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We'll written book. Interesting subject and very easy to read.
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Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo
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"In this provocative work full of intriguing female characters from tattoo history, Margot Mifflin makes a persuasive case for the tattooed woman as an emblem of female self-expression."
—Susan Faludi
Bodies of Subversion is the first history of women’s tattoo art, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back into the nineteenth-century and includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Author Margot Mifflin notes that women’s interest in tattoos surged in the suffragist 20s and the feminist 70s. She
* Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics.
* The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties.
* Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship.
* Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill’s mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist.
* Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed.
“In Bodies of Subversion , Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It’s an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history.”
—Barbara Kruger, artist
—Susan Faludi
Bodies of Subversion is the first history of women’s tattoo art, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back into the nineteenth-century and includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Author Margot Mifflin notes that women’s interest in tattoos surged in the suffragist 20s and the feminist 70s. She
* Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics.
* The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties.
* Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship.
* Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill’s mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist.
* Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed.
“In Bodies of Subversion , Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It’s an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history.”
—Barbara Kruger, artist
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1997
This edition
- Format
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192 pages, Paperback
- Published
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April 9, 2001 by Juno Books
- ISBN
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9781890451103
- ASIN
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189045110X
- Language
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English
About the author
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If you'd like to have a chat with me, you'll find me now on Skolay: skolay.com/writers/margot-mifflin
Margot Mifflin is an author praised for writing "delicious social history (Dwight Garner, The New York Times). She wrote the first history of women's tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, a finalist for a Caroline Bancroft History Award.
Her 2020 book Looking for Miss America, the first cultural history of the Miss America pageant, is a Cosmopolitan Best Nonfiction Book of 2020, a New York Post Best Book of 2020, a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book, a National Book Review 5 Hot Books Pick, and a PureWow 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020. It was awarded the 2021 Pop Culture Association's Emily Toth Best Book in Woman's Studies award.
“A spellbinding…first-rate analysis of the United States's most distinctive beauty contest.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Mifflin's lively book reads as an obituary…She's cleareyed about the pageant's many hypocrisies and failures…But Mifflin, too, is invested in the pageant's sense of specialness.” —The New York Times
“Mifflin is as alive to the pageant's historical grotesqueries as she is to the weirdo details of its founding.” —The New Yorker
“This incisive and entertaining history deserves the spotlight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Nothing short of fascinating.” —Cosmopolitan
Margot Mifflin is an author praised for writing "delicious social history (Dwight Garner, The New York Times). She wrote the first history of women's tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, a finalist for a Caroline Bancroft History Award.
Her 2020 book Looking for Miss America, the first cultural history of the Miss America pageant, is a Cosmopolitan Best Nonfiction Book of 2020, a New York Post Best Book of 2020, a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book, a National Book Review 5 Hot Books Pick, and a PureWow 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020. It was awarded the 2021 Pop Culture Association's Emily Toth Best Book in Woman's Studies award.
“A spellbinding…first-rate analysis of the United States's most distinctive beauty contest.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Mifflin's lively book reads as an obituary…She's cleareyed about the pageant's many hypocrisies and failures…But Mifflin, too, is invested in the pageant's sense of specialness.” —The New York Times
“Mifflin is as alive to the pageant's historical grotesqueries as she is to the weirdo details of its founding.” —The New Yorker
“This incisive and entertaining history deserves the spotlight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Nothing short of fascinating.” —Cosmopolitan
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62 reviews All reviews
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Not just a beautiful cover.
An in depth and well researched look at the modern history of women and tattooing.
It focuses mainly on the west, starting with The Tattooed Lady in the circus, to women as tattoo artists in the early 1900's and right up to the modern day industry and the struggles for female tattoo artists as well as tattooed women.
With a great selection of photographs and snippets of interviews from a who's who of female tattoo artists, this is a must read for anyone interested in the subject.
An in depth and well researched look at the modern history of women and tattooing.
It focuses mainly on the west, starting with The Tattooed Lady in the circus, to women as tattoo artists in the early 1900's and right up to the modern day industry and the struggles for female tattoo artists as well as tattooed women.
With a great selection of photographs and snippets of interviews from a who's who of female tattoo artists, this is a must read for anyone interested in the subject.
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easy read with lots of pictures
thought this was going to be more academic however
thought this was going to be more academic however
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Feminism + tattoos = INCREDIBLE BOOK. This is a fantastic, fascinating read. And the gorgeous pictures just make it that much better. I can't believe I waited so long to read this.
As a heavily tattooed woman myself, it really made me appreciate the rich history of tattooed women, and the role it plays in why, where, & what we get tattooed. The concept of using it as a way to own my own body in the face of abuse & the litany of legislation written by old white evangelical men to tell me what I can & can't do with my body was something I had never actually consciously THOUGHT about, but it really struck home with me.
This book made me even prouder to be a feminist, and a tattooed one at that. I bought a copy for my (female) tattooist as well. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.
As a heavily tattooed woman myself, it really made me appreciate the rich history of tattooed women, and the role it plays in why, where, & what we get tattooed. The concept of using it as a way to own my own body in the face of abuse & the litany of legislation written by old white evangelical men to tell me what I can & can't do with my body was something I had never actually consciously THOUGHT about, but it really struck home with me.
This book made me even prouder to be a feminist, and a tattooed one at that. I bought a copy for my (female) tattooist as well. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.
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Not just a beautiful cover.
An in depth and well researched look at the modern history of women and tattooing.
It focuses mainly on the west, starting with The Tattooed Lady in the circus, to women as tattoo artists in the early 1900's and right up to the modern day industry and the struggles for female tattoo artists as well as tattooed women.
With a great selection of photographs and snippets of interviews from a who's who of female tattoo artists, this is a must read for anyone interested in the subject.
Grace
An in depth and well researched look at the modern history of women and tattooing.
It focuses mainly on the west, starting with The Tattooed Lady in the circus, to women as tattoo artists in the early 1900's and right up to the modern day industry and the struggles for female tattoo artists as well as tattooed women.
With a great selection of photographs and snippets of interviews from a who's who of female tattoo artists, this is a must read for anyone interested in the subject.
Grace
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Splendid vizual, foarte informativ (în istoria artei tatuajului, cu accent pe "artă") și cu o solidă perspectivă sociologic-feministă.
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Pioneering, painstaking feminist history of women tattoo artists and women with tattoos. Definitely worth checking out for the first section about the early days of women's tattoo in America. It's crazy to read about just how unthinkable and beyond the pale getting tattoos was for most of society just 100 years ago, especially for women, and how that manifested in phenomena like early tattooees being able to make a living as circus sideshow curiosities, often marrying their tattoo artist, and/or making up weird stories about being abducted by indians and forcibly tattooed to explain themselves to the public.
The chapters on more recent history feel a little rote to me, like a directory of important artists with less organization and development of themes than I might like. And it kept bugging me how the pictures don't appear in line with the relevant section of text so I had to keep flipping back and forth to try to find the pictures of who Mifflin is talking about at any given time.
I like hearing the wildly different anecdotes/explanations/theories about why people get tattoos.
I like seeing how much Seattle shows up in tattoo history, like with Vyvyn Lazonga's 1979 tattoo shop.
Some of the recurring themes are Mifflin lamenting what she considers the over-sexualization and "relentless cheese-cakery of women in the tattoo media", and how the "fine arts world" typically ignores the history and development of tattoo as an art form (example p.101/102). I can see what she means about the cheese-cakery looking at the cover of my recent Tattoo magazine, but on the other hand tattoos are intrinsically sexual since they are made on human bodies and I don't have a super clear picture of what Mifflin envisions a more equitable, preferable media landscape of tattoo art to look like. I assume she would prefer the objectification/sexualization to be more of the self-objectification/self-sexualization variety, which I totally agree with. It's the same problem mainstream porn has.
But as far as she seems like she wants insiders and outside scholars in general to be more "serious" about the tattoo art world, I don't really follow her. I personally don't give a shit about whether art is "serious" as such. The high brow/low brow thing just feels like ridiculous arbitrary wall-building to me and I've never been able to detect any correlation between art being good and whether it is "high brow" and "serious" or "low brow" and "vernacular", or whatever.
The chapters on more recent history feel a little rote to me, like a directory of important artists with less organization and development of themes than I might like. And it kept bugging me how the pictures don't appear in line with the relevant section of text so I had to keep flipping back and forth to try to find the pictures of who Mifflin is talking about at any given time.
I like hearing the wildly different anecdotes/explanations/theories about why people get tattoos.
I would say about half the men [I worked on] got tattooed just to get tattooed, whereas almost all the women were getting a tattoo for a reason, says [Sheila] May...(p.56)
I like seeing how much Seattle shows up in tattoo history, like with Vyvyn Lazonga's 1979 tattoo shop.
Some of the recurring themes are Mifflin lamenting what she considers the over-sexualization and "relentless cheese-cakery of women in the tattoo media", and how the "fine arts world" typically ignores the history and development of tattoo as an art form (example p.101/102). I can see what she means about the cheese-cakery looking at the cover of my recent Tattoo magazine, but on the other hand tattoos are intrinsically sexual since they are made on human bodies and I don't have a super clear picture of what Mifflin envisions a more equitable, preferable media landscape of tattoo art to look like. I assume she would prefer the objectification/sexualization to be more of the self-objectification/self-sexualization variety, which I totally agree with. It's the same problem mainstream porn has.
But as far as she seems like she wants insiders and outside scholars in general to be more "serious" about the tattoo art world, I don't really follow her. I personally don't give a shit about whether art is "serious" as such. The high brow/low brow thing just feels like ridiculous arbitrary wall-building to me and I've never been able to detect any correlation between art being good and whether it is "high brow" and "serious" or "low brow" and "vernacular", or whatever.
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This was one of those interesting-but-boring books. Like a textbook. You know that the information is probably fascinating and you’re definitely curious about it, but it’s presented in a way that makes it taste like dirt rather than delicious cuisine.
Some folks really like textbooks. They like the endless names and dates and oh-so-minute specifics that frankly just make my mind fall asleep. I’m a memoir girl all the way. I mean, what’s the overall picture here? Where’s the story? Where’s the flavor?
I suppose it’s a personal preference; I’m the type who needs more abstract, big-picture storytelling and less “Jane Doe was born on January 1, 1885 in San Antonio, Texas and in 1900 opened a tattoo shop in San Diego, California where she utilized a single needle tattoo method developed in the early 1700′s.” BLAH. Save your dry regurgitation of facts– it feels SO beige. I’m craving some color here (which, by the way, you’d think wouldn’t be too difficult given that the topic is tattooing…). Good thing the book included some beautiful tattoo pictures or I may not have made it out alive.
Textbook-y style aside, women and tattoos do indeed have a very cool history that is worthy of print and discussion. Tattooing has swung from taboo to mainstream to taboo again throughout history, and women have had a particularly complex and remarkable relationship with the art form. From sexualization and objectification to self-expression, memorial, and explicit declarations of self-determination, tattooing represents an enormous variety of meaning that has been ever-evolving over the course of the thousands of years that folks have been hammering ink and ash into their skin.
Women as artists, too, are an interesting topic of contemplation. Like most other professions, feminist waves broke their way, slow and steady, through layer upon layer of misogyny and oppression in the world of tattooists. Still not completely void of sexism but definitely making progress, third wave feminists are both reaping rewards of those who fought before, and struggling with their own battles to be heard and respected for their art rather than their genitalia.
Long story short– killer topic, not my favorite book.
Some folks really like textbooks. They like the endless names and dates and oh-so-minute specifics that frankly just make my mind fall asleep. I’m a memoir girl all the way. I mean, what’s the overall picture here? Where’s the story? Where’s the flavor?
I suppose it’s a personal preference; I’m the type who needs more abstract, big-picture storytelling and less “Jane Doe was born on January 1, 1885 in San Antonio, Texas and in 1900 opened a tattoo shop in San Diego, California where she utilized a single needle tattoo method developed in the early 1700′s.” BLAH. Save your dry regurgitation of facts– it feels SO beige. I’m craving some color here (which, by the way, you’d think wouldn’t be too difficult given that the topic is tattooing…). Good thing the book included some beautiful tattoo pictures or I may not have made it out alive.
Textbook-y style aside, women and tattoos do indeed have a very cool history that is worthy of print and discussion. Tattooing has swung from taboo to mainstream to taboo again throughout history, and women have had a particularly complex and remarkable relationship with the art form. From sexualization and objectification to self-expression, memorial, and explicit declarations of self-determination, tattooing represents an enormous variety of meaning that has been ever-evolving over the course of the thousands of years that folks have been hammering ink and ash into their skin.
Women as artists, too, are an interesting topic of contemplation. Like most other professions, feminist waves broke their way, slow and steady, through layer upon layer of misogyny and oppression in the world of tattooists. Still not completely void of sexism but definitely making progress, third wave feminists are both reaping rewards of those who fought before, and struggling with their own battles to be heard and respected for their art rather than their genitalia.
Long story short– killer topic, not my favorite book.
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