Search and You Shall Find in My World

23 March 2010

Tattooed on their small minds

I was in a jeep towards downtown this morning when I heard a lady asked- Gikuha na nimo imo earring? (Have you taken off your earrings?)

I thought she was just cautious since we were already near downtown where most of the bad elements ply down here.

Imo tattoo tabuni na'g tarong. (Your tattoo, hide them discreetly.)

She was asking the young man beside me.

Curious, I asked why. She told me her nephew beside me would be applying for a janitorial job. Her company would not tolerate tattoos and piercings because of the connotation that tattooed people came from prisons.

I sat dumbfounded. I have both piercings and tattoos.

Meanwhile men and women in barong or coat-and-tie amassed thousands and thousands of peoples' money and they are respected in this country and even called Honorable.

More:
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Historical link of tattoos in the Philippines as written by Fr. Gabriel S. Casal, Eusebio Z. Dizon, Wilfredo P. Ronquillo.
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Gang tattoos as photographed by Sidney Snoeck, an expat living in the Philippines
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Photo grabbed from Mark Baul, a tats collector
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2 comments:

Adeth said...

About tattooes...Edik,my brother was not accepted in one of the BIG STORES in our nice place Bohol just because of the tattoo...he was told if he gonna erase the tattoo then he can get the job... that is a total discrimination jud...

Over here we have neighboor who wears COAT AND TIE going to work monday to friday...but on his free days I saw him he got a lot of tattoo on his one arm and shoulder they do not say you cannot work because of the tattoo...in the place where I work they do not mind if you have tattoo or percing as long as during work hours you just take it off and I think that is understandable because of the nature of our work that we meet different cultures everyday and we never know one of them is a JUDGEMENTAL FILIPINO hahahaha and accuse the company of hiring CRIMINALS because the workers are having tattooes or percings...

Unknown said...

such are filipinos. we still have our biases without looking back at our history.

tattoos goes back to our ancestors. that was why visayans were called PINTADOS due to the tattoos in their bodies.