painful ritual that you go through um
to to to exercise some force, some symbol or some
some presents from your life. Of purging. Yeah right, it's
almost like self flagilation. Yeah, I mean, and a great
way to I guess, end to break up or a
(33:02):
marriage or something. You just actually just pay someone to
use a laser beam to just blast their name out
of your skin and let your your body's immune system
consume it. You can say that too. You can be like,
right now, you, I'm purging you from my blood. Yeah,
my immune system is is eating the last of you now, Sarah. Now,
(33:22):
given the number of individuals who end up needing to
have a tattoo removed, it's it stands to reason that
we would want to develop inc that is more easily
removed to make tattoos in a sense a little less permanent,
knowing that we're going to get tattoos so we don't
want to keep forever. I was thinking about that. I
was like, this is good for the noncommittal set like myself.
(33:43):
He was like, Okay, maybe I'll get one if I
know that it's going to break down much easier with
a laser. And that brings us to UH to the
special Infinity Inc. Manufactured by what's the name of the company,
Freedom to Ink, freedom to eat, because yeah, freedom to
be me, you and me. But with the caveat that
we can we can erase things that we put into
(34:05):
our flesh. And the idea here is that you just
have a a die that is easier to remove because
the diet is stored in microscopic capsules uh that will
stay in the skin for good, but are more easily
broken down by the laser. So it's basically, let's make
an ink that is easier to remove with the accepted technique.
There's nothing magic about. You can't just rub them the
(34:25):
magnet on it and make it go away, but it
makes it easier to get rid off with the traditional
means of tattoo removal. Again about the macro fuses and
the size, right, So if you can get that die
particle as tiny as you can and just suspend it
in a polymer bead, then when you aim that laser
(34:46):
at it and it combust that polymer bead, than it's
so much easier to deal with by the body. And
it seems like this uh, the sink is becoming more
and more accessible and more and more tattoo parlors around
the world. But it does still kind of seem like
an easy way out, like like why why do you
want to have that? Is having that escape route in
(35:08):
place seems a little against the idea of of the
permanency of the whole point anyway, Yeah, but I don't know,
I guess it would be it would be definitely beneficial
I could see for for those medical tattoos we were
talking about, particularly ones used in radiation treatments, because in
many cases hum individuals who undergo that kind of treatment afterwards,
(35:29):
even though we're talking about very small dots, they might
want to get rid of them because it's it's it's
a permanent sign of this, uh, this this ordeal they
had to go through. So or maybe it's just something
that they should always offer when someone is getting a
you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend's named tattooed, like how
do you want to upgrade a bit and go to
(35:51):
this so other ink, you know, the sort of offered
as a as a you know, behind the counter kind
of sale. It's like, hey, I know she means a
lot to you, but trust me, five years show now,
who knows I don't know why the tattoo artists is
talking like that. Yeah, well, you generally want all your
relationship advice from a tattoo artist generally speaks Oh, I
think a tattoo artist could provide great relationship with us.
(36:11):
Are you kidding? They probably have seen everything and probably
know more about the human experience than most of us.
I've heard a friend of a friend used to work
at a tattoo parlor in Athens, Georgia, and supposedly the
parlor had a at a wall of shame in the
back where they would put the particularly bad tattoos that
individuals had had paid for like their own workmanship, or
(36:35):
just like more of like the like hey I want
this dolphins sitting on a lazy boy. I think that
kind of thing, you know, or particularly like racist tattoos,
just things where you're like, oh, why would someone do that?
I think it probably you know, there was a range
from just the the the head scratching tattoos to the
purely awful uh tattoos. I have a challenge for you
(36:58):
guys out there. You come up with the tattoo that
I should get, and I'm not saying I'm gonna get it. Okay,
I'm just saying because you know, I'm noncommittal, but I'm
intrigued by it. Christian Stein Metts of uh stuff of
genius in other house efforts um joints, I suppose um
he and I were talking one day and saying that
we should get all get like one bonding tattoo and
(37:21):
what should that be, And of course the house of
logo came up as an idea, which is a question
mark if you guys aren't familiar with it. And then
we thought, yes, tramp stamps of the House to works logo.
And then we quickly decided that's a terrible idea and
so confusing for anybody who might be amorously involved with us. Yeah,
(37:41):
it does it. Yeah, I can see that being problematic.
Well maybe we should put it. We should all get
it right here on our third eye in the penney
on Gland. Yes, over the should probably pick one chakra,
Just go pick one of these chakras that it relates
most to your The sort of content that you produce
is for how stuff works, and that's where you get it.
(38:01):
I like it. Yeah, what are the car stuff guys
gonna do? Oh? Which which chakra is the automotive chakra.
I can't remember the pelvic regions. Yeah, alright, So there
you have it. UM A crash course in some of
the some of the interesting points of tattooing history and
culture that that we found interesting UM as well as
(38:23):
the science of tattoos, the science of tattoo removals. And
in our next episode we're going to look to some
of the more cutting edge UH and indeed the near
future applications of tattoos, the future of tattooing. So look
forward to that episode, and in the meantime, make sure
you go to stuff to Blow your mind dot com
because that is find where you will find all the
podcast episodes, all the videos, all the blog posts, as
(38:45):
well as links out the various social media accounts that
we maintain. And if you would like to send us
your thoughts about tattoos, because I bet you guys have
some experiences out there are some things that you'd like
to share, you can do that by emailing us a
blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
(39:07):
stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your relationship with tattoos? Do you have tattoos? Is
anyone close to you have tattoo? Well, I don't have
a tattoo. I'm noncommittal by nature. And this is how
(00:24):
I found out is by pondering like, well, maybe I'll
get a tattoo. What tattoo would I get? And then
just be like, I can't commit. Um, my husband is tattooed,
and I like them. I parturefually, like chef tattoos that
exalt like their favorite kind of food or their favorite night.
Oh yeah, I like that. There's the guy on Mind
(00:46):
of a Chef the second season who has the one
arm is sleeved and different vegetables and ingredients. My apologies
for not remembering his name, but check out the second
season of Mind of a Chef too, good stuff. Yeah,
but that's can be really kind of fascinating. What about you, Well,
I do have one tattoo. And to your noncommittal thing
that you brought up, indeed with me. It was like
(01:08):
a long sort of deciding process because I always kind
of wanted one, but I wasn't impulsome enough to just
go out and get like some stupid tattoo in junior
higher high school. So I I spent a lot of
time thinking, all right, if I get the one tattoo,
get one one mark of my body that's gonna be permanent.
You know, what is it gonna be? Where am I
gonna put it? It It has to have some sort of
(01:29):
um you know, it needs to be a potent enough symbol.
It needs to uh to to to mean something to me.
Because if you get a whole bunch of them, if
you just get sleeves, and you can afford to have
some duds in the mix, right, and you can cover
them up later on. But if you're just gonna get
the one, you gotta really hit it out of the
park so that it's you know, you can argue that
(01:49):
maybe I didn't hit it out of the park with this,
so it's um. I had the design done by an
artist by the name of Michael Manning, and it's it's
on my my ribs and it's the Yeah, it was.
It was probably not a great place pain wise for
a first tattoo, but it's essentially the spear wound of Christ.
But it's also kind of like um a volva and
(02:12):
also kind of like an eye. So like, I had
those three requests because I'm always I've always been fascinated
with with some of the Stranger Christ imagery, particularly images
such as the you know, the with the finger is
going into the whole and the resurrected Christ's body, and
the idea that that the spear of wound and the
resurrected Christ is not only like yonic symbolism but is
(02:34):
all but it is ultimately about combining masculine and feminine
aspects of God into one body. So I was always
interested in all that stuff. So I thought, well, hell
I would just get a tattoo that kind of encompasses
some of those ideas. And uh is kind of a
you know, a shifting, amorphous symbol of something. Well, I
was just about to say, you really nailed it, but
that's not a choice of words. But really, seriously, I
(02:56):
mean that is a thoughtful tattoo. Well, thank you. Yeah,
And plus it's out of the way, so nobody sees
it unless I'm you know, swimming or something so works
on all accounts. Now, a two thousand and twelve Harris
poll found that twenty one percent of American adults have
a tattoo. That's one in five, which is a lot
higher than I thought it would be. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
I guess you know. Part of it is that you
(03:17):
don't necessarily have to see tattoos. I've I've I've seen it.
When I was researching this, I kept coming across I
don't know something in the keywords I was throwing in.
I kept finding an article about Dolly Parton being secretly
covered with tattoos. I think she's a butterfly or something
emerging from her boosom. But I mean, I've never seen it.
So so so everybody could essentially have butterfly tattoos on
(03:41):
their stern ums, have been Lessia at the beach with them.
You're just not gonna know. Oh you're gonna call it
this sternum the sternum. Yeah, I alright. Um. You probably
are familiar with all sorts of sites that celebrate the good,
the bad, the terrible of tattoos, because one of the
intriguing things about tattoos is that they can be permanent.
(04:02):
Although we have technology now to get rid of them.
But essentially what you're doing is you're trying to immortalize
some sort of idea. So when you see some bad
grammar in a tattoo, then it's especially mortifying, right, Yeah,
bad grammar, just weird, perplexing imagery. Particularly one that I
(04:23):
was come back to was the one of the dolphin
setting on like a lazy boy recliner smoking a ball.
That's one of my favorites. Um, and really that's that's
That's not even like one of the worst tattoos. It's
not like it's not really offensive to anybody. Uh, it's
just strange that someone was like that, that's going on
me and I'm going to take it with me to
(04:43):
the grave. It's gonna last longer than my life. That tattoo. Now,
there's one I saw that was super earnest and kind
of sad only because of the way it turned out.
But um, it was a bat tattoo that said only
God can judge me. The problem with it is that
it had super fancy scroll so that j look like
an f and so it turned out essentially looking like
(05:06):
only God can fudge me, fudge me. Okay, all right, Uh,
it's yeah. I mean that's the power of tattoos though,
is that it's it's the the the permanence or the
the ideal permanence of the thing. It's what may can
make a tattoo uh inspiring and empowering. It's what it
can make a tattoo uh dehumanizing and uh. And we've
(05:29):
seen examples of both ends of the spectrum throughout human history.
I mean, you go back in time, you look at
some of our earliest examples. We found, Um, we found
them etched in the flesh of the five thousand, two
hundred year old Ootsi the Iceman. This was the Iceman
that we found on the Italian Austrian border back in
nine And we also find very early examples of tattoos
(05:54):
among the Egyptians, the only the females. This is a
really interesting They this to date them back to around
two thousand year two. This would date them back to
around two thousand b c. E UM. And these were
these women were probably they think royal Cortisan's dancers, ETCETERA.
Archaeologist Johan Fletcher theorizes that these tattoos had a therapeutic
(06:16):
role and functioned as a permanent form of amulet during
the very different difficult time of pregnancy and birth, and
these would have been placed on the abdomen um around
the breasts and uh. And so in this we see
the idea of the the tattoo is is is a
is almost a magical spell as a protective uh feature.
(06:37):
And and really you see that again through throughout human
history even today, A lot of times we get those
those tattoos on us um to immortalize some some spirit
that we aspire to, or some person that means a
lot to us, some deity, some supernatural force, whatever, some
sort of symbolics, some symbolism that we wish to take
(06:58):
into our flesh. One of the more interesting ones to
me that I ran across was from a archaeological dig. Uh.
These archaeologists were working in an icy plateau in eastern Russia,
and they stumbled upon a burial chamber of a mummy
who became known as the Siberian Ice Princess, and her
(07:21):
year old body was incredibly well preserved in the permit frost,
and it had elaborate tattoos on both of her arms. Now,
her head was shaved, and she wore a wig and
a tall wooden head dress decorated with cats and swans,
and they think she goes a princess or someone who
of elevated status, because not only that she was surrounded
by six horses that were saddled and bridled they were
(07:44):
supposed to be They think her spiritual escorts into the
other world. And she also had a little um container
of cannabis, which they then found out maybe had something
to do with alleviating her pain, because she did have
some cancer growth in her body and she had some
form of osteoporosis too. So, um, what I thought it
(08:04):
was interesting in terms of the tattoos is that the
person who lead this Natalia, Paulice Max, says that compared
to all tattoos found by archaeologists around the world, those
on the mummies of the Pazarik people whom she was
a part of, are the most complicated and the most beautiful.
And so what's interesting about this tattoo is that they're
(08:25):
they're the sort of language that they deal in is
of animal imagery, and so they had a kind of
animal based language, which is really cool. And Paul's Max
says that these tattoos were used as a means of
personal identification, So think of your own passport. This idea
is that this would tell the story of who you were,
(08:47):
so that in the afterlife you could meet up with others. Interesting,
there's a reminds me of an old Eastern saying that
I ran across that said that if if you do
not have a tattoo, did it's almost like you don't exist,
Like you're you're basically invisible of the tat. By tattooing
something into your body, um, like you're making yourself more real.
(09:09):
I'm thinking about that all right. Now. You mentioned that
the sort of medicinal aspects of that tattoo, I should
go back and mentioned that on our our friend Ootsi
the iceman uh Ootsies tattoos consisted of dots and small
crosses on his lower spine and right knee and ankle joints,
and those correspond to areas of scrain induced degeneration uh
(09:30):
with the suggestion here being that they may have been
applied to alleviate joint pain, and therefore we're essentially therapeutic essentially,
and again you're getting also probably into a certain amount
of magical thinking as well and ritual but but ultimately
an early form of of a medicinal tattoo. Now you
had mentioned Egyptian women and um tattoos that would help
(09:53):
as sort of talisman's And there's one example that the
British Museum looked at. They had scan and ripped the
mummy of an Egyptian woman dating back to seven hundred CE.
They found a tattoo on her thigh and as just
deciphered by the curators, the tattoo, written in Ancient Greek,
is transliterated as m I x A h A or Michael.
(10:15):
So the idea here's that its thought that the the
name was referring to the archangel Michael, and because it
was placed on our inner thigh, that it might have
been a protection not just for the birth of a child,
but maybe even against a sexual violent act. Interesting. Here's
(10:36):
another interesting religious tattoo. And I do want to point
out that we're not going to attempt to chronicle every
fascinating tattoo tradition that's been passed down through human history,
because there are many whole books have been written about this.
But we're just hitting some high points here. For us
Um during the Crusades in the eleven and twelfth century,
Um Christian warriors identified themselves with the mark of the
(10:56):
Jerusalem Cross, so they could be given a proper Christian
burial of died in battle. And that that one is
kind of interesting because on one hand it's a religious tattoo,
but it's also it also is sort of like some
of the modern models of medical tattoos that will touch on. Basically,
it's saying who and what you were for anyone that
would come across your body. All right, we're gonna take
(11:17):
a quick break and we get back. We're gonna talk
prison tats. All right, we're back now. Earlier and we
mentioned the the power of tattoos. The permanence of tattoos has,
of course the positive and empowering side, but also a
negative into humanizing side. You do see a long tradition
(11:39):
of penal tattoos uh throughout human history, particularly uh. You
see it in Chinese, see it in Japan, you see
it in the Hellenistic period. And this is the idea
that you have, You have your your criminals, and you
want to mark your criminals. So what do you do.
You tattoo them and you let everyone know then from
you know, ideally for the rest of their lives. We're
(12:00):
dealing with someone who committed this act. So that's taking
the permanence of that tattoo and using it in a
very very negative manner. Yeah, but now you know, fast
forward to today and you see prison tattoos more of
aspect of prison culture. And to be clear, according to
the Federal Bureau of Prisons, having a tattoo kit is
considered contraband for a number of reasons the US as
(12:23):
a weapon, it could spread infectious disease. And yet, as
we know, contraband gets through the gates, and in fact,
there's an entire prison economy based on contraband. Yeah, I
think we went into some of this in our did
we go into this in our our our episodes about digestion?
Because I know Mary Roach went into the prison wallet
a lot in her book Prison Wallet. That's right. I
(12:45):
cannot imagine smuggling a tattoo machine into my prison wallet
based on some of the other things that get smuggled in.
The tattoo gun is probably not the worst. But but indeed,
I mean, you could you look at a prison environment
and you have so many there's it's it's almost a
perfect model for why a lot of people get tattoos.
(13:06):
Because you're cut off from people you love, so you
might get a tattoo uh of some reminds you of
somebody outside. You also have to in many cases bond
with a different cultural group you're you know, you have
prison gangs, for lack of another word, prison cultures, and
that you want to show that you are a part
of that culture. You make that that culture a part
(13:27):
of your flesh. Also, it's a it's a place where
some inmates find religion, and you want to show that
that this deity or this uh, this model of faith
means a lot to you, so you put it into
your skin. Retired law enforcement official in prison culture expert
Richard Lichton says, quote, I've talked to many inmates, and
tattoos are always about what's important to them. It can
(13:47):
be something personal likes about this name or a Bible quote,
or to belong to a group, to intimidate others, or
to tell a story. So I think that's really important
to uh. And we'll talk a little bit more about this.
But you know, if you're in prison and you, as
you say, you want to bond with a certain group
or identify with the group, the easiest way to do
that is to have a permanent tattoo inked on you. Yeah.
(14:09):
I mean it kind of comes back to the basic
idea that as humans, we we all look kind of
the same on the outside. You know, there's not there's
nothing on the outside that necessarily gives a lot of
depth about character. And the tattoo is an ability to
take our inner world and make it a part of
our outer world. Well. And in terms of prison culture too,
it's a bit of survival, right, especially if you're trying
(14:32):
to join a group or you know, get protection from
that group. So, um, let's get to the tear drop tattoo.
Shall we kind of get that out of the way,
because there's always that always comes up, and I feel
like there's no definitive answer for this. This is the
idea that you have a tear drop tattoo you've killed
somebody in prison. Yes, okay, that's usually there. I should
(14:56):
say that most people associate it with, you know, the
fact that the wearer has killed someone, but it can
also mean that the wearer has served a long prison
sentence or is mourning the loss of a family member,
And a clear tear drop can mean that the wearer
has committed an attempted murder or alternatively that a close
(15:18):
friend was killed and the wearer is seeking revenge. You know,
we haven't even touched on this, but just as a
call back to our episode The Zen of Pain and
to a listener mail that we received and I believe
red in our recent episode, getting a tattoo stings a bit.
And Uh, it's depending on on your means of of
of actually uh, putting the tattoo in your flesh. Um
(15:42):
it it becomes a ritual, it becomes an experience of pain,
a rich wolf pain, and so you have that whole
dynamic going on as well as you say, get in
the name of a departed loved one put into your flesh. Yeah.
And I think that the reason why that tear drop
one is appoignant or so trouble link to so many
people because it's such a mark on that person and
(16:05):
in such an outward expression of the angst or sadness
that that consumes them. Presumably. Yeah, because when you get
a facial tattoo, you're changing the way that you communicate
with the world. Um. I think we've discussed before on
here that, uh, when a when a hominid species such
as humans have faces that kind of all look alike.
It's because the more the more like we are, the
(16:29):
more nuance comes out in our expressions, the more that
we're better able to communicate with one another because we
have kind of a similar facial recognition cognition system in place. Yeah,
so so, yeah, the idea of facial tattoo is often
kind of kind of frightening, kind of intimidating. Um. And
of course you see a great tradition of a facial
(16:49):
tattooing with the Maori people, really beautiful facial tattoos, but
in particularly with the men, it's it's often you know,
it's about uh, putting on this this impressive usual display,
this aggressive display intimidation. Right, So it's sort of a
kind of embodied cognition, which we've talked about before with
the old lab coats, that people dawn sometimes and they
(17:10):
feel more important or more proficient. In the same way,
if you're altering your face to look more intimidating or
to express express your grief, then you are embodying that
that is changing the person that you are expressing to
the world. Now, speaking of gangs and cultural tattoos and
and about the hour display, sometimes it's about the hidden
(17:31):
display as well, because I think one of the most
remarkable examples of like a gang cultural tattoo is of course,
the the the body tattoos of the yakuza, the Japanese
gangster class. We have these elaborate designs that they generally
have themes of of unresolved conflict and also symbols of
(17:51):
of character traits that the the wear wants to aspire to.
For instance, the carp often shows up as a representation
and of strength and perseverance. Yeah, and then there's also
you know, sort of the the language behind them, So
it's not just the bonding, but it's also sort of
again embodied cognition in a way of saying, this is
(18:13):
the life that I have chosen for myself. When it
comes to gang tattooing, the Canada Border Services Agency document
Tattoos and their Meetings says that the three dot tattoo,
usually in a triangle configuration, it signifies prison, hospital, cemetery,
and that represents the path and the ultimate end of
a gang lifestyle. So it's the kind of commitment to
(18:36):
that lifestyle to to have that tattoo and say that
I accept of these maybe the terms of of uh,
my employment or the culture that I'm entering into now.
We mentioned medical tattoos a little bit earlier, and of
course we we still see the use of tattoos in medicine,
though not as a mystical curative factor, but you do
(18:59):
see them. For instance, is to indicate a medically relevant
condition on a body of your location, kind of like
those Crusader tattoos we mentioned earlier. Essentially would would let
someone know this person has this condition, please treat them accordingly.
You have in some cases, US soldiers have a tattoo
version of their dog tags that are sometimes called meat tags,
(19:19):
and this is essentially the same thing as the crusader
tattoo that says this dead body was so and so
and this is where they were formed, that is their unit, etcetera.
But then you also see um medical tattoos uh used
in radiotherapy. You're using a radiation to to treat a
very particular part of the body. You want to hit
(19:39):
the same part, the same area each and every time.
You need a permanent marker of where to to apply
that radiation. Yeah, and usually it's just for like freckle
sized dots, and you know, in sort of a square
configuration that's mapping out that patch of tissue that needs
to get hit over and over and over again. And
(19:59):
the more accurate you can make that and the faster
the process, especially for people who are going through say
six weeks or more radiation treatments, this can be really
really helpful. Indeed, also you'll see medical tattoos sometimes used
for aerola replacement or parvy a replacement at following them assectomy.
So again this dude, those are just some some quick
(20:20):
points on the long, rich timeline of human tattooing. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to talk about the actual mechanics of tattooing. Hey,
we're back. So we've talked about the history of tattooing,
culture of tattooing, and it brings us up to the
(20:42):
modern day. Yeah, and before we really talk about the
more of the modern aspects of tattooing, including the invention
of the tattoo machine, we should say that, um, the
reason why tattooing became so popular, or one of the
reasons is people like Joseph Banks, who was naturalist aboard
the British ship Endeavor and According to a Smithsonian article
(21:05):
by Abigail West, he was one of the first to
record encounters with the Polynesian practice of tattooings or tattoo um.
And again we're talking about seventeen sixty nine when Banks
was watching a twelve year old girl being extensively adorned,
and then he wrote about it, and it really captured
(21:26):
the imaginations of a lot of people, and they then
wanted to also participate with tattoos, and indeed we have
a rich tradition of sailor tattoos um. I think probably
some of my first encounters with tattoos were individuals saying
a church environment who were veterans and had been sailors
or otherwise engaged in the Second World War, and they
(21:48):
would have these sort of faded miss shape and tattoos
that may have once been mermaids or or or just
naked ladies or whatever, but had slowly turned into more
sort of green blurs on their arms. And you can
see the appeal because you know, here you have back
in the day someone looking at these tribes, and you
can see how sailors who consider themselves a community and
(22:11):
to themselves like a tribe might want to use as
bonding as well, or to tell stories about their travels. Yeah,
and and they're of course engaging and often risky employment
out there on the on the high seat. So you
have every reason to want to make something a little
permanent in your flesh when you're dealing with all of
this uncertainty. So you won't be surprised to know that
(22:33):
it became so popular that in December eighth eight someone
by the name of Samuel F. O'Reilly received a patent
for the first tattoo machine, a two coil electromagnetic tattoo needle.
His invention was actually a modification of Thomas Edison's eighteen
seventy six electric pen patent, and O'Reilly saw how Edison's
(22:56):
methods of ink transfer using a stencil and ink pen
could be adapted for use in tattooing. And so what
you have is this machine that just gets improved over
and over again to the point where they get lighter,
easier to handle, safer, and less painful, and you get
better inks. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the ink, because
(23:17):
because the ink has has has varied a lot, it's
pretty uh, it's pretty stable. These days, it tends to
be more of like a vegetable based pigment. But in
the past you've seen him seen it made from anything
from from soot to metal salts um. But again, nowadays,
you go into a tattoo parlor, if you're getting a
you know, an on the level tattoo, it's probably gonna
be something more vegetable based, unless it's something super cutting edge,
(23:41):
which we'll talk about in the next episode where we're
talking about the future of tattoos. Don't want to give
that away, but the tattoo gun, Yeah that the technology
basically hasn't changed all that much. It's it's got there's
been a refining process over the years where it gets
gets better and better because you can still build a
very crude tattoo gun and uh and do the work
yourself or have your cellmate do it, which we don't recommend,
(24:03):
do not recommend even getting into a situation where you
have a cellmate in the first place. Yeah, it's worth
pointing out. I believe the FDA does not technically approve
of tattooing or even Hannah tattoos by the way, they say,
hinna really, because I was I was looking at one
of the um the more cutting edge techniques it will
discuss later. I saw a note that it was not
approved by the FDA, so I kind of looked into
(24:25):
a little bit as well, what does the FDA approve of?
And uh uh, it seemed to indicate that the FDA
is really does not approve any of the tattooing. So
there you go. Huh, they're kind of old school like that. Yeah,
I mean, you are talking about putting ink into your skin,
so you can't really expect the FDA to be two
behind that. Yeah, let's talk about that. This machine is
moving a solid needle up and down to puncture the
(24:47):
skin between fifty and three thousand times per minute. The
needle penetrates the skin by about a millimeter in deposits
a drop of insoluble ink into the skin with each puncture.
And now, when those tattoo needles are punching the skin,
they're going through the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin,
and then they drive into the dermis, which is the
(25:08):
second layer of the skin. And that layer is modeled
with nerves and blood vessels. And if the tattoo artist
is shading the design, then they're using this um shader needle,
which is comprised of several needles in a single bar.
Otherwise they're just using one single line needle. So again,
(25:29):
epidermis is the outer layer. Dermos is the second layer.
So when you're looking at a tattoo, you're looking through
the epidermis into the dermis. That's where the actual ink
is contained. And that's really important because that has a
lot to do with why they don't fade in the
first place. Yeah, because you know, obviously there can be
It depends on where you get the tattoo, depends on
(25:50):
the wear and tear, depends on a number of factors.
Tattoos do fade over time. If you were some sort
of you know, I would love to see this attack
in some sort of fiction where there's an immortal character,
be it you know, kind of like a highlander or
a vampire situation. What happens when they get that tattoo
and they actually live five hundred, six hundred years. How
(26:10):
awful would that tattoo look over the course of centuries? Yeah,
sort of, I love mom. It would just be like
our mom um. Yeah, because if it were just up
to the epidermis, that first layer, they would slaw off.
Now consider that we shed fortyo skin cells an hour.
That's about a million a day. Yeah. In fact, that
the body replaces itself with a largely new set of
(26:33):
cells every seven years to ten years. Uh, and some
of our most important parts are revamped even more rapidly.
So we have red blood cells live for about four months. Uh.
Those poor cells that line your your acid filled stomach,
they're lucky the last like five days. Meanwhile, cells in
the sculptal system are consistently regenerating, but a full turnover
(26:53):
takes a full decade. So you know, we're constantly rebuilding
our bodies as we as we go through live we're
consuming food and we're consuming nutrients, and we're building everything
back up again. And yet the tattoo remains mostly stationary,
right because it's part and personally because it's sort of
trapped in the dermist, that second layer, but also because
(27:16):
of your immune system. And what I mean by that
is that every puncture signals to the body to begin
the inflammatory process. So you have immune cells racing to
those puncture sites, and then you have special cells called macrophages,
and they begin kind of while saying quotes, eating the
dye in an attempt to clean up the inflammation that's
(27:37):
causing and then the rest of the dye gets soaked
up by skin cells called fibroblasts. In the fiber blasts
along with a lot of those macrophages, they kind of
they suspended in the dermists in perpetuity. And so that's
what you have showing through the skin. And of course
the dermist is is more stationary than the epidermis. The
(27:58):
epidermis is constantly slapping off, but but the dermist is
uh is a little more set in stone, if you will.
And I really think what's interesting about this is it's
a story about the immune system helping this process to
keep the ink in place in your body. Yeah, and
then ultimately you have that you have inc that's just
not it's not small enough to be a factor for say,
white blood cell. So you know, their University of Pittsburgh
(28:20):
Medical Center dermatologist James B. Bridenstein pointed out in Scientific
American article the tattoos remain in the skin because the
ink particles are too large to be ingested by the
white blood cells that patrol the body in caraway foreign bodies.
So you know, it's it's kind of like you know,
police officers walking in front of some graffiti art on
a wall. It's not their jurisdiction to to deal with
(28:43):
it's removal. They're not going to remove, and the white
blood cells are saying, hey, it's not my problem. This
thing is too big to be an issue to me anyway, right,
And that's why I think it's interested with macrofacies are trying,
and some of them are successful in carrying away the
die particles. Well, others they just kind of sit there
with it and their their bellies really, yeah, suspended forever
in the dermis. Alright, So this of course brings up
(29:03):
the question, how do we remove tattoos? How do you
get rid of this this this awful tattoo that you
say got on spring break back in n Or or
a lover's name that no longer seems uh, seems appliable,
like one that comes to my mind as a as
a wrestling fan. There's of course the wrestler uh that
goes by the name the Undertaker, And for a while
(29:24):
he had like one of his past wives, her name
was Sarah, and he got her name tattooed on his throat,
so it was very, very prominent when you would see
him perform that that Sarah meant a lot to him
because her name was on his throat, and then eventually
the name was gone and uh, and he was no
longer married to her. So you you might wonder, how
do you get rid of Sarah? How do you rid
(29:46):
her name from your throat flesh? I wanted to mention
that tattoo regret is actually fairly common. According to the
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the number of people
undergoing laser tattoo removal increased or be three percent from
two thousand and eleven to two thousand and twelve. I
don't know, just like a bad year for for tattooing.
And there's a two thousand and twelve British Association of
(30:09):
Dermatologist survey that found that nearly one third of people
suffer they say suffer from tattoo regret. To be fair,
this survey was really small, like respondents men, women, and
the most tattoos were done by a professional, but half
of the patients were over forty, which tells the story
that a lot of these tattoos were done in the
(30:30):
younger years, between eighteen and twenty five years old. See,
it was a youthful indiscretion that they want to to
actually erase from their flesh when they're an adult. Yeah,
and then occasionally to you'll have medical complications. Um. The
New England Journal of Medicine described contaminated inc causing infections
of non tuberculosis myso bacteria. It's really difficult to treat
(30:54):
and really the only option is removing that tattoo. I've
also heard that sometimes tattoo removal is useful for people
who are who are very much still into their tattoos,
but essentially becomes a tool of retouching past tattoos. So
you you have some sort of you know, star or
name or an emblem, and it's maybe it's faded a
(31:15):
little bit or just not maybe it wasn't of the
same quality as you. You want your other tattoos and
you you don't want to raise it completely, but you
want to touch it up, and tattoo removal techniques can
be used to essentially make it look better. Indeed. Um, now,
when we get to the actual mechanics of tattoo removal,
just remember about the macrofishes and this, you know, the
(31:37):
dyes being too large right to break down in the
dermis and recall the information because when you are trying
to remove a tattoo, what you're basically doing is aiming
a laser at it and breaking it down into tinier
and tinier particles so that those macrofiges can consume it
and take it away into the bloodstream to be flushed
out of your body, break it down to a level
(31:57):
that they can handle it, and to a level to
where it their business to handle it. And most tattoos
require at least three to four treatments. They're spaced about
eight weeks apart to remove. The cost can range from
several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the size
and the location of the tattoo. And it turns out that, um,
(32:18):
just black and white tattoos are the easiest to remove
because those that black dye is easier to break down
with a laser. It's interesting. I would have thought that
maybe some of the other colors would be easier to
break down, but I guess the black is really stark,
and yeah, it's just it responds better to the laser. Now, um,
the removal is described as someone snapping a rubber band
(32:41):
at your skin over and over again, so it's it's
another sort of painful ritual that you go through um
to to to exercise some force, some symbol or some
some presents from your life. Of purging. Yeah right, it's
almost like self flagilation. Yeah, I mean, and a great
way to I guess, end to break up or a
(33:02):
marriage or something. You just actually just pay someone to
use a laser beam to just blast their name out
of your skin and let your your body's immune system
consume it. You can say that too. You can be like,
right now, you, I'm purging you from my blood. Yeah,
my immune system is is eating the last of you now, Sarah. Now,
(33:22):
given the number of individuals who end up needing to
have a tattoo removed, it's it stands to reason that
we would want to develop inc that is more easily
removed to make tattoos in a sense a little less permanent,
knowing that we're going to get tattoos so we don't
want to keep forever. I was thinking about that. I
was like, this is good for the noncommittal set like myself.
(33:43):
He was like, Okay, maybe I'll get one if I
know that it's going to break down much easier with
a laser. And that brings us to UH to the
special Infinity Inc. Manufactured by what's the name of the company,
Freedom to Ink, freedom to eat, because yeah, freedom to
be me, you and me. But with the caveat that
we can we can erase things that we put into
(34:05):
our flesh. And the idea here is that you just
have a a die that is easier to remove because
the diet is stored in microscopic capsules uh that will
stay in the skin for good, but are more easily
broken down by the laser. So it's basically, let's make
an ink that is easier to remove with the accepted technique.
There's nothing magic about. You can't just rub them the
(34:25):
magnet on it and make it go away, but it
makes it easier to get rid off with the traditional
means of tattoo removal. Again about the macro fuses and
the size, right, So if you can get that die
particle as tiny as you can and just suspend it
in a polymer bead, then when you aim that laser
(34:46):
at it and it combust that polymer bead, than it's
so much easier to deal with by the body. And
it seems like this uh, the sink is becoming more
and more accessible and more and more tattoo parlors around
the world. But it does still kind of seem like
an easy way out, like like why why do you
want to have that? Is having that escape route in
(35:08):
place seems a little against the idea of of the
permanency of the whole point anyway, Yeah, but I don't know,
I guess it would be it would be definitely beneficial
I could see for for those medical tattoos we were
talking about, particularly ones used in radiation treatments, because in
many cases hum individuals who undergo that kind of treatment afterwards,
(35:29):
even though we're talking about very small dots, they might
want to get rid of them because it's it's it's
a permanent sign of this, uh, this this ordeal they
had to go through. So or maybe it's just something
that they should always offer when someone is getting a
you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend's named tattooed, like how
do you want to upgrade a bit and go to
(35:51):
this so other ink, you know, the sort of offered
as a as a you know, behind the counter kind
of sale. It's like, hey, I know she means a
lot to you, but trust me, five years show now,
who knows I don't know why the tattoo artists is
talking like that. Yeah, well, you generally want all your
relationship advice from a tattoo artist generally speaks Oh, I
think a tattoo artist could provide great relationship with us.
(36:11):
Are you kidding? They probably have seen everything and probably
know more about the human experience than most of us.
I've heard a friend of a friend used to work
at a tattoo parlor in Athens, Georgia, and supposedly the
parlor had a at a wall of shame in the
back where they would put the particularly bad tattoos that
individuals had had paid for like their own workmanship, or
(36:35):
just like more of like the like hey I want
this dolphins sitting on a lazy boy. I think that
kind of thing, you know, or particularly like racist tattoos,
just things where you're like, oh, why would someone do that?
I think it probably you know, there was a range
from just the the the head scratching tattoos to the
purely awful uh tattoos. I have a challenge for you
(36:58):
guys out there. You come up with the tattoo that
I should get, and I'm not saying I'm gonna get it. Okay,
I'm just saying because you know, I'm noncommittal, but I'm
intrigued by it. Christian Stein Metts of uh stuff of
genius in other house efforts um joints, I suppose um
he and I were talking one day and saying that
we should get all get like one bonding tattoo and
(37:21):
what should that be, And of course the house of
logo came up as an idea, which is a question
mark if you guys aren't familiar with it. And then
we thought, yes, tramp stamps of the House to works logo.
And then we quickly decided that's a terrible idea and
so confusing for anybody who might be amorously involved with us. Yeah,
(37:41):
it does it. Yeah, I can see that being problematic.
Well maybe we should put it. We should all get
it right here on our third eye in the penney
on Gland. Yes, over the should probably pick one chakra,
Just go pick one of these chakras that it relates
most to your The sort of content that you produce
is for how stuff works, and that's where you get it.
(38:01):
I like it. Yeah, what are the car stuff guys
gonna do? Oh? Which which chakra is the automotive chakra.
I can't remember the pelvic regions. Yeah, alright, So there
you have it. UM A crash course in some of
the some of the interesting points of tattooing history and
culture that that we found interesting UM as well as
(38:23):
the science of tattoos, the science of tattoo removals. And
in our next episode we're going to look to some
of the more cutting edge UH and indeed the near
future applications of tattoos, the future of tattooing. So look
forward to that episode, and in the meantime, make sure
you go to stuff to Blow your mind dot com
because that is find where you will find all the
podcast episodes, all the videos, all the blog posts, as
(38:45):
well as links out the various social media accounts that
we maintain. And if you would like to send us
your thoughts about tattoos, because I bet you guys have
some experiences out there are some things that you'd like
to share, you can do that by emailing us a
blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
(39:07):
stuff works dot com.
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