In ancient cultures, the people believed that tattoos had magical significance or healing powers. Kitamura mentions one historical book about Japan that wrote about the discovery of clay figurines from the Jomon period (10,000 B.C. - 300 B.C.). Those clay figurines that were found were covered in designs that were probably the tattoos of that time. In 1948, the body of a Scythian man who lived around the year 550 B.C. was found in Siberia. He had very detailed tattoos that depicted mythical animals that covered his limbs and torso. A number of years after that discovery, another tattooed body of a woman who dated around the same time period was found in a tomb in Altai. The tattoos that covered her shoulders, wrists and thumb were also of mythical creatures. Around 450 B.C., a Greek writer by the name of Herodotus wrote that in the Scythian and Thracian cultures, “‘tattoos were a mark of nobility, and not to have them was testimony of low birth.’ In different parts of the world, there were different views on whether tattoos were for wealthy nobles or the poorer classes. The Japanese have a word, irezumi, that means ‘the insertion of ink’ and it original meant that tattoos were used as a punishment. In the early 1700’s, Japanese tattoo artists started calling themselves and their tattoos by different names in order to distance their art work from the torturous tattoos of the past. The earliest appearance of tattoos on women were in the circus in the late 1800s. These "Tattooed Ladies" were covered - with the exception of their faces, hands, necks, and other readily visible areas - with various images inked into their skin.
In order to lure the crowd, the earliest ladies, like Betty Broadbent and Nora Hildebrandt told tales of captivity; they usually claimed to have been taken hostage by Native Americans that tattooed them as a form of torture. However, by the late 1920s the sideshow industry was slowing and by the late 1990s the last tattooed lady was out of business. Today, women sometimes use tattoos as forms of bodily reclamations after traumatic experiences like abuse or breast cancer. In 2012, tattooed women outnumbered men for the first time in American history - according to a Harris poll, 23% of women in America had tattoos in that year, compared to 19% of men. In 2013, Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, became the first Miss America contestant to show off tattoos during the swimsuit competition — the insignia of the U.S. Army Dental Corps on her left shoulder and one of the "Serenity Prayer" along the right side of her torso.In August 2013, William Mullane of London was tattooed with a portrait of his late father which used ink mixed with a small portion of his father’s ashes.In recent years, various lawsuits have arisen in the United States regarding the status of tattoos as a copyrightable art form. However, these cases have either been settled out of court or are currently being disputed, and therefore no legal precedent exists directly on point.
