the civilizing of resistance: straightedge tattooing

The social lifestyle "Straightedge" is a response to the hedonistic bodily indulgences (e.g., substance abuse, promiscuity) of many North Americans. Practitioners emphasize self-restraint and bodily purity as a "deviant" alternative to these practices. Like other socially labelled outsiders, Straightedgers include tattooing in their lexicon of body modification activities. Resultantly, Straightedge tattoos have become signifiers of the group's underlying philosophies of social resistance toward uninhibited bodily decadence. Data collected from interviews with 31 Straightedgers in Canada indicate that tattooing is not constructed as a flamboyant form of social protest by them, but rather a highly controlled method of cultural dissent. To this end, Straightedgers exploit and reframe long-standing cultural stereotypes about the tattooed body in order to "civilize" the face of contemporary social resistance in Canada.