Al Martinez: Old Glory lives on in our hearts and our breast

I was down at Sam's getting a haircut the other day when I spotted Doris, the tattooed lady. She was heavier than when I saw her at a party several years ago where she entertained the guests by exposing herself enough to reveal the image of an American flag just over her right breast. Or maybe it was her left breast, I can't remember.

She was the wife of a television producer, and all you had to do after she'd had a glass of wine or so was to say, "Show us your tattoo, Doris!" and down or up or open came her blouse to display Old Glory. Sometimes she would wiggle in such a way as to simulate the flag waving in an autumn breeze.

I thought it was fitting that I mention her on Memorial Day when we are thinking patriotic thoughts, and Doris was among the first women I knew to show her colors. When I saw her in front of Sam's I said hello, but she didn't recognize me so I didn't ask if she still had the flag tattooed on her bosom. She was wearing a sweater and I couldn't tell.

At one time tattoos were confined to sailors who got drunk in Shanghai and had their bodies imprinted with likenesses of snakes, dragons, ships at sea or the names of women across their chests, although the more family-minded simply had "mom" on their upper arms.

I used to know a biker named Sullivan who had a tattoo shop off Sherman Way in the days when only men had tattoos. He lived in a back room with a python in a glass cage. One day a guy came in with his girlfriend,

studied some drawings on the wall, turned to Sullivan and said, "How much for a butterfly on her ass?" I didn't stick around to see if Sullivan actually did draw a butterfly on her behind, but I still consider it a seminal moment in the feminist movement.

It is different today. Doris, the Butterfly Lady and others like them led a new wave of women who found body art an appealing assertion of their independence. They set out to prove they could be just as stupid as men by adorning themselves with neat little chains around their ankles or garish psychedelic images here and there on their backs or around their belly buttons.

We owe all of this to Otzi the Ice Man, a relic of the Bronze Age whose 5,000-year-old tattooed body was discovered frozen in the mountains between Austria and Italy. He had 57 tattoos on his legs and across his stomach. They consisted mostly of straight lines because those were the days before Andy Warhol, and mankind didn't know much about pop art.

I hope this adds to your education regarding a popular form of body disfigurement rooted in antiquity. I'm sure the march of feminine equality will find women tattooing themselves all around their erogenous zones, but I'm not going to be the one to ask to see them.

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Al Martinez writes a column on Mondays and Fridays.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/columnists/ci_18167842?source=rss

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