A Letter of Dissatisfaction and Complaint.

Read this article:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/61175.html

I read this, trying to remain calm and trying to imagine whether, if I wasn't a young woman with a tattoo myself, I would agree with Melanie Reid on this subject. Then I felt moved to write the following email response:

To the Editor
Upon reading the article entitled "Pain, hurt and self-harm. And we call this art?" I was moved to write and express my considerable reaction to Melanie Reid's patronising and moralistic journalism.

To introduce the article with the statistic about more women being tattooed than men implies from the outset that Ms. Reid's difficultly is not so much with tattooes themselves, but with the fact that women are choosing to have them. For men it has been common practice for years, and while Ms. Reid may not agree with it, she perhaps acknoweldges that those who participate are making a choice. Now these statistics have come to light she cannot, it seems, simply sit by and watch while naive young women are drawn into this most loathsome of practices.

The implication that pervades this article is that this young generation of women are simply too credulous. They are led to think to be tattooed is "cool" and "fashionable" by those female celebrities who, sadly misguided themselves, are driven to this self-torture in the public eye. A whole generation of innocent, wide-eyed young girls being brainwashed by glossy magazines into mutilating themselves with "pretty little designs". When men were doing it, it was something not to be meddled with, but now that women are free to make decisions about what they do to their own bodies, they are making all manner of mistakes. They do not, and here Ms. Reid seems to feel a genuine sense of sadness for these poor, misguided females, fully understand what they're doing.

Her use of some sort of 'teen vernacular' ("It's cool and sexy, innit?") seem to imply that she perceives these tattooed women as being very young, when in fact the statistic upon which she bases her entire article does not specify the ages of these women. She has clearly decided to assume that these women are very young in order to be able to preach more successfully from her Mary Whitehouse-esque standpoint. She mentions that "more than 35,000 people a year are getting laser treatment to remove tattoos", but does not specify whether these people are male or female. The implication that women are the most at risk of being led blindly into this practice of self-mutilation rests upon the suggestion that more women have this surgery than men do, once their bodies, to their considerable shock, cease to be as lithe as they once were.

Of course there are theories that suggest links between body art and self-mutilation. There are those who suggest that wanting to alter one's body is symbolic of a need to alter oneself in a much deeper emotional way. Ms. Reid is saying nothing new by telling us what "psychologists believe". She is merely saying things that have been discussed in depth for years, but just in an incredibly patronising manner.

Which is it to be, Ms. Reid? Are we victims because we are following the fashions set out by the celebrities whose lives we so covet, or because we need to torture ourselves as a means of coping with the "vague, ubiquitous hurt of (our) emotionally damaged lives"?
It seems to me that the only thing we tattooed women are victims of is Ms Reid's misplaced moral judgement, and fearful worry that we will not be able to claim our place in the typing pool.

Try to sleep at night, Ms. Reid. Just as you are capable of making the choice to express yourself through ignorant postulation on subjects you clearly know very little about, we are capable of making the choice to express ourselves however we see fit.
Yours sincerely,
Léonie,
London


What I actually meant was Fuck You Ms Reid, but then I remembered that I am not a Daily Mail reader and have to use actual words.