US armed forces get hip to soldier ink
The long tradition of tattoos in the navy gets a millennial update
No caricature of a millennial is complete without a mention of tattoos. Inked skin seems nearly as ubiquitous as “Netflix and chill” among the under-35 crowd — and the US Navy is taking note. According to The New York Times, the Navy is relaxing its regulations regarding tattoos effective immediately. Sailors will now be able to have as many tattoos as they want below their elbows and knees. They’ll also be able to sport ink on their necks for the first time, so long as the tattoos are no longer than an inch in any direction.
It might come as a surprise that there are any Navy regulations concerning tattoos at all, considering the deep history of sailors and tattoos. The tradition goes back as far as Captain Cook’s crew arriving in the South Pacific and encountering the tattooed Maori inhabitants. They became so popular after that, that having tattoos pretty much became synonymous with being in the seagoing life.
The reason for the Navy’s sudden change is pretty simple: sometimes the people who will make the best sailors have tattoos that don’t fit within the old guidelines. As master chief petty officer of the Navy, Mike D. Stevens, told The Navy Times, “We just got to the point where we realized we needed to be honest with ourselves and put something in place that was going to reflect the realities of our country and the needs of our Navy. We need to make sure that we’re not missing any opportunities to recruit and train the best and brightest because of our policies.”
But to really understand what’s happening here, Stevens’ sentiment and these policy changes should be seen as part of a much more extensive effort by the Department of Defense to adjust to larger demographic and cultural changes. They should be seen as part of a larger push towards more inclusivity in the military.
That movement could be seen earlier this year in Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s successful fight to change the Marine tattoo policy for women. The regulation is ostensibly the same for both sexes, but since women wear a V‐neck cut undershirt and men wear a crewneck, any collarbone tattoos on men would be covered (and fall within regulation) while the same tattoo on a woman would be considered verboten.
In other words, it was implicit sexism against qualified recruits such as Kate Pimental, a Maine woman who raised the issue with Pingree. In a simple fix with wide‐ranging implications, the Marine Corps agreed to change their policy in order to allow women to wear crew‐cut undershirts.
The Pimental case was just another instance in a long and loaded history of women and tattoos. The first American woman to be tattooed was Olive Oatman, who had her lower lip tattooed against her will after being kidnapped by the Mojave tribe in 1858. But what began as a mark of captivity eventually came to be a symbolic feminist gesture during the Victorian era, marking secret art (almost always covered by clothes) as a way of taking ownership over their bodies. It was rumored that even Queen Victoria herself had the image of a Bengal tiger tattooed somewhere on her body. That same gesture of empowerment has carried over into contemporary times. As Margot Mifflin wrote in Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, “Tattoos appeal to contemporary women both as emblems of empowerment in an era of feminist gains and as badges of self-determination at a time when controversies about abortion rights, date rape, and sexual harassment have made them think hard about who controls their bodies — and why.”
Both the Navy and the Marine Corps changes in tattoo policy are illustrative of the Department of Defense coming to grips with changing values and cultural mores. In 2011, gay people were allowed to openly serve in the military. Starting in 2016, all combat jobs will be open to women. Sikh Army Captain Simratpal Singh recently won the right to wear his traditional turban. Each of these developments, including the tattoo policies, are related.
President Obama commented on women in combat saying, “As commander in chief, I know that this change, like others before it, will again make our military even stronger. Our armed forces will draw on an even wider pool of talent. Women who can meet the high standards required will have new opportunities to serve.”
So, this is all part of the DoD’s quest to cast the widest net possible in order to find right person for the job — who just might be a 22-year old with an anchor tattooed on her forearm.
