a place to put my thoughts

I was reading vogue and of course naturally curious/jealous of the Cara Delevigne and her capacity to retain her it-girl status and not become imbued with partial percentage of hatred from every admirer as the previous occupier of said status, Miss Alexa Chung. And it made me wonder how she did this…

      Love Magazine which essentially are a shrine - a lineage of those images that thrust her into being ‘it’ – of her birth as the idol she is today.

  It was exploring her rise to power that I noticed how she has consistently enhanced and individualised her brand as the Cara Delevigne as her fame grew. As her name became more distinguished, so did she. Beginning with her eyebrows, and as her legend flourished, developing into her uniquely defining tattoos.

It is the question of her fantastically different tattoos that I am most curious about. How she is quite literally branding  herself to achieve a more personalised image of herself.

   But even more frankly, she is also branded with a person’s artwork, their label, forever. This first occurred when Kate Moss was painted and then tattooed by the relic that is Lucien Freud, a completely unique and invaluable experience to be had.

Yet, most of us that are inked (of course I am not speaking true of the whole tattooed population) don’t consider a tattooist an artist in the same right as Lucien Freud. Those who are particularly guilty of this are the spectators – whenever there are snaps of celebrities with “new tats” there is never a reference to the artist that created the artwork, which is most unlike anything in any other creative industry. A tattoo is as much a brand of the wearer as it is the producer.

      Cara has earned herself 4 British Vogue covers since 2011 including featuring in this months issue, the Big September Fashion issue, American Vogue alongside Karlie Kloss and Joan Smalls, and also a Miss Vogue cover shoot back in 2013. Not forgetting her iconic cover shots for

Problematically, it seems this position is symptomatic of our generation as some of us fail to take into consideration the real impact having a tattoo has, in that they are irremovable. A lot of the problem is that people don’t think of the unique style of each tattoo artist, and rock up to a situation where they can be inked and think that each one can create a bespoke piece of artwork exactly as one envisages in their mind’s eye. In reflection, this is like walking into Vivienne Westwood and asking for something in the style of Gucci that you just happened to like; it simply doesn’t work that way. Just take a moment to think, tattooist’s are most often than not self-employed, so in due respect you should treat each one as unique as independent labels.

Of course, this overarching statement is exactly that, an overarching statement; there are plenty of folk out there who really know their stuff and have done their research and realise the importance of having tattoos. But, for some reason, tattoo art is a selective business to tap into to get the required insight needed to treat tattoo art with the due respect. By that I don’t mean information is hard to come by, but that tattooing is certainly not common knowledge.

Ultimately, it could be said that tattoos are not a mass culture phenomenon but a cultural elite, and that is true, however, it is becoming more apparent that brash decisions are being made about being inked to achieve a niche look. For example a friend of mine recently had a tattoo done for free, and an acquaintance with a similar ‘I want it now’ tale got lime scale poisoning (which isn’t as serious as it sounds, but still negligent). A serious reality check: you can contract some nasty stuff from needles, especially in other countries.

    Truthfully, it all comes down to the impatience to be tattooed. If you want a tattoo done properly and by a viably fantastic artist, then the wait between making the booking to actually sitting in the chair should be around a year, and the research process should be the same length previous to placing an order.

It is for all these reasons that I want to start taking my research into my own hands. I want a tattoo, my first tattoo, but I want to do it properly. So, in essence this article will be the first of a bi-monthly column about my findings in the world of tattoo artistry, making studies on different tattooist and providing an insight into this exclusive art culture to lead me to my discovery and creation of my first tattoo.

How far do Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter and Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale challenge their social positions?

Both texts, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Scarlet Letter, similarly are structured around a society in which punishment is central. Where Nathaniel Hawthorne positions the ‘jailhouse’ both physically and metaphorically in the centre of the Puritanical settlement in Boston, Atwood more subtly creates an environment in which the whole ‘Tale’ is set and limited to the confines of the Gileadean society, blocked off by the ‘wall’, which, retrospectively, is reflective of that similar to the famous ‘Iron Curtain’[1] which separated East and West Germany, creating almost a Communist prison in the East. Thus structurally, they both illustrate a situation in which punishment is paramount. The texts both are introduced with an illustration of how the protagonists broke the social conventions immediately from the offset; Offred, who was punished simply as a result of her gender, acting as a representative of all women in society and the wrongdoings they previously executed; and Hester, punished because she broke the social convention and became an icon for the whole of her society as a symbol of sin. Thus, both women immediately become subject to a context of the regimented social conventions of a ‘prison-house’[2], and therefore the social position in which they are in is likened to that of a prison sentence. The way in which these women challenge their social positions therefore, is born out of this structure.

Comparably, one way in which Hester Prynne and Offred similarly break the conventions of their social positions is the illicit creative outlet they yield. The title of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet ‘Letter’ is illustrious of the symbol of both Hester’s sin and also her artistic violation of her social context. The ‘scarlet letter’, her ‘badge of shame’, is ‘so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it [was] greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.’[3] The beauty in Hester’s embroidery completely juxtaposes the symbol of punishment it is designed to bestow in her, therefore depicting the thematic importance of artistry in the novel and signifying her defiance to allow the letter to ‘contain her essence’, but rather uses it to ‘preserve her humanity amidst adversity’ and instead creates a symbol which ‘functions according to the framework of understanding in which it is perceived.[4]’ Hester utilises the artistry of the scarlet ‘A’ to be a physical embodiment of her rejection of the codes of society which have put her in this social position. In parallel, the title of Atwood’s novel also draws attention to the product of Offred’s creative contravention, The Handmaid’s ‘Tale’. A ‘tale’ bearing the connotation of a fiction, ‘a story about events which are not real: fairy tale’[5], indicating perhaps that Offred, as the narrator, not only has control over creation of the story, but illustrates the imaginative, and potentially fabricated quality which is evoked in her reflective anecdotes and, structurally, the cinematic flashbacks. Hence the existence of the ‘manuscript’ as a creative testimony, and the symbolism of ‘the scarlet letter’, both depict an artistic freedom which illicitly infringes the standards of society and thusly expresses how the protaganists challenge their social positions. 

[1] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/294419/Iron-Curtain The political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

[2]  The Scarlet Letter The Prison Door p. 35

[3] The Scarlet Letter The Market-Place p.40

[4] Julian Cowley ‘York Notes The Scarlet Letter’ - The Custom-House - Summaries & Commentaries