Chinese Tattoos and the Black Athlete

Chinese Tattoos and the Black Athlete

Chinese Tattoos and the Black Athlete

Once the purview of sailors, bikers, and loose women tattoos have become the hippest cachet of a generation under forty. So much so, it's the rare individual, male or female, that doesn't own one. The style of tattoos range from the animate to the inanimate pictorial and they all have something to say about the person on whom they appear.

Some make a statement of hatred, a la skinheads or the Aryan brotherhood, some boast of self-importance as in Shaquille O'Neal's superman tat, some make obscene assertions of prior criminal activity, such as, a spider-web tat on the elbow implicit of murder, and others simply express the beauty of a butterfly. Fairly recently, however, there has been a trend to tattoo oneself with Chinese characters.

It is unclear when and how this came to be, but Madison Avenue would envy the Ad campaign unleashed by individual sports professionals--specifically the Black ball player, in promoting such tattooing. Instead of the obligatory gold chain, tooth, or pendant, now, for all to see like a lit-up neon billboard--this seems to be the latest craze. Adorned coat of arms these players, particularly basketball players with their sleeveless jerseys, are able to display an array of tattoos from the leg to the neck. Will these be the new enigmatic-gang signs that aren't readily decipherablethus their attraction? Not to worry, that would require some knowledge of the language. Not as scary as it first soundedhmm.

Some of the "Hall of Fame Chinese Character luminaries" vary from Marcus Camby, who claims to be the originator of the Chinese tattooing trend in the NBA, to Allen Iverson and Larry Hughes, who share similar characters meaning Loyalty , to Shawn Marion's three characters meant to mean "The Matrix" but it really doesn't, to Marquis Daniels totally indecipherable sysmbols on his left inner-forearm. The danger with such forays into a pictorial writing system, so permanently inked onto ones body, is that the Characters may be wrong, and worse--nonsensical! You are at the mercy of the Tattoo artist's knowledge of the language to ensure the accuracy of the character and that should be disconcerting.

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