Draw on your resources, not your bod’!

By Ed Goldman

You are cordially invited to attend the alienation of many of your fellow readers as I ask this simple question: What’s up with tattoos?

I know they’ve been around, and in many cultures, since people first began to walk erect and call in their Door Dash orders. (“Okay, one steppe bison for Og. One long-tusked mammoth for Nala. Anyone want white-fronted goose? Who else is in? With six you get straight-tusked elephant roll.”*)

In my teens, and long before, tattoos were what sailors and Hell’s Angels sported, mainly on their forearms and biceps. Members of my tribe (if you’ve just joined us: Jews) rarely submit to tats. According to the Torah: “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.”

While I’m not really sure why God needed to reaffirm who He was at the end of the dictum, as a longtime journalist who’s a stickler for attribution, I can respect it.

By the way, that quote is from “Leviticus 19:28” though I’m sure it was recorded earlier than that. In military time, that’s 7:28 p.m., kind of late in the day but still not even primetime (8 p.m.-midnight).

Now, if 1928 was meant to be a date, that’s a year before the Stock Market crashed and The Great Depression began. And while I’m pretty sure that era saw an uptick in people gashing their flesh and incising marks on themselves, the tat phenomenon is older than that.

The online literature about tattoos runs counter to my expectations. Since all of life does, this is not a shocker.

Sociological experts of every stripe (and possibly of butterfly tats, the country’s most popular inky icon), tell us that these days, tattoos are seen as a sign of self-confidence among younger people. I’d have thought just the opposite—that if you needed to draw on yourself, rather than on your own resources, you must have a lack of self-esteem, not a surplus of it.

For instance, I remember reading an interview with Jackie Gleason—the late actor, producer and composer of truly mediocre “romantic mood” music—in which he spoke about his role of bus driver Ralph Kramden in the ancient “Honeymooners” TV show (which Gleason created). He was asked why Ralph always wore his work uniform in his apartment, during off hours. He said that this was a trait of insecure people—which makes me glad Ralph wasn’t a hazmat technician, deep-sea diver, astronaut or department store Santa.

Most people don’t load their bods with tattoos to remind the world of what they do for a living. (An exception would be tattoo artists themselves, who tend to display their work on everything but their sleeves). Maybe Ralph would have done that if the show were updated and he sported the drawing of a Gotham City bus on the back of his neck, but we’ll probably never know. A dismal attempt to modernize the show as a movie about 18 years ago, starring the always-enjoyable Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph, flopped. This might have been the public’s way of saying the Honeymoon(ers) was over.

* Actual Neanderthal food sources.