Popular Culture- Tattoo

Popular Culture: Tattoos

A tattoo is a type of modification made in the body, made by inserting inerasable ink into the outer layer of the skin for the pigment change. In the modern age, the use of tattoos is very common especially in the youngsters. However, in the western culture it is common in adults as well. Tattoos can be image of anything, either an alphabet, an animal, name of the loved ones. It has been like a fashion these days inking their body parts as much as they can. Piercing tattoo is one of the common popular cultures in today’s world and all of the theories of popular belief, myths and icons seem to apply the tattoo piercing.

There is a popular belief about piercing tattoo that when a tattoo is done on a human body, the one with the tattoo is brave enough and is courageous within him. Besides, some people make tattoo on them because they are in love. Many couple ink themselves with same kind of tattoos on their body parts, or pierces each other’s name thinking their love would last forever. This usually happens at the young age when they are deeply in the romantic feeling of love. Besides there is a popular belief about tattoo that tattoo helps you to memorize certain incidents that took place at certain phase of time. This one is the most common of the popular belief and also one of the major reasons behind doing tattoo. With all these different popular belief regarding tattoo, the percentage of tattoo users has raised rapidly these days in almost all corners of the world.

Talking about the myths of tattoo, there is a common myth that that society will look down upon you if you have one. Those who have revealing tattoos, people may have bad impression on them as punks, gangsters type or even sometimes vulgar as well. Likewise, there is another myth regarding tattoo that getting a tattoo is quite painful and when you get the one, you will regret later on. This happens in most of the cases. When people regret of having a tattoo some may even modify the existing one which would even destroy the previous art as well.

Talking about the icons for tattoo, they can be Kat Von D who runs the show called LA Ink in TLC. Her show is very popular and lots of people get influenced by her and do tattoos on their body. Besides, there is another show for tattoos called Miami Ink which is also as famous as the previous one. Moreover, youngsters gets influenced looking at the wrestlers as well as they have great looking tattoo made on their body especially in the chest and arms area. These icons have a great impact on the followers and just by looking at them and by following them, the percentage of tattoo followers have raised rapidly these days.

 After applying such theories to the art of tattoo piercing, it sounds as if myths are often linked with the negative but what we need to understand is that these myths are not always false. As stated above, the common myth that tattoo can be painful cannot be true always. It relies on which body part you make the tattoo. If it’s in the fleshy areas then the case may be wrong but if the area is a bit bony then they can be painful as well. Similarly sometimes even popular belief tends to be negative as well. Some examples of popular belief turning out to have a negative impact can be such as people who have tattoo; they are strong with in themselves and are brave enough. This is not the case. Many people pierce tattoo not because they are brave and they do at their will but it may be the force from their peer group or the girlfriend/ boyfriend for the sake of love only.

References

Snippets Short Answer. (n.d.). What are some myths about tattoos? Retrieved May 26, 2012, from http://snippets.com/what-are-some-myths-about-tattoos.htm

TLC. (n.d.). Miami’s Ink. Retrieved May 26, 2012, from http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/miami-ink 

Icon Analysis

For me icons could be anything be it a product, or some personnel or cartoon characters which has influenced us in some sort of way directly or indirectly. As far as my view is concerned I have listed these three personnel as my icons who have had a great impact on my life. The 3 icons that I would like to discuss are Jon Bon Jovi, Mark Zuckerberg and the band System of a down.

Firstly, I would like to take Jon Bon Jovi as a popular culture icon because of the success he had achieved in the field of music industry. Bon Jovi has his first album released in 1984 and till then he had 11 albums released as a band and two solo albums on his own. Last year he was named as the second richest band in earnings. The amazing fact that I would like to share about Bon Jovi is that he had been able to manage himself and his band in both appearance and the songs writing to keep going with the changing time.   As a solo artist, he has received lots of awards for his work, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for his solo hit, "Blaze of Glory".  At this age also, he remains a heart throb for a large population of girls including adult women. The main reason behind choosing him as an icon is that his music reminds me of my teen age and hold back all of those memories together.  I liked his choice of music in songs. The song “Always” is one of the best songs of Bon Jovi that I really liked a lot. He gave a major contribution to the rock music by introducing a new and fresh approach which was really in a desperate need at that time. I really like Bon Jovi and he had a big influence on my life in the field of music. 

The second personality that I would like to choose as my icon would be Mark Zuckerberg. He launched a social networking site “Facebook” in 2004 along with his 3 other friends while studying at Harvard University. With his remarkable achievement in the field of social networking he has become the youngest billionaire with more than $19 billion of wealth. He is now on the list of world’s top 30 richest people on earth as well. Facebook is an international social networking service which allows everyone in the globe to connect with each other by posting photos and videos, updating status, sharing on walls, commenting and many more. It is because of Zuckerberg’s invention that we are able to be in touch with our friends and family far away from us living in different corners of the world. I have lots of my family members living in foreign countries like America, Australia, England and it would have been really much difficult for me if I had to communicate with them daily if there was not Facebook in my life. With the help of this, I am able to know what’s going on in their life, what are they doing and other stuffs related to them. It is all because of the contribution my Mark and so he will always be one of the favorite icons for me who has influenced my life a lot.  

Lastly I would like to list the band System of a Down as my 3^rd icon. System of down is a rock band from Southern California, formed in 1994 consisting of Serj Tankian in lead vocals, keyboards, rhythm guitar, Daron Malakian in guitar and vocals, Shavo Odadjian in bass, background vocals and John Dolmayan in drums. The band has been nominated for 4 Grammy Awards, and won the award in 2006 for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "B.Y.O.B.". I chose this band as my icon because I really liked the choice of their lyrics of their song which are often oblique and discuss the topics such as the use of drugs, politics, and war on terrorism which are the major issues that the world we are living on is going through these days. Their song provides a kind of public awareness regarding those stuffs. Just listening to their song, sometimes I get a feeling within me that I should do something for my country. Their song “Boom” is one of my favorite song which talks about the war and its effects. Besides, it has been my icon because I really like Hard Rock genre of song and such song give me a kind of refreshment when I am tired or stressed out.

Popular Culture

Popular Culture simply refers to all those things that are shared or favored by a large number of people living in a society. It reflects the ideas, behaviors, artifacts, beliefs and values which are shared by most of the people.

For me, popular culture is the way most segments of our society live and the life style they follow. It can be anything from the television shows they watch, music they listen to, the way they dress, the hair style they follow, the gadgets they use, or the food habit they have. It helps to live our life in a comfortable way and move along with the society we are living in.

By understanding popular culture, not only it helps us to get along with our society but it’s even more important in the field of business environment. Business mostly deals with what are the needs and wants of the people, what type of life style and trends they are following. A business can only get success if it’s able to catch up with the current trends and for this, understanding popular culture is very important.  

For me, understanding popular culture is important because by understanding popular culture, I will be able to know what the choices of people are. At present, being a student I like to explore new things, study and focus on what should I do to get success. For this, popular culture helps me a lot. In the present context of Nepal, in the educational field, Bachelor in Business Administration can be taken as the popular culture. Lots of student are on the same field and there are many banking and financial institutions also which can offer a good job and recruitment. Summing up, it has got a good scope over here. That is why I am also studying the same faculty hoping that I can gain a lot of knowledge and experience that is required to be a successful entrepreneur which has always been my only dream.

Likewise, understanding popular culture is also important for my future career. For me, as I have already mentioned I would like to start a business on my own and get successful in it. When I complete my graduation I am thinking of opening a restaurant and sports bar. For this, I need to understand the choices of people.  I need to know what kind of food people prefer in restaurants. For instance, in Nepal momo, chowmein, pizza, hard drinks can be taken as a popular culture in food habits. Besides, I need to know whether people like watching games like football, cricket in the sports bar or not. It’s a popular culture in European countries, and if the case is same here in Nepal that can be a good choice for me to start a business.

As far as I am concerned, I would like to cite an example of iPhone as a popular culture artifact which is quite far away from the topic that I have discussed above i.e. from the restaurant business.  IPhone can be taken as a popular culture artifact because these days it’s very common among all of the countries. Even in the 3^rd world countries as Nepal also, it has gained so much of popularity that about 3 out of 10 people use iPhone in the urban city like Kathmandu.  Because of its huge popularity, Apple Inc. is updating the product from time to time in order to catch up with the demand. With lots of free applications and feature, one can carry out almost everything with the help of it. Since the introduction of IPhone, there really is not much need of other products such as computer, camera, phone, and internet. It has got almost all of those and even a price seems a bit high especially in the poor countries like ours but it is worth it. Even though I do not have an iPhone but I wish I had one.