8E
Monday, August 19, 1996
FYI
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tattoos penetrate students' lives, skin
Pam Dishman/KANSAN
Chris Bishop, Lawrence resident, draws a tattoo on a patron's arm at Skin Illustrations, 704 Massachusetts St. St.Bishop's father, "Uncle Rubris" owns the tattoo shop.
By Sarah Brown Special to the Kansar
Elizabeth Gregg's high school friends always saw her as a goody-goody. So they were surprised when she showed up with her first tattoo, a rose on her ankle.
Tattoos aren't just for Harley riders anymore. Nice girls like Gregg, Salina junior, are sporting them, too.
Shandra Dalke, Great Bend sophomore, got the same reaction from her friends when she had a Chinese dragon tattooed on her ankle in February.
"They said, 'You don't seem like the type,'"
she said. "They thought it was fake."
By contrast, friends who saw former KU student Sarah White's tattoo for the first time told her. "Well, that you've."
White considers herself a risk taker. She said getting the tattoo was true to her nature. She had a Korean symbol representing dancing women put on her upper arm.
John Hoopes, assistant professor of anthropology, said there were as many reasons to get a tattoo as people who had them. He became interested in tattoos when he noticed that many of his students had them.
Hoopes said one incentive for getting a tattoo might be a desire to exercise control over one's body, especially when other aspects of life seem out of control. He also said people might use tattoos to separate themselves from a uniform majority.
Women seem more particular than men when deciding where to place a tattoo, Hoopes said. They may use it as another way to highlight their appearance, just as they might style their hair and apply makeup, he said.
Dalke said that she had considered getting a tattoo for a long time. But on an impulsive decision, she went to a tattoo parlor with a friend.
White also gave a lot of thought about a tattoo before she actually took the plunge. She reasoned, "It's your body. You're walking around in it all the time, so you might as well decorate it." She added that it was important to get a design that is both meaningful and attractive.
"It's a lifelong commitment," she says. "It's a weird relationship that you have with it."
Gregg got hers for a more familiar reason: "At the time, everyone was doing it," she said.
Reaction to their new body decoration was almost uniformly positive, all three
women said. They figured it was because the tattoos are becoming less shocking. Some people were surprised, but few were actually hostile to the change — except their parents.
Dalke said that it took her mother a couple of months before she could bring herself to look at it.
Gregg said her parents wouldn't talk to her for two weeks.
In reaction to the common question of, "Didn't that hurt?" all three women said they'd expected a painful experience, but the reality was not so harsh.
Dalke compared the sensation to someone dragging a needle lightly across the skin.
White said it was more irritating than painful, like having a rock in your shoe.
"After you tolerate it for five minutes or so, you become numbed to it," she said. "After awhile, you almost experience a euphoria."
Euphoria did not figure into Gregg's second tattoo, a Playboy bunny. She said it was much more painful than her first, because it was on her stomach, where the skin is thin.
Body location plays a big role in determining how much the process will hurt.
Beth Lee, who does body piercing at Led Bodine the Bad Tat Graphics, 1826 Massachusetts St., said that any place on the body that doesn't get sunlight is more painful to have tattooed.
Exposure to sun toughens up the skin and pushes nerve endings farther below the surface, desensitizing the skin.
Lee explained the tattooing process. Pigments that will be needed for the tattoo are poured out into caps. A needle is placed into a hand-held machine and is dipped into the first pigment.
Lee said that many people believe a tattoo needle is hollow and color is injected into the skin through it. Actually, the needle just pokes a hole through the upper layer of the skin, and the pigment flows off the end of the needle into the hole.
Bad Tat Graphics, 1826 Massachusetts St., where Dalke got her tutorship, has been in business since January 1995. The owner, Bodine, has been tattooing for six years.
White got hers at Grimm Tattoo Studio in Kansas City, Mo. That's also where Chris Bishop, the manager of Skin Illustrations, 740 Massachusetts St., got his first tattoo. Bishop said the shop is owned by his father, "Uncle Russell" Bishop, who runs another parlor in Overland Park. The shop opened
"After you tolerate it for five minutes or so, you become numbed to it.After awhile,you almost experience a euphoria."
Shandra Dalke Great Bend sophomore
last October, and Chris estimates at least 80 percent of their customers are KU students.
The two businesses share some guidelines: Bad Tat wont tattoo minors unless they come with a parent; Skin Illustrations won't do it at all, and it doesn't pressure clients into getting a particular tattoo, or into getting tattooed at all.
Skin Illustrations also does not tattoo people who are intoxicated. Lee said drunk people usually brought a bad attitude with them. Intoxication also makes the process more painful.
Because alcohol thins the blood, drunk clients bleed more during the procedure, which can push the pigment back out of the skin, meaning the tattoo won't take. More bleeding leads to a greater risk of infection, Lee said.
Preventing the spread of infections such as hepatitis and HIV is a priority for both shops, therefore each uses disposable needles. Everything that's reused is sterilized in what's called an autoclave. This machine uses steam pressure and 270 degrees heat to kill germs.
Skin Illustrations sterilizes used needles before putting them out in the trash in a special container. Tattoo artists at Bad Tat wash work surfaces with bleach after every tattoo.
And to protect customers and themselves, the tattoo artists wear rubber gloves while working.
Despite health risks and family opposition, Dalke, White and Gregg say they would do it again. They all used the same word to describe tattoos: addictive.
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