Women, Tattoos, and Religion an Exploration into Women’s Inner Life

Abstract

In this article, we study women’s tattoos from a lived religion perspective. We describe how women’s tattoos express their inner lives, the religious dynamics associated with tattooing, and how they negotiate them with others. The sample used came from surveys and interviews targeting tattooed women at a confessional college on the East Coast of the United States. Women appropriate a prevalent cultural practice like body art to express their religious and spiritual experiences and ideas. It can be a Catholic motto, a Hindu or Buddhist sign, or a reformulated goddess, but the point is that women use tattoos to express their inner lives. We found that women perceive workplace culture as a hostile space for them to express their inner lives through tattoos, while they are comfortable negotiating their tattoos with their religious traditions. And they do so in a Catholic university.

Keywords

• women
• tattoos
• lived religion
• secularization
• economy
• spirituality