Tattoo Culture

Tattoos have long been a part of human history. Permanent, they were once used to represent a tribe or group of sorts. Nowadays, tattoos are a form of art. Either way, the wearer of any kind of ink in any form does one thing for sure: express oneself. Many people, ranging from kids to adults, find a voice through tattoos. Throughout the past decade, tattoos have become much more socially acceptable.

If anyone went back to the nineties, tattoo was basically taboo. If you had one, maybe you were part of a gang or vandalized public property. Perhaps you were plotting to steal a tub of Tollhouse cookie dough from the corner store that does not charge tax. If you had a tattoo, you were likely an adolescent ruffian. One did not simply go home and tell their mother how they got the Mona Lisa tattooed onto their biceps. These supposed mere scrawls on your skin were a desecration to the status quo.

For thousands of years, tattoos were a norm, simply a component of one’s culture. They tended to symbolize various rites of passage. In a tribe in Papua New Guinea, a new tattoo was given each year as you get older. When a girl came to be of marrying age, she received a v-shaped tattoo around her collar bone. Some tattoos were given to warriors as a symbol of bravery.

What happened between so long ago and the last century? How did it become unacceptable to have a tattoo? In the twentieth century, people became very conservative. Walking around with art on your body was silly and frivolous. Criminals sent to jail were often already tattooed. Common tattoos were the teardrop and varying numbers of dots. These were all symbols of involvement in gangs. People with two dots between their index and thumb had been convicted of crime and finished their sentence.  

Tattoos today are defining, unless you happen to have a ton of money and an undying wish to undergo tattoo removal surgery. Then they do not last long. But tattoos have come a long way in the past ten years, with advances not just in procedures, but in social acceptance. You can get your grandmother’s name tattooed somewhere and not be called out for it. There are employers who request tattoos not to be visible, but this is mere, easy to follow, protocol in the workplace.

What a lot of people are able to do is draw what they want a tattoo artist to draw onto them. This makes tattoos pretty popular around the more artsy populations. They can draw up something simple or utterly complicated that they can then carry on their bodies forever. Tattoos are also used to represent important parts of someone’s life, relating to tribes and their tattoos for rites of passage. For example, names of passed family members or a symbol representing something important to you. Most importantly, tattoos are an ultimate art of expression. One tattoo can be worth a thousand words, many stories, and one person’s life-changing event.

The New Feminism

Having gained momentum with the iconic Rosie the Riveter at the head, feminism has made great strides throughout the past century. Women have garnered the right to vote, middle and upper class women began to join the working world, and women as a whole have pretty much made a stand of independence. Recently, there have been new feminist ideas, the head runners of these being Marie-Anne Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg.

New feminist idea number one: Slaughter believes women should be able to basically design their work schedule. In most workplaces, you are given a work schedule and expected to follow it. That makes sense, right? However, when you are raising a family and you are attempting to fully pursue a career, that’s the same as working two full time jobs. Slaughter says the woman “can’t have it all” in the sense that having a career and a family do not mix.

Feminist idea number two: Sandberg takes on a different stance. She argues (not directly toward Slaughter) that there is such thing as a balance between family and career. There is no need to choose just one. She believes that employers can enable employees, women or men, to be able to keep up with their family and still achieve career goals. They could do this by allowing more schedule flexibility in more jobs.

Let’s take a moment here. Feminism was originally conceived to provide equal rights to work and get an education for women specifically. Since then it has spread to various aspects of culture, and feminist movements are taking place in developing countries. Now we have two women, hardcore feminists by the looks of it, and two different approaches to the work-life balance. From the beginnings of feminism, our country has made advances. We are not so concerned about women getting an education or being able to have a job anymore. We are now looking into how women can have a job and a family.

It really all boils down to choice. Some people, like Slaughter, believe there is an either/or choice between home and work. Others, like Sandberg, believe there is such thing as a balance. I am going to just point out that Sandberg makes an interesting move with her idea of having jobs become more flexible. We do live in an extremely technological world where this is a very possible endeavor. It would be nice to further take advantage of the technology available to us.

We are witnessing feminism branching out to newer areas, which could for some of us be completely terrifying or purely of interest. Feminism can be scary, but it is interesting to see that it is something that does not sit. It is constantly growing and reaching out. Sandberg and Slaughter bring up the point that does not seem to be addressed very well: the work-home balance. It is something that needs to be looked at more. It is a choice the employee has to make, whether to pursue ambition and help run a family or to choose one or the other. But I don’t think this new idea will die out for a while.

Movie Review: Warm Bodies

You are in the dark theatre and the screen begins to fill with the side of someone’s face. Dialogue begins, “What am I doing with my life?” The dialogue continues in a sort of monotone but engaging tone. We see a close up of a big blue eye, and really white skin. The dialogue continues in the voice of the person we see on screen. His eyes shift and he talks about getting out more and having better posture. People would respect him more if he had better posture. He asks himself, “Why can’t I connect with people?” The camera zooms out and we see him walking, or rather, trudging along in an airport. “Oh right, I’m dead.” The dialogue continues, and the watcher can’t help but chuckle.

This is the opening to perhaps one of the best movies I have seen, Warm Bodies. It is a romantic tale of a zombie falling in love with a living girl, a new twist on the zombie apocalypse. We have Nicholas Hoult cast as R (the main character, or zombie) and Teresa Palmer as Julie, the living girl. The film was based off of Isaac Marion’s novel by the same name.

What I really like about the film was the way it explored humanity. What exactly makes us human? We have R, a zombie who wants so much to be alive again, to connect with other people. He has this conscience, even though society has deemed him and all other zombies as mere ‘corpses’, incapable to think for himself. He hungers for human flesh, but every time he feeds, he knows what he’s doing is wrong. One day, he and a pack of other zombies find some humans. Among this group is Julie, whom R is attracted to. 

Another aspect of the movie I enjoyed was the romantic twist and Shakespearean influences in the plot. A zombie being friends with a human is not exactly the status quo. In the Walking Dead, it tends to be either you blast the head off the zombie or they get to eat you. In Shaun of the Dead, it is pretty much the same shindig. In Warm Bodies, R saves Julie and keeps her alive. That is the complete reverse of how zombies are supposed to be. R is caring and thinks and wants to be alive. That is not your run of the mill living dead.

As for Shakespeare being present, we can start with the whole star-crossed lovers bit. R and Julie live in the post-apocalyptic society where survival means humans kill zombies. Humans do not love zombies. Zombies do not care about humans. Yet here we have a zombie and a living girl in quite the unfortunate predicament of liking each other but having society shun their being together. Then we have a balcony scene. This was the point where I finally realized that R was Romeo and Julie was Juliet. Insert ‘I see what you did there’ meme.

All in all, Warm Bodies was a fantastic movie. You will be left with a severe case of the feels and perhaps not be able to deal with how amazing the film you just witnessed was. It is comedic, romantic, and had zombies. I give the movie a five out of five, simply because I’m still trying to comprehend the beauty of what I beheld in the theatre.

Public Transportation: The RIPTA

We’ve all taken some form of public transportation at some point in our lives. Whether it was taking the yellow bus to and from school or hopping on the train to get to a city, you’ve been on some mode of public transportation. It always starts out fun. Then you get used to it or begin encountering people who smell like Doritos, and it all begins to spiral into the dark abyss.

I remember when I first started taking the RIPTA (Rhode Island’s bus system). It was last year in February when I had to take a bus from Lincoln all the way down to Providence where my new school was. I was all excited with my monthly pass I got through school. I admit, despite it taking nearly an hour to get to school and an hour back, I really enjoyed it. Then again this could be because when I lived in Europe, it was the best way to get anywhere.  New things also have a knack for being shiny and intriguing.

Normally, just to get to my school, which is a mere half hour away, I had to go through four transports. First, I had to be dropped off at the Lincoln Mall. Then I had to take the 54 to Kennedy Plaza (in downtown Providence). Next I had to wait for the 1 to take me down Eddy Street, and lastly I walk down two blocks to arrive at my destination. It was a bit wearying.

About half the bus smells like some form of molding cheese, and there’s so much waiting. The buses are usually full, meaning the buses don’t have certain routes often enough. This is due to the bus system being strained far too much. Having a bus that has to serve an entire state, even one as small as Rhode Island, is near impossible. It’s like pouring baking soda into vinegar and expecting the mixture not to explode eventually. Public transport barely has enough money to run.

It gets better. Because of recent budget cuts, twenty percent of RIPTA bus stops will be eliminated. They say this will provide better and faster service. Come on! This is not okay. I don’t take the bus anymore, but honestly. One does not simply take away money from an already faltering service. No. Bad.

I would like to think there is an easy solution, but either way, public transport as it is won’t last. We could condense the RIPTA to just the city, but then there are other transportation issues. How will someone go from, say, Bryant to Providence? Then typically this is where I would start ranting on about how we should be more like Europe. We should have clusters of where people are rather than spread out haphazardly across a bunch of land.

I really do not like the public bus. Every time I take it, I try to picture Europe where the system is run efficiently. I imagine myself comfortable, not squished on a bench between suspicious humans. I like to think I’m on a mini adventure, maybe going to meet Gandalf, not heading to another stop and more waiting. All in all, either the RIPTA needs to seriously be looked into by whoever makes the budget, or just dissipate into the air.