Body Tattoos

There's an article in the Sydney Morning Herald this week about 'mummy tattoos'. When middle class mothers start wandering en masse into tattoo parlors you know something is going on.

What is this trend to permanently ink your body about?




I wonder, as I do, if it's movement into the mainstream is in some way linked to the increasing trend towards DIY biographies and reflexive self-narratives argued by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck? Are we incorporating our material bodies into our self-constructed narratives? I've just written a paper about reading graffiti in terms of the construction of self-narratives in urban sites and now the connection between place-based narrative and writing onto our bodies is increasingly fascinating.

For more pix of the Beckham's various tattoos - go here.