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Argumentative Essay About Tattoos

917 Words4 Pages
My Great Grandmother was born to a rapidly changing world, coming of age near the end of the depression and the beginning of the second world war. She was born in 1924 to devout Lutheran farmers in a small rural community in central Texas, leaving her isolated, temporarily, from the growing social-political changes happening around her. Her first exposure to tattoos was not until her mid-twenties, after moving to Fort Worth with my great grandfather for the opening of his law firm. There she formed a bias against tattoos, due to the clients my grandfather represented, believing them to belong only to malcontents and social pariahs. She has held fast in this belief throughout her life, and as a result was mortified upon discovering a tattoo on her great grandchild. Despite the explanations I gave for the tattoo, her discontent failed to be swayed. In her mind, there was no worth to a tattoo, nor meaning behind one. Her blind opposition to an art was a stark reminder of the differences between our two generations. The article Why Do People Get Tattoos written by Miliann Kang, explains the dynamic societal stigma previously held against tattoos and the background for the antiquated societal biases, magnifying the differences between modern society and the society of our forebears. The social construct against tattoos in the past was a means of extinguishing individualism and expression, by demonizing the art form. Women who had tattoos were viewed as lewd or adulteress, and
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