Marines Ban Tattoos

You've got to be kidding me: "The Marines are banning any new, extra-large tattoos below the elbow or the knee, saying such body art is harmful to the Corps' spit-and-polish image."

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway announced the policy change last week.

"Some Marines have taken the liberty of tattooing themselves to a point that is contrary to our professional demeanor and the high standards America has come to expect from us," he said. "I believe tattoos of an excessive nature do not represent our traditional values."

Of the list of things I expect from members of our armed forces, being highly tattooed is not among them. Don't wantonly massacre dozens of civilians, don't rape a child and set her on fire and murder her family, don't brutalize detainees. These are the sorts of things on my list. As for tattoos, frankly, I don't give a flying fuck if a wo/man who's served his/her country well wants to look like Leopard Man:



(A veteran of 28 years of service in the British armed forces, btw.)
Anyone caught with a new tattoo on the banned bits "could be barred from re-enlistment or face disciplinary action." So…stop-lossed but aching to go home? Just get some fresh ink! And it's obviously not lost on these wo/men that they're fighting to "spread freedom" but are having their freedom taken away:

"This is something I love to do," said Cpl. David Nadrchal, 20, of Pomona, who made an appointment to get an Iraqi flag and his deployment dates etched onto his lower leg. "The fact I can't put something on my body that I want it's a big thing to tell me I can't do that."

Nadrchal said he is unsure whether he will re-enlist: "There's all these little things. They are slowly chipping away at us."

…Tattoo artist Jerry Layton at the Body Temple Tattoo Studio in Oceanside said he was booked up with Marines rushing to beat the deadline.

"These are guys that are dying in the war," Layton said. "They can fight, but they can't get a tattoo? It's ridiculous."

Totally. The ban strikes me as preventing what's a very important rite of passage for many soldiers, too—all in the pursuit of an "image" that masks the ugly, messy, and generally hardcore nature of war while we're at war. It's like the marines are being told: "Don't remind Joe and Jane America back home that we're at war. Let them sleepwalk through their precious, insulated little lives without any unnecessary wake-up calls." Does that convey a message these wo/men are doing something honorable? Yeesh.

My father-in-law was a sailor for many years. It wasn't an easy life; for much of his childhood, Mr. Shakes wouldn't see him for months at a time. Hard men did the job he did.

He used to be a hard man—hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-tempered. Hard-living. It's difficult for me to reconcile that with the man I met long after that part of his life was over, who won't even show me his plentiful tattoos, accumulated over years of service, because they're "noot fit foor a yoong lady's eyes." I know what they are, though, because Mr. Shakes has told me, and they tell a story about the life he lived. They tell the story about what it meant to be a sailor. It marked him, that hard life. Our soldiers, who will be indelibly marked by their service whether with ink or without, should be able to tell their stories across their skins, too. That strikes me as the very least we owe them.