Week 8 -- All Things Tattoos

It's that time of year. Midterms have come and gone and we're in the home stretch toward finals. As anyone who has ever gone thorugh the college process will attest, that sounds much more relaxing than it actually is. This is the part where we rely heavily on our planners and hope that we haven't lost track of any final projects. But we usually do. This where extra caffeine and late night cram sessions come in, even if we know better.

This is where I find myself, completely absorbed in the writing process for my tattoo research project. I'm trying out the following as an intro/research questions section for my annotated bibliography:

It’s not uncommon to see someone with a tattoo anymore. In fact, it seems that more people are embracing tattoos as an art and a form of self-expression than ever before. This shift in the way Americans think about tattooing has been relatively recent, appearing within the last 3 decades. I’d like to examine the reasons for this shift and hopefully answer the following questions:

1.      In what ways does society define or label people with tattoos. How have these labels changed as tattoos have become mainstream.

2.      How has tattooing changed over the last 30 years and how have these changes impacted the way society views tattoos.

3.      Has the acceptance of tattoos influenced the way artists are being trained or did the changes in artistic techniques affect the shift in society’s desire to embrace the practice?