“The most vulgar and barbarous habit the eccentric mind of fashion ever invented.” Thank you, 19th-century arbiter of social taste Ward McAllister.
With the dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren on the bandwagon, it’s hard to see tattooed women as transgressive today. In some communities, they never were: tattooing practices were part of puberty rituals and used for therapeutic purposes, to commemorate milestones and to recognise kin in the afterlife.
