Tattoos used to be taboo, associated with deviants and prisoners. And yet today, tattoos are sported by celebrities, business people, parents, and adolescents alike. Fascinated by this dramatic shift (and informed by her own relationship to the art of tattooing after marrying a tattoo artist), sociologist Katherine Irwin documented the popularization of tattoos in Symbolic Interaction.
Irwin writes that tattoos didn’t suddenly become acceptable one day. Rather, in the 1990s, adventurous middle class clientele slowly but surely used legitimization techniques to “to frame their desires for tattoos within mainstream definitions of success and achievement.”
- Jstor Daily
