Conformity tattooed for all to see

A classic sign of social rebellion has taken a sharp turn toward social conformity.

It's plain to see, right there on arms, legs and chests. And lower backs, inner thighs and parts best left unimagined, too.

That tattoo has gone mainstream.

"It's not just carnies and criminals anymore," said high school English teacher Tim Towslee.

He has seen plenty of tattooed kids walk the halls at Deep Run High School in Henrico County, but he was talking as much about himself. Since getting his first tattoo when he was in high school, the 32-year-old has covered himself nearly neck to ankle with permanent ink.

Tattoos have made the transition from the fringe of society to counterculture to the mainstream, said Margo DeMello, the author of "Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community" and a professor at Central New Mexico Community College.

She and other researchers, plus tattoo enthusiasts and practitioners, say the seeds of change began taking firm root about a decade ago, when relatively respectable athletes, movie stars and musicians began sporting tattoos. Just as people have tried to emulate the fashions and physical appearance of celebrities, so, too, have they tried to replicate body art.

It has reached the point now where to stand out, a person needs multiple tattoos in highly visible places such as the hands, neck or face, DeMello said.

Like many white-collar professionals, Towslee keeps his body art to himself. You'd never know he has one tattoo, much less dozens, if you saw him in the classroom.

"They're for me," he said.

Not that his students would blink.

"For people under 40, tattooing is not so stigmatized," DeMello said. "They've grown up with this."

Evan Durand, a 15-year-old freshman at Mills Godwin High School and an aspiring tattoo artist, said he doesn't think twice if he sees a tattooed person on the street or in the classroom. "It's nothing special," he said.

He doesn't have a tattoo yet -- you have to be 18 to get one in Virginia unless you have parental consent -- though he'd like to. He has seen several of his designs tattooed on people.

"That's pretty cool," he said. "You just have to be sure it's for you, not because you think somebody else will like it. This is a decision that's going to last your lifetime."

Neshae Eccles has made that decision 10 times, and she's just 18.

"They get addictive," she said after watching her friend Kiana Bullock, also 18, get her first tattoo. "This isn't the end for me."

Bullock wasn't so sure she would get another, but she was happy to see her first: her late mother's name on her forearm.

"I've wanted to do this since I was 16," she said.

Jessica Harsh first got the urge to get tattooed when she was 12. Her mother made her wait until she was 18.

"I'm glad I waited," she said. "When I was 12, I really wanted a dolphin."

Now 27, Harsh is no longer a dolphin tattoo kind of person. Her 14 tattoos are mostly personal messages, daily reminders of family members and friends.

"I'm a living scrapbook," she said. "I'm kind of like my own photo album."

She has not had to look far to find a place to get a tattoo.

Even by Richmond standards -- and the city has been the state's tattoo capital since Norfolk began what would become a 54-year ban on tattoos in 1952 -- the market for body art has exploded. In the past decade, demand from everyone from the hippest teenagers to suburban grandmothers has led to the number of tattoo parlors growing from a half-dozen or so to nearly 40. Tattoos are so much a part of daily life, you can even get one in local malls, including Chesterfield Towne Center.

"And that's just the [the artists] with shops," said Billy Eason, 71, the owner of Capital Tattoo and the promoter of two annual tattoo shows, including this weekend's 17th annual Richmond Tattoo Arts Festival. If you're willing to gamble on quality and safety, he said, there are just as many "artists" operating out of their homes.

You can spend less than $50 on a simple tattoo to thousands of dollars on elaborate designs. The simplest are quick affairs, stock designs that take less than an hour to ink. Bigger designs, such as customer-created full-arm "sleeves," take multiple sittings and can stretch out over years.

Eason said tattoo-studded celebrities and sports stars helped whet the appetite for ink, and the market responded by cleaning itself up and greatly improving the quality of its offerings.

"It used to be a bucket and sponge," he said, referring to the old-fashioned method of cleaning up after a tattoo was finished. "Now this place is so clean, you could eat off the floor. You can't imagine the inspections we go through."

And you can't imagine the art, either, he said. The days are gone when self-trained artists such as himself ruled the market by inscribing names and simple designs on the odd band of servicemen and assorted miscreants who wanted to display their individuality.

The trade has given way to art, and now you're likely to find college-educated and professionally trained artists with the buzzing guns in their hands.

The Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation has licensed tattoo parlors and artists, and regulated apprenticeship programs since July 2004. As of Nov. 1, the state had 212 licensed tattoo parlors, 418 artists and 102 apprentices.

Among other things, the state makes sure parlors are safe and the people working in them are aware of how to prevent the spread of blood-borne diseases. With sterilized equipment and employees in disposable gloves, reputable, licensed shops look more like dentist offices than the seedy back-room parlors of lore.

With the regulation, Eason said, has come an overall improvement in the business.

"Very few people could tattoo well back then," said Eason, who started tattooing in the late 1950s. "These artists [today] are phenomenal. I quit doing [tattoos] because I couldn't match that quality."

Tattoo enthusiasts such as Eccles and Harsh are good news for people like Dave Zobel, 28, who owns Brookland Park Tattoo. He said he has seen tremendous change in the decade he has been in the business.

The talkative artist -- and he does consider himself an artist first -- said he never tired of seeing the unexpected walk through the doors of his North Richmond shop. He gets his share of tattoo purists, he said, but he also draws in a steady flow of the type of people who not long ago would have scoffed at tattoos.

"We deal with a large mix of customers," he said.

"It's nice. I get to meet and talk to people I wouldn't have [several years ago]. Some of the people you'd think would be the most boring -- the soccer moms in their minivans -- are the most interesting. And some of the people who you'd think would be the most interesting -- the tattoo purists -- are the most boring."

The most fun he has had with a tattoo, he said, was on a 73-year-old woman.

"She came in and said she didn't know how much more time she had on this planet, and she wanted a tattoo," he said. "She got a quarter-size rabbit on her butt."

That got a chuckle from Germ, 31, an artist in Zobel's parlor and an occasional customer himself.

"It's all in what you want for yourself," he said as Zobel worked on the outline of a tattoo on Germ's chest.

"The customers are more educated about their choices now," said Zobel.

That tattoos have become so accepted is no surprise, said Myrna Armstrong, a professor at and the regional dean of the Highland Lakes Campus of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing. She began seeing evidence of changes in the perception of tattoos in 1990.

A nurse in the Army reserves, Armstrong saw an ever-increasing number of officers with tattoos. From her academic post, she decided to study the trend.

"I didn't have any problem finding participants," she said. "They were like, 'Finally, someone who takes this seriously.'"

That study, and subsequent research with high school and college students, convinced her that long-held beliefs about who was getting tattoos and why were wrong.

"The early research was conducted in juvenile detention centers and jails," she said. "They found that people getting tattoos were criminals. Well, duh!"

Nearly 20 years ago, she said, she discovered that 10 percent to 15 percent of the high school students with tattoos she studied were from middle-class backgrounds. Since then, subsequent research has proved that tattoos cross all ethnic, social and economic lines.

"For a long time, we thought it was an impulsive thing" to get a tattoo, she said. "I think that's still true with adolescents. But for [older people], it's a lot more deliberate decision-making than we give credit for."

Zobel said he sees proof of that every time he looks at his calendar.

"I'm booked out four months," he said.

A delay, he said, can be a good thing, if occasionally a tough sell to customers grown accustomed to seeing detailed work done in quick segments on television shows such as "Miami Ink."

"People come in here and think they can get a big piece done in 30 minutes, and it just doesn't work like that," he said. "I spend more time with consultations than I do tattooing. I want to make sure what they're going to wear for the rest of their days is what they want.

"I know that what I thought was cool when I was 18, it's not so cool anymore."

Harsh knows that lesson well. Her first tattoo has since been covered by a different design.

"I tried to fit who I was around the design," she said. "Everything since then, I've gone in with the idea."

She has also gone in knowing her decision would be long-lasting.

"People will say to me, 'What's going to happen when you're old and have saggy skin?'" she said. "Well, I'll have really colorful saggy skin."

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or .