Gen Z Tattoos
This is a script for a podcast I made about Gen Z tattoo artists for Professor Audrey Quinn's Intro to Audio Reportage Class, spring 2023.
Vox1:
Tattooing is increasingly accessible to Gen Z artists and customers alike. Not only are more of us getting tattoos, but small-time artists are finding their footing through informal DIY networks and promoting their work online. Gray Harrison reports on a group of her peers who are all connected through tattoos.
Reese1:
New York, you need a license. You need to take sanitation classes, and then do a certain number of supervised hours. But then, I feel like 60% of tattoo artists who start by themselves, there’s not a chance of that like happening– it’s not like looked down upon to be unlicensed.
Vox2:
That’s Reese, a tattoo artist I went to college with. Reese started learning to tattoo as a first year, and since graduating, their primary income now comes from tattooing. Reese operates bookings through Instagram, which has grown into the mainstream platform for small-scale artists to promote their work and communicate with customers.
Reese2:
In some ways it's nice, because you really can be anywhere. I think before it was better if you were in bigger named shops and then people hear your name here and there. But then now you can be operating out of your apartment..
Vox3:
Internet culture has not only shifted the landscape of tattooing; it’s influencing the images and styles we’re drawn to as well.
Reese3:
The types of images that I wanted to draw had really intense, contrasty lighting, so like metal shimmering, a lot of like alien imagery too. Being Gen Z, too, a lot of people get Internet-themed tattoos. I feel like a lot of Y2K images are coming back, like people get Nokia phones and chain link fences.
Vox4:
Our increasingly virtual existence, coupled with the enforced physical isolation of the pandemic, has placed the whole world, but especially Gen Z students, in a deeply lonely time. My friend Fern, who Reese has tattooed twice, has noticed a theme of isolation across her five tattoos.
Fern1:
So, my first tattoo is of this tiny naked lady pulling a tiny wagon under an archway into the sunset. And then the third tattoo is just a UFO kind of flying over earth in this forest in the night with all these clouds around. I've definitely had moments of loneliness and alienation and I think those moments are often when I'm driven to get a tattoo.
And I guess in a more twisted way, it's kind of a cathartic form of pain. Like it's a very safe form of pain. Just the sensation and being in your body for that can sometimes feel good.
Vox5:
A positive tattoo experience must be grounded in mutual trust between the artist and customer, and this aspect of closeness and connection is one of Fern’s priorities.
Fern3:
I honestly start with the artist and not so much the tattoo. I tend to have really deep and interesting conversations with the tattoo artists I see. By the time I leave the session, I feel like I've made a new friend.
Vox6:
Many of us turn to tattoos as a strengthening force, a reminder of bodily autonomy when our external environment feels beyond our control.
April is a junior at the college Fern, Reese and I attended. She learned to tattoo largely by watching Reese tattoo on campus last winter. She now earns enough to cover supplies while she continues to develop her style. Permanence on the body is something she was drawn to.
April1:
I think it is really powerful to make art that is stuck forever. I play a lot of jazz music and free improvised things, and that's very temporary. You make something and it only lasts for a little bit, and then it’s gone, which is entirely different from tattooing. It’s about the time that you spent with the artist making it permanent.
Vox7:
I resonated with April. Being online feels ephemeral and fleeting. We’re flooded with so much information, but none of it lasts, and physical art forms like tattooing have a grounding appeal.
For April, it went beyond an artistic interest. Tattoos have been an important part of her transition.
April2:
Before I could get on hormones, I don’t know, I was kind of uncomfortable with my body, but I didn't have a way to change that and I wasn't comfortable expressing it that much yet. I got tattoos because that was a way of asserting some control over my body, because I didn't have a choice on the way my body looked, but I could add a tattoo that was like some mark of control and choosing the way that I look. And it has stuck with me.
Vox8:
From NYU Journalism, this is Gray Harrison.