Excerpt
While we await that book, we have Margot Mifflin’s perceptive and moving “Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo,” first published in 1997 but reissued now in a heavily updated and resplendently illustrated third edition.
For most of history, tattooing has been a male preoccupation, either a one-fingered salute or an exercise in swagger. Think of Popeye and his twin anchors. Ms. Mifflin had the good idea to examine tattooing in the Western world from a female perspective. Her relatively slim book doesn’t provide a truly wide-angle view, but the insights she brings are insinuating and complex.
This new edition of “Bodies of Subversion” arrives at the crest of a wave. For the first time, according to a 2012 Harris Poll, American women are more likely to be tattooed than men. Some 23 percent of women have tattoos; 19 percent of men do. They’re no longer rebel emblems, Ms. Mifflin notes. They’re a mainstream fashion choice.
The article has a slide show of eleven mostly SFW pictures of tattooed women going back to the 1920s
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/201...OKMIFFLIN.html