Conspicuous on pop singer, basketball players, movie stars, and even children's dolls, tattoos and body piercings have never been more popular in America. Academic researcher Anne Velliquette observes, "Today's social climate welcomes body art to an extent that no other period in modern history can rival." She maintains that tattoos can provide meaning to persons bewildered by the fragmentation and chaos of postmodern society:

Your body is the one thing you have ultimate control over. Tattoos are a way of committing to something permanent and stable, of recording who and what you are right now. . . . The traditional stereotype is gone.

The stereotype Velliquette refers to has long relegated tattooing to marginal subgroups of society. Throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, tattoos were associated with crusty sailors, hard—muscled prison inmates, leather—clad motorcycle gangs, or freak—show exhibits. As late as the mid-twentieth...