tattoo taboos

on monday evening a stranger, an elderly orthodox jew, felt perfectly entitled to lay his hands on my tattooed arm and tell me, in a creepy and unfunny attempt at humour*, that he would like to take a grinder and clear the soiled skin off my arm. he then, in what appeared to be an attempt to rescue the clearly awkward situation, shared a wonderful story of his young female neighbour who has a tramp stamp, saying that when she bends over he can only see half of it and he always asks her to keep going so that he can see it all. shadowslight responded first and correctly, saying that her tattoo probably wasn't intended for him, and i spent the next while thinking of all sorts of things i'd have liked to have said but never would - certainly not in the context in which we found ourselves.

this story has been bugging me since last night, partially because i feel uncomfortable with having had that creepy dude lay his hands and ideas on me, but more because it's far from the first time i've encountered this kind of behaviour and it seems that there are a couple of misconceptions that need clearing up, in particular amongst the orthodox community which constitutes the vast majority of my friends and family.

1. let's talk about the tattoo taboo. if your reason to hate tattoos is because you're jewish, and (good) jews don't get tattoos, perhaps you'd be interested to learn where our tattoo aversion comes from?

a) there is a commandment in leviticus about not cutting or tattooing ourselves, which comes in context of not serving other gods and refers to a very particular marking. so as long as we're not tattooing ourselves in service of moloch, we're good on that count.

b) if your aversion to tattoos stems from the nazis tattooing our people in concentration camps, do you share the same aversion to trains? because the trains were a big part of the holocaust experience too.

the torah tells us - in that same set of commandments that that first commandment comes from - to keep our judgements of our neighbours to ourselves. which leads me to the second misconception:

2. for some reason, family and friends and strangers think it's acceptable "good" jewish behaviour to share their honest opinions about how gross and revolting my tattoos are. not "i don't like tattoos", but "those tattoos are disgusting". so let me make my forthcoming behaviour perfectly clear to as many of you as possible, so that when you mother / brother / cousin comes home telling stories of this terrible person that they encountered, you might have a little context in which to process that information:

if you feel like you have the right to tell me that my tattoos are ugly, or that it's a terrible shame that i'm getting them done, i will feel well within my rights to respond in kind. i will "call it as i see it". the following are sample responses depending on which physical "imperfections" are easily visible to me:

"your makeup is spectacularly awful today, did you look in a mirror on your way out the door?"

"you really need to invest in a new wardrobe, these clothes are not doing you any favours"

"has your doctor said anything about your eating disorder?"

"my goodness, you're looking terribly wrinkly today!"

"yuck! you've got botox injections, haven't you?"

"are those breast implants? ooh, i just can't believe you've done that to your body!"

"what on earth were you thinking when you got your hair cut like that?"

if any of those responses would offend you, i warmly recommend reconsidering how you talk to other people.

* i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe he's actually a serial killer. who knows?