The goal of this dissertation was to study women's tattooing in a phenomenological way, and to go in-depth into a 'handful' of cases with the purpose of discussing tattooed women's daily lives and experiences. The purpose of this study is to contribute a work to the scholarly literature about women's tattooing. Open-ended conversational interviews and feminist phenomenological methods together shed light on tattooed women's everyday experiences and the connection between gendered attitudes about women's bodies and tattoos and motivations for tattoo attainment and/or tattoo removal.
The first findings chapter of this dissertation covers women's tattoos, self, and identity by focusing on why the participants in my study chose to become tattooed, where and why they placed their first tattoo, and their identification with others with tattoos. Findings show that women may become tattooed because their tattoos represent some form of affiliation to other individuals or association with memories. They may also decide to place their tattoos in bodily locations that they enjoy and want to decorate, locations that they do not particularly enjoy and want to beautify, or places in which the tattoo design "looks good". Some women are also more apt to identify with others with tattoos than those without them. In Chapter 6 of this dissertation I describe the connections between women's tattoos and the following: (1) societal beauty norms, (2) personal or individual beauty, and (3) femininity. Findings show that although women tend to think that tattooing goes against current societal beauty norms and ideas of femininity, many women feel that their tattoos make them more beautiful. The final findings chapter of this dissertation focuses on participants' regrets (or lackthereof) with regard to tattoos. Although more than half of the women in my sample cited no regrets about their tattoos, other participants shed light on gendered reasons for why women might experience regret and/or opt to undergo tattoo removal. Overall, this dissertation offers important insights into the social experiences of extensively-tattooed women, and contributes to a more sociological and gender-specific glimpse into women's lives and tattooing experiences.
