sending and receiving through tattoos

In thinking about tattoos as a medium, one thought keeps crossing my mind: the asymmetric aspect - tattoos are a one-way communication. A tattoo communicates a message to the viewer.Among other things, it may be one of class, humor,  artistry, sexiness, status or power.

In prison, for example, tattoos can represent status and power along with gang affiliation. Much of that status and power come from tattoos representing crimes committed, prison time served and more. Tattoos can be so powerful in these confined circumstances that inmates will often rip the skin off another inmate to remove the tattoo.

The Tlingit, a native people of the Northwest United States, also use tattoos as a status and tribal marker. Members are tattooed with crests that signify lineage; these crests take the form of animals such as bears, wolves and eagles, as well as
minerals and constellations. They tie clan members to original myths and locations and only a member of the Bear Clan, for example, can tell stories about the bear:

the crest, and the right to use it in stories, sets the group apart from other groups while defining its position with respect to other groups. Therefore, the ownership of a crest, the right to use the emblem, was more valuable than the possession of a particular physical object, an heirloom or crest object itself. Because crests were so closely linked to a group’s identity, and because other clans validated one’s own right to a crest, wars occasionally resulted from attempts by competing clans to gain status over the other: to become the highest ranking owners of the crest. 

Just as tattoos for the Tlingit joined the physical and conceptual, tattoos could also communicate beyond the physical plain and into a more metaphysical or religious one. Among the first recorded tattoos, after all, are the ones found at Egyptian religious sites from the time of the pharoahs: women were inscribed with tattoos on their thighs, bellies and even breasts and were for a long time these tattoos were thought to denote prostitution. Recent analysis, however, reveals that the tattoos were instead meant to communicate with Bes, the god who protected women during pregnancy and delivery.

In thinking about the transcendental nature of tattoos, I've come to realize that they are more than a one-way form of communication. They can communicate communal power, as with prison gangs or native Americans, for example, where each tattoo speaks to its fellow tattoos to create a greater power for all. Similarly, pregnant Egyptian royalty in effect were speaking to their gods and in granting the women protection during their period of vulnerability, the gods were communicating back through those tattoos. Such is the power of the tattoo.