Touch: Taboos & Tattoos

Taboos

          Touch taboos were described as socially unacceptable places to touch a person on their body. Different cultures have different ideas of what is acceptable to touch, some allow hair to be touched, some consider touching hair to be on the same plane as molestation. However, there are other ways in which touching is considered taboo. As I was mulling over the text, trying to decide what to create, I was eating chips and dip. I reached for the napkin to clean off my dirty hands, when an idea struck me. It's taboo to touch things with dirty hands, because you shouldn't leave a mess everywhere. But human hands are covered in germs, oils, and accumulated nasty things that we don't see normally, yet it is not unacceptable to say, shake someone's hand without first having them wipe it off. So for this image, I finished eating my chips, no longer concerned for what little bits of dip and seasoning were getting on them, and allowed them to accumulate, so I could create this image. It's a visual representation of the mark we all leave when we touch things on a daily basis. 

Tattoos

          Tattoos are also sometimes considered taboo in certain sects of cultures, especially facial tattoos. Face tattoos often convey an edgy appearance. People with many face tattoos would unlikely be able to work for a daycare or as a bank teller. They're sometimes seen as untrustworthy, scary, and even lacking in intelligence. However, tattoos are just markings, and while they express a persons' personality, there is nothing innately untrustworthy, scary, or unintelligent about tattoos. To illustrate, I sketched an image of someone many consider to be a well respected genius with simple, nonspecific tattoos on his face. I did this to illustrate the prejudice against ink on skin, and to showcase the flaws with that logic.