Tatoos

This is from Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson. (Thanks to Paul Adams for this.)

The cultural logic, then, of tattoos depends upon the body being a canvas for our self-expression, a lump of clay that we style in ways that express the hidden core of who we are. Tattoos are an aesthetic technique—the program of control and domination—melded with a contrarian aesthetic and applied to our bodies. The practice of tattooing treats the body not as our place of personal presence in the world, but as an object for our self-construction. (p. 113).