Meet the people and dig on the scene! Join Dustin in giving someone a tattoo (of a bumblebee riding a unicycle, no less) and glimpse the stuff most relevant to the book’s major concern: the intersection of people, bodies, and money—as experienced by tattooers.

Sociologically speaking, this chapter explores tattooing from a Goffmanian perspective, exploring “regions” of “frontstage” and “backstage” work to produce “glamour” by tattooers—who, I suggest, perform an intimate form of “body labor.” The chapter frames the body as a physical and cultural phenomenon and highlights the masculinizing character of tattoo-shop experience. It suggests tattooing is cooperative and insists tattooers are socialized agents interacting with conventions, including those related to “sensory socialization,” emotions, and emotional labor. Introduces main characters and their struggles while instituting the book’s through-line arguments and metaphors.

Explore the tattoo apprenticeship and experience the nerve-wrecking process of doing a very first tattoo. Join a fascinating and rare occupational world, where schools are shunned and informal, even-spiritual practices reign.

Sociologically, the chapter employs Durkheim’s sociology of religion to describe apprenticeship entry as sacred ritual and shows the intimate character of tattoo/body labor. It explains the need for sensory socialization among tattooers, who must embody tattooing’s demands, including those of sanitization and cross-contamination prevention. It also introduces my entry into the shop and uses “rapport” to describe affinity among people with shared social history, including in areas of gender, race, and class. It details Matt’s apprenticeship program and situates it within in a broader, occupational struggle over apprenticeship ideals while illustrating the power of these ideals through an example of contention—when Matt nearly opened a “tattoo school” and broke conventions.

Sit in a bath of your nerves while trying to steady the hand enough to avoid making permanent mistakes on the bodies of strangers. Talk with other tattooers who open up about their fears, and even hear from some clients who love their imperfect tattoos, sometimes more than their great ones.

Sociologically, this chapter employs the concept “feeling rules” to illustrate the emotional quality of tattoo labor and to emphasize the “emotional labor” involved. It further describes the role of aesthetics in the production of masculinity and frames tattooing as a site to understand/trouble notions of “permanence” and time related to bodies. It also distinguishes tattooing from other forms of body labor on the basis of considerations surrounding time and breaks the time associated with a tattoo into two parts—the object and the process—while theorizing their relationship and impact on tattooer and client. It questions the role of fear and argues it serves as a signal for understanding and alignment with site-specific conventions of feeling and practice.

Join along and feel what it feels like to cause people pain, and to try your best to separate the physical body from its more emotional, cultural, and even moral, qualities. Join tattooers as they labor to turn their skill into money, often at the expense of their own bodily health.

Sociologically, the chapter suggests a strong need for “bodily awareness” in tattooing, both of the self and of others, while forwarding the claim that tattooers learn to approach the body as an object of technical labor over time. It articulates the necessity to embody conventions of practice while showing how repetitive body labor can damage the body. It also frames embodiment as “bodily capital” and illustrates the emotional demand of tattoo labor through a focus on client talk about any tattoo’s meaning. The chapter shows the dual quality of bodies (physical/cultural) and the relationship between the body and personhood by exploring a tension between bodily objectification and personal recognition. It also details how tattooers understand and manage the pain they cause, arguing they routinize the experience.

Learn how to touch like a pro. which involves offering a legible sense of confidence through a firm, stable handling of the body. This requires a trek through the #metoo movement in tattooing, wherein those who sexualize clients are kicked out. And did you know that “pampering” has its roots in food cramming?

Sociologically, this chapter situates touch in tattooing as a sociological concern. It employs the “touching rules” concept, explores socialization required for proper touch, and details the cultural norms of appropriate touch with the concept “touching right.” It also compares tattooers to surgeons to illustrate the aesthetic influence on appropriate—i.e., nonsexualized—touch. It uses “affective centrality” to describe tattoo spaces and highlights cases wherein tattooers touched wrong to illustrate the porous boundaries between everyday life and tattoo worlds. It explores the “Me Too” movement among tattooers and frames appropriate touch in tattooing as “nonpampering,” situating this in a history of pampering labor and its gendered qualities. The chapter also iIntroduces the idea of “exhibition rules” in tattoo shops to convey the social expectations of nude bodily display.

Join tattooers as they deal with their medium—skin. You’ll notice skin’s physical characteristics are nearly inseparable from their more cultural meaning, and especially when it comes to tone (and race). We follow tattooers as they post on Instagram, and debate the role of race in their marketing. You’ll also ride alongside tattooers as they do their best to become “tone-conscious.”

Sociologically, the chapter describes skin as a physical and cultural phenomenon. Skin is cultural in the sense that people ascribe meaning to its physical characteristics. The chapter forwards tattooing as a practice that helps reveal the social quality of bodies and the skin’s coloration in particular. It describes race as an outcome of a historical process of scientific racism and situates tattooers as people who become “tone-conscious” through their work—yet another aspect of their sensory socialization. It also explores the impact of 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement on tattooing and explains a light-skin preference among some tattooers as newly troublesome in light of heightened public discourse. It situates technology as an agent of racial ideology, with Instagram use among tattooers as a focus.

Feel the terror of doing the very worst thing—misspell a tattoo. Join tattooers as they prepare for the experience of making mistakes, and consider the way it may impact their lives. Engage in conversation about the social aspects of our inner lives.

Sociologically, the chapter explores the experience of making mistakes in tattooing, with emphasis on the connection between our understanding of the body, life course, permanence, work, and emotion. It emphasizes the importance of impression management among tattooers and highlights the role of perceived permanence in distinguishing tattooing from other forms of body labor. It also forwards a social approach to the conscience, drawing from theories of social interaction, including Erving Goffman, George H. Mead, W. E. B. Du Bois, and pragmatist philosopher William James. It offers a riveting narrative of the pain derived from messing up someone’s body at work.

Follow tattooers as they debate whether or not to do tattoos they don’t fully agree with. I mean, would you give someone a tattoo on their face? What if they were young?Does the fact that they want it, are paying you to do it, and seem to have thought it over change the answer? Are tattooers ever required to give someone a tattoo?

Sociologically, the chapter explores the moral side of tattoo labor, specifically the social production of right and wrong in relation to giving people tattoos, especially those that will likely impact the client in a negative way. It forwards an economic analysis of moral decision-making at work, one that connects price, autonomy, care, and hierarchy to the notion of choice. It also explains why tattooers are unlikely to be profit-maximizing in their labor and frames this as an “ethic of refusal.” It emphasizes that tattooers follow conventions to aid their moral decisions and highlights the potential risk of refusing to do certain tattoos, a risk amplified by broader arrangements of power in the areas of race and gender.

Wind down with the crew and consider the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of tattooers. Think about how ethnographers approach their work, and how leaving “the field” is tough when that field is your own backyard. What if “the field” is actually your own body?

Sociologically, the chapter reestablishes the book’s primary arguments, descriptions, and approaches to theory through a discussion of Matt and his enduring love for tattooing. It includes an account of how COVID-19 impacted tattoo worlds, with emphasis on the precarity of relying on carnal interaction for income. It also adds a note about ethnography and specifically the notion of “the field.” It historicizes the field and suggests embodied ethnographies have a unique field—the body. The chapter notes how tattooing can harm the body over time and how, given that tattooing’s demands can become routinized in bodily experience, a tattooer/researcher who leaves the field might carry it with them.

Join a conversation about the process of research and writing, paying special attention to what it means to inscribe the lives of other people on the page.

Sociologically, this appendix explains the research process with emphasis on the profound impact direct participation in tattooing had on the book’s focus and publication. It draws on research about ethics and writing to describe the risk that we open people up to by writing about their lives. It also explores writing as clarifying and outlines a more academic take on methodology, particularly Wacquant’s “sociology of flesh and blood.” It explains the risks of doing embodied research—of tattooing people for research—and details the participants, data, and analysis used to produce the narrative.