There is also a difference in getting visible art inked once you are established…and doing it before you start in your career. Depending on the career of course. But someone who has a respected track record of production might be able to do something and still find professional success that someone who has no or little reputation in the industry can’t.
I wonder how often the opposite scenario of this thread occurs. A person with a facial tattoo owns a business, and is interviewing some potential employees. If one of the applicants for the job is the type of “conservative”/“mainstream” person who would never hire an employee with a facial tattoo, would it be hypocritical for him or her to accept being hired by a person with one?
Why isn’t it relevant? In either case, you’re making a judgment call on whether the behavior is legitimate; apparently you’ve decided that it’s OK for members of African or APAC subcultures to sport facial art, but that it’s not OK for members of American subcultures to do so. What criteria do you use to determine whether a subculture is legitimate or not?
You had specifically mentioned a person who had an aversion to tattoos because of an occurrence that happened to a relative, not them, hence my thinking their aversion is deserving of a little less respect than if they were actually the victims of the forced tattooing.
Supermarket wardrobe as character indicator? Seriously, the supermarket? Where people buy the most mundane of their purchases?
And you truly believe the laziness of sweatpants at a grocery store is comparable as a means of typing personal character as are the “colorful” and permanent choices of visible (and often odd and offensive) art people wear when it comes to tattoos, and giant metal pieces in their eyebrows, ears, noses, lips?
A few minutes in a grocery store on your way home from walking the dog is a far cry from having a permanent naked blue woman (with nipples that CAN’T be avoided) on your neck, or H-A-T-E across your fingers. The people that I know who have visible body art, are either in the industry itself (Kat Von whatsis), or are celebrity or celibu-wannabe types, or are in low-visibility low pay jobs. (if they even work).
All of the people I know personally who fit the colorful body art definition (and I’m talking about the extreme and unhide-able variety of tattoo and body art, not someone with cover-able or small reasonable tattoos) are very low-ambition, low-paying job, anti-establishment “attitude-y” people. And without exception, their tattoos are offensive.
When you are interviewing someone for a job, you want to hire the best person for a job. You have only what they present to you - their appearance, their resume, their references, and their answers to the interview questions. If, at the end of the day, the guy with the facial tat was the most impressive in the other categories, you’ll probably get over the facial tat and hire him (unless its the sort of job where the facial tat is disqualifying for either reasons of the job or the content of the tat.)
When you apply for a job, you want a job that is the best fit for you. That might mean that you look at the employer and say “wow, I’m not working for some guy who was stupid enough to tattoo his face.” Or, at the end, you might be convinced that despite your misgiving about the hiring manager, this is a really good fit for you.
I cannot imagine many scenarios in which someone with a facial tattoo would be the best fit for the type of work I hire - some, though. And I can’t imagine many scenarios in which I’d meet a potential new boss with a facial tattoo and wouldn’t have immediate misgivings about the fit. Now, in both cases, if I were desperate - if the tattooed individual were the only qualified person applying for a job I needed to fill - or if I needed any job to make ends meet - I wouldn’t have a choice. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve haven’t been in a situation in years where I only had choices that were a bad fit.
I believe that it’s perfectly valid to judge people by how they *choose *to look, just like you do.
I’m not surprised to hear that. I just think it’s an unfair application of non-work criteria–MAYBE it’d be acceptable for someone just out of school with no references, but judging someone for (say) a programming position based on their physical fitness or tattoos? Frankly, I don’t see where you could make any reasonable correlation.
Frankly, anyone who doesn’t judge others for the way they look is lying. Even if we know, intellectually, that my judgments about strangers in the mall might be wrong. I llook at teens with children and assume those children are their own children - and they aren’t just babysitting their little sister. Sometimes I remind myself that not everything is as it looks externally - and sometimes I don’t bother because, honestly, as long as I school myself to avoid sending dirty looks in the direction of the woman wearing - in my opinion - enough makeup and clothes that imply she is “open to offers involving money” - it really doesn’t make any difference what I think.
It does make a difference what I think when you are asking me to actually make a decision based on my judgment. But in the case of hiring someone - its my job to make a decision based on my judgement. I’m not going to make a decision that violates any laws (I wouldn’t dream of not hiring someone due to race, religion, gender, sexual preference, whether they have kids, if they are married), but anything else IS fair game. I am going to evaluate every piece of data I can gather in making that decision - I want it to be a good hire because if its not, its more work for me. I may discard some of that data as irrelevant - I may decide that the choice of blue suit over black or grey isn’t any sort of indication. Your job, as the interviewee, is to sell yourself to me. That is going to be a lot harder with facial tattoos, maybe not impossible, but it isn’t likely to be easy - I’m going to have to decide the facial tattoo is irrelevant, that it doesn’t point to a potential lack of judgement or a non-conformist attitude that is going to make you difficult to work with. (I also have to sell the job to you and you get to decide if its a good fit, but honestly, unless you were in IT in the late 1990s - or are like my husband, who is being actively recruited right now by more than one company while holding a job he likes, the power is usually sitting on the hiring side.).
I’m sorry, my post was meant in honest “wow I’m perplexed” mode, not in snarkly mode. I should have clarified.
But as Dangerosa said (in fact her whole post was excellent): “I’m not asking anything of you when I run to the store in my sweatpants, and you don’t need anything from me. If you judge me, it really doesn’t affect me one way or another.”
Let me add to that, if you judge Mr./Ms. Sweatpants grocery shopper, it doesn’t really affect YOU one way or another either. After all, we’re talking about the sweatpants wearing person crossing your visual path for a matter of moments probably. You’re not deciding for you and your clients that they’re going to have to keep looking at the naked blue nipple woman on the neck, or HATE across the knuckles of some employee for his/her entire employment at your company.
There’s a huge difference between showing possible laziness (and I don’t agree that sweatpants in a grocery store is lazy) during a few moments doing a mundane errand and what a person chooses to say about their beliefs and mentality regarding cultural norms. Particularly since sweatpants in a grocery store IS part of social norms.
You don’t see the difference between the permanency of body art and the briefness of a sweatpants wearing episode with regard to a person’s life and work attitude? Particularly given (as I said before) the often vulgar, odd, and offensive subject matter of said art? And I don’t really see it as you being a snotty or snobby bitch that you feel that way, I just think it’s apples and oranges.
Funny, to me when I see “work clothes” garbed people (like sweatpants and tshirts) what it says to me about their character is “obviously employed overworked person trying to get a few things done on their brief off-hours”. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but from what I see, it’s usually the "disability/welfare queens with 5 illegitimate brats in tow that have time to dress to the nines and have full-on Maybelline faces for a visit to the grocery store.
Tool is one of my very favorite bands, but Die Eier Von Satan is a pretty creepy song, and is obviously recorded in such a way as to make it sound like a diatribe, so I can see why someone would leap to the conclusion that it was something more sinister than a recipe for hashish cookies.
Well, at least I know there are no SCTV fans in this thread…
It’s not relevant because Africans from a tribal culture in which facial scarification is an expected and respected part of everyday life are completely different from Americans from a culture in which facial modification is extremely unusual and tends to be associated with certain behaviors that make people uncomfortable, whether that discomfort is legitimate or not. And you know this, but this tangential argument is simply an example of Dopers being unable to resist taking something to every possible extreme to the point where the discussion is meaningless and accomplishes nothing.
I have no opinion about the “okayness” of American subcultures having facial art. I have seen beautiful facial art and fugly facial art, facial art that’s been carefully considered and facial art that’s been the result of very poor decision-making. I think people who want to rock their facial modification should let that freak flag fly, as David Crosby says. But they should also not bitch when their behavior, which they engaged in with the full knowledge that it is not mainstream in this culture, leads others to make some assumptions about the meaning of that behavior.
The deliberate decision to engage in a non-mainstream behavior involves KNOWING that the behavior is non-mainstream. It can’t have escaped the notice of people with facial or neck tattoos that those modifications are extremely unusual, and likely to elicit reactions. To choose to engage in that behavior is absolutely their right, but is not without consequence.
A person who gets a facial tattoo or a neck tattoo that’s large and visible, and then gets all indignant about other people making assumptions about the meaning of that relatively permanent visible decision, makes me a little impatient, frankly. Dude or dudette, you violated a social norm, and I admire you for that and support your right to and reasons for doing so. But violations of social norms have consequences, and don’t act all fake “I don’t understand why people judge me this way!” about that.
And I’ve not said anything about the “legitimateness” of a subculture. I’m simply saying that there are aspects of chosen behavior that people engage in that they are fully aware are going to create certain reactions, and if those behaviors elicit those reactions, a protestation of “how DARE you judge me?!?!” is disingenuous.
Hi! I’m Jake. The guy with a snake on his face.
I think that tat that Dani D.( American pickers) has on her lower neck/shoulders is classy and looks fine. I can’t imagine that keeping her from a job. A google of Dani Diesel (pretty as a junk yard) will turn up a semi-nsfw video of her in a previous gig showing her tat.
You’re correct that wearing sweatpants to the grocery store isn’t relevant to a job interview in the way that having visible ink is, but my point wasn’t so much about the job thing as just that yes, how we choose to appear says something about us, and sweatpants say “I’m a lazy slob who has given up on life” at least as much as visible ink says “I spit on your bourgeois picket fence sensibilities.”
Maybe where you live. Here it’s a norm for the trashy and/or lazy. Well, and the fat. And, to be fair, the very young, but presumably most of them will grow out of it.
As I said before, the main difference I see is “I once exercised bad judgement” vs. “I’m exercising bad judgement right now”. Of course, I don’t see much actually offensive body art, which means that either you run into much more of it, or we have different standards of “offensive”. Most likely some combination of the two.
I don’t really think of sweatpants as “work clothes”, and I’m trying to imagine in what context they would be. Maybe for warmth if one works outside? But honestly, if your job is sufficiently not client-facing that you can wear sweatpants, I can’t imagine a little (non-offensive) visible ink would be a problem.
I don’t know about your neighborhood, but I can discern quite a bit about your worldview from this. And honestly, I’m just flabbergasted that you think the people who went to work that day are the ones in sweatpants, and not the ones in makeup, since I wear makeup to work every day, but I sure as hell don’t wear sweatpants.
I’m not sure when the last time I’ve seen offensive body art was. I’ve seen great body art. I complement strangers on their well done art. I have friends with half a dozen tats and more. Facial tats aren’t a matter of being offensive, they are a matter of being non-conformist. There are non-conformist jobs out there. And there are jobs where conformity in physical appearance is a minor deal compared to education or experience. I’ve spent my life in corporate America - and I’m old enough that when I started a black suit vs. a grey suit mattered if you worked for IBM or Peat Mitchell Marwick. Its silly to believe that in a culture where wearing flats or stilettos instead of one to two inch conservative heels could sink your career that facial art is going to be acceptable.
Around my neighborhood, its a time of day thing. If its between 5 and 7 the grocery store is filled with people running to the store in their corporate uniforms. On Saturday afternoon, those same folks are running to the store in their Saturday clothes, which are often chosen for comfort. Mine are yoga pants, not sweat pants. If its one in the afternoon and you run to the store you get the stay at home moms (and people like me who get to work from home once in a while!) who are wearing sweats or yoga pants or jeans. Frankly, if I were a SAHM, I’d wear comfy clothes, too. Sweats aren’t the most glamorous outfit, but they are comfortable, easy to wash, and warm in a Minnesota winter. Sweats alone at the grocery store or Target won’t set off my tacky meter any more than a tattoo is enough to automatically set off my tacky meter. It has to be a outfit worthy of peopleofwalmart.com or a tat that makes me think “oh, you are going to regret THAT.”
“Classy” is not a word I would use to describe any tattoo.
Okay, so you’re choosing to apply a double standard. Apparently the issue is not “you must conform to majority standards”; it’s “you must conform to majority standards unless you’re from a culture where different standards apply, and I can’t define what I mean by culture but I’ll know it when I see it.”
I assume you wouldn’t endorse murdering people based on how they adorn themselves, but you are endorsing a refusal to let them enter particular areas of the workforce. What’s the tipping point in that continuum from acceptable treatment of others to unacceptable treatment? And what criteria are appropriate to use as a basis for those judgments? (Bearing in mind that the constructs of “acceptable” vs. “unacceptable” vs. “illegal” acts and “protected classes” are themselves social agreements.)
First off, no one is saying you MUST do anything. Want a facial tattoo - go for it. Just don’t be surprised when it limits your career options.
Secondly, we are looking for people who - I wouldn’t say “comform to majority standards” but I would say “do not reject cultural norms.” If your culture of origin were one were facial tattooing was a cultural norm, and then you switched cultures, your tattoo would not have been a rejection of cultural norms at the time you got it. That implies something quite different about you.