Tattoos Have Burst Into The Popular Culture Of The United States In A Powerful Way

By Author: Jordon
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Visual media are not confined to glossy pages or computer screens. Perhaps one of the most fascinating forms to today's youth are the colorful images that span the bicep or peek over the top of a sock. Like a modern-day coat-of-arms, tattoos have burst into the popular culture of the United States in a powerful way. Tattoos, once viewed as taboo, are seen in a variety of environments. Celebrities such as Angelina Jolie famously bare their tattoos for tabloids, while networks develop reality shows depicting the journeys of tattoo artists, shops, and the background stories about the individuals who patronize them (e.g., Inked, Miami Ink, L.A. Ink). This fascination can be translated into an introduction to visual media.

To accomplish this, we introduced our ninth-grade students to the Norman Rockwell painting "Tattoo Artist." Rockwell illustrates a scene in which a Navy sailor chooses to have a tattoo applied; signaling his Tag Heuer Replica Watches newest relationship with Betty, while above the chosen spot, viewers can see that this ...
... arm has chronicled all his past relationships, a single line struck through each name to signify the end of the relationship. Typically, the students picked up on the irony of the painting immediately and make the connection to their own relationship pasts. Many students cringed when thinking what their arms might look like had they tattooed each former flame on their arms. To encourage students to move beyond their initial reactions, we also prompted them to think o Rockwell's painting as a scene from a movie, predicting what each character is thinking in this snapshot o a scene. This required students to pay close attention to the details presented in the painting. They had to read every nuance to frame a narrative that explores each character's motivation and reactions. This attention to detail also highlights that the growing list o names, like tattoos, cannot be undone with a simple change of mind.

Once students realized the permanence of tattoos as depicted in Rockwell's painting, we provided articles related to the health risks and issues surrounding tattoos. We then asked students to design personal tattoos that symbolized an important life event. Although the tattoo designs were not applied Omega Replica as actual tattoos designing hypothetical personal tattoos gave student the opportunity to express themselves and their experiences through color and images. Knowing that tattoos are essentially permanent, the students were asked to keep this permanence in mind as they designed their tattoos.