Viewpoints—summer 2009 (your views on tattoos; and Mary Lyon)
Tattoos—Spirited Expression or Scourge of the Skin? Alumnae and parents sound off.
*What do you think? Add your two cents about body ink by using the "add comment" at the bottom of this page.
As a tattooed member of the class of 1957 (yes, '57!), I'm delighted to learn that I would find plenty of company on campus! After a trip to French Polynesia in 2004, I knew I wanted one; the question was, "where?" At my age, most of the favorite places (upper arms, belly, rump, thigh) are no longer "out there." Then I remembered one of the natives with a tattooed wedding ring. Aha! A toe ring! And that's what I have today.
Jan Laing Hetterly '57
Fairfield, Connecticut
For my eightieth birthday, I presented myself with a tattoo for no particular reason except that, as a recent denizen of hospitals, I wanted to be sure I was better identified than with a plastic wristband.
It is on my left wrist, easily hidden by a wide bracelet when my age group might be startled. It has two colors (the inks now are quite handsome): sky blue and coral; red for my Aries sun, blue for my Pisces moon sign. The shape is a flower with seven petals in blue for my biofeedback number, and a seven-pointed center in red. Nothing was more fun than designing it myself with the help of an adorable young man.
Mary Hoyt Blum '48
Cushing, Maine
I absolutely loved Hannah Clay Wareham's article, "Tattoos: Stories in Ink." It captured so many different and interesting stories, and I think it truly reflected the evolution of tattooing from a sailor's hobby to a legitimate form of self-expression for everyone from bikers to soccer moms.
My mother died one week before I started my junior year at Mount Holyoke, and on the two-year anniversary of her death, I got my first tattoo: a tribal sun with her initials in the middle. I chose a sun because while I was a kid who liked to lounge in the shade, my mother would always beg me to come sit in the sun with her, because she felt it could heal what ailed you. The tattoo marked both my graduation from Mount Holyoke, which was her final wish for me, and my decision to begin healing.
It's so refreshing to see other women marking important events in their lives with tattoos. I especially love that my classmate, Carrie Ruzicka, marked herself with a laurel chain to symbolize the strength that MHC gives to all of us.
Laura Draper '99
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tempting as it is to initiate a sermon on the theme "Act in haste; repent at leisure," I'll limit my observation to the fact that anyone who can manage to wait a little longer may be able to obtain a programmable tattoo. See, for example, www.gizmowatch. com/entry/tattoos-driven-bytechnology/ or www.design.philips.com/probes/ projects/tattoo/index.page.
Carl Witthoft, parent of an '08 alumna
Acton, Massachusetts
I was disappointed with the Alumnae Quarterly for publishing the article "Tattoos: Stories in Ink" (spring 2009). As a mother of three, I constantly am reminding my children not to draw on their skin with markers. As an internist, I have seen countless tattooed seniors, many of whom regret putting indelible pictures and words on their skin (a little more serious than a five year-old wielding a Sharpie). In fact, having a tattoo does more than permanently deface the body; it increases the risk of blood-borne diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV.
I was planning on giving this issue of the Q to a prospective student, but after reading this article I changed my mind, not sure of the message that I would be sending to a rising senior in high school. We should be teaching our youth to respect their body, not deface it.
What next Q, the art of body piercing?
Katie Doty Romp, M.D. '91
Birmingham, Alabama
This week started with a battle with my eighteenyear- old high school senior, who already has the Chinese characters for "One's responsibility is heavy and the journey is long" tattooed on his side. Thursday brings his next tattoo against my wishes. Then again, he's just earned a combination of academic and soccer scholarships that will pay for his entire tuition next year. His responsibility will be heavy.
Seeing young women at MHC explain their decisions made me feel a tad bit better.
Melissa R. Vance '84
Moorestown, New Jersey
Misunderstanding Mary Lyon
James E. Hartley is absolutely right that we miss the mark when we try to make Mary Lyon into who we want her to be rather than taking her "on her own terms," but just as it is important not to shoehorn Lyon into a particular pigeonhole of our own liking, it is also important not to impoverish "her own terms," which is precisely what the "Closer Look" feature in the spring 2009 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly does.
The piece sets up a false dichotomy between a protofeminist pioneer of women's education beloved by the NOW set and a devout woman committed primarily to "the centrality of religion" rather than "maintaining academic standards," as Hartley puts it. In so doing, the piece deeply misunderstands the religious revival that gave Lyon her spiritual bearings, and makes Lyon into a quaint antique rather than someone who still matters.
Mary Lyon's religious views were shaped by the Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that insisted on the notion of perfectibility, which in New England (where Lyon experienced the movement) had profound social implications. Perfectibility was the idea that, since human beings are created in the image of God and God is perfect, human beings have the potential to become perfect by removing the impediments between themselves and the perfection of God, which is to say, sin. While achieving perfection was unlikely in a human lifespan, human beings should nonetheless strive for it in a lifelong process characterized by a personal relationship with God and a commitment to duty, which consisted in part of bringing God's love to bear on need in the world. In New England, perfectibility was not simply an individual idea, but also a social one. Just as individuals should strive to remove the impediments separating them from God, churches, neighborhoods, communities, towns, states, and nations could, too, in an effort to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.
That notion was the spark behind the various reform movements that swept the northern United States in the antebellum era, and of which Mary Lyon's seminary for women was a part. She absolutely meant it when she wrote that the point of educating women was to equip them to take part "in the great work of renovating the world." To assert that Lyon would "be appalled" by Mount Holyoke today because of the lack of "intense religious feeling," is to miss Lyon's point about the purpose of "intense religious feeling." Such feeling was not separable from matters of doctrine and worship for her, but neither did it end with such matters. In fact if by intense religious feeling, we mean primarily personal worship, Lyon probably would have dismissed that idea as narrow and selfish. The point was to serve the world, to bring God's love where it was needed, to be, in essence, a missionary to the world whether one served in the foreign missions or within a mile of one's birthplace.
If we understand Lyon's understanding of the purpose of religion and of the college on terms that more closely match her own, then the picture of today's Mount Holyoke changes a little. Chapel is not required any more, but by turning to three random pages in the very issue of the Quarterly featuring Hartley's new book, I note mini-biographies of graduating seniors who plan to work for nonprofits advocating for environmental conservation and the rights of indigenous peoples, a profile of a professor working to distribute films of cultural reclamation to schoolchildren in Senegal, and a feature on alumnae who work in public health in Uganda, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Ethiopia. It seems to me that the college is still engaged in "the great work of renovating the world." It slights Mary Lyon and it slights religion to suggest that such work does not descend directly from Lyon, or that she would not be able to see those similarities herself.
Chandra Miller Manning '93
Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University
Washington, DC
