I’ve
attended private Catholic schools my entire life, where many parents have
conservative values, such as no tattoos or multiple piercings, and many
children obey their parents’ rules regarding these sorts of things. Naturally, in elementary school no one in my grade
had a tattoo and I don’t recall anyone having more than the traditional single ear
piercing, but once I started at my all-girls high school, I began to notice
more and more girls with multiple ear piercings. While most stores require a parent or
guardian’s consent if the customer is a minor, getting your ears pierced seemed
to be a rite of passage for many teenage girls.
By the time I graduated high school, tattoos were the next big thing
that many girls were getting.
I
remember the first time a girl in my grade (of only 125 students – I went to a
small school) got a tattoo. She happened
to be a friend of a friend, so I quickly learned about the sparrow that was recently
tattooed onto her shoulder. When asked
if the tattoo had any symbolism or significance, she didn’t really say much, just
that she liked the design. I remember
feeling confused and asking myself why someone would get something permanently
engraved into their skin just because it ‘looked pretty.’ A couple of months later, a good friend of
mine got a tattoo on her eighteenth birthday, when she was legally considered
an adult. Just like the other girl, my
friend didn’t seem to have any specific reasoning for the phoenix she had
tattooed on her ankle. Similar to the
ear piercing fad, it seemed like more and more people were getting tattoos
merely as a rite of passage rather than expressing any symbolic meaning.
As
we learn in Wendt’s “Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body,” Samoans have a long and
rich history of tatau. Unlike the girls
that I knew who got seemingly meaningless tattoos just because they legally
could without their parent’s consent, every Samoan tatau has a specific meaning
that is significant to their culture.
The word ‘tatau’ itself has five, if not more, meanings. Wendt states, “The tatau and malu are not
just beautiful decorations, they are scripts-texts-testimonies to do with
relationships, order, form, and so on” (403).
Tatauing is a way of life for Samoan people and “…gives [the body]
shape, form, identity, symmetry, puts it through the pain to be endured to
prepare for life, and recognizes its growing maturity and ability to serve the
community” (Wendt 400-401). The pain
that is endured is a significant part of the tatauing process and without it
the tatau would lose its significance.
The pain that the Samoan endures is a symbol to his or her community
that he or she is willing and committed to serve.
We
learn in Wendt’s “The Cross of Soot” that not all tattoos have to be traditional
Samoan tataus to be significant. Samasoni,
a young man, had an eagle that “…shimmied up and down as if in flight” (Wendt
14) when he flexed his arm and does not seem to hold any significant meaning to
him. Unlike Samasoni, the boy finds
significance in his unfinished star tattoo when he proudly states to his mother
that Jesus left him his cross tattoo.
Although the tattoo isn’t complex like the Samoan tatau and malu, the
boy finds religious significance in his tattoo, marking his transition from
youth to maturity.
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