Full Coverage: Links From All Over (June 11, 2009)

[Shutdown Corner] Well, here’s the biggest tattoo-related non-story of the day. Chad Ochocinco, the Cincinnati Bengals safety formerly known as Chad Johnson, is, for those unfamiliar with the NFL, one of the bigger clowns in the league. (See: Legally changing his last name to a mangled Spanish translation of his jersey number.) Anyway! Mr. Ochocinco, like so many athletes, has wandered into the land of Twitteronia, and made this startling announcement yesterday:

Yall might not believe me but my tatoo guy is here and i getting my face done, looks cool to, dont be mad just accept the Ocho please

The tattoo, as you can see, is of America’s wang, the state of Florida. Has your world been turned upside down? Well, keep your head on, folks: It was just a gag! Yep, this prankster just had someone Photoshop a smudge onto his mug. Ha ha, hilarious…?

The entire twitt world and media outlets got punked, that was my twitt joke from yesterday, they follow I’ll have fun with it.

My grandma would kill me if I had damn facial tatts!!! Fun while it lasted, back to normal, I felt different to.

In conclusion, you are never getting those five minutes or wasted brain cells back.

[The Globe and Mail] Whoa ho, what’s this? Actual good legal news about tattoos? It is! Nadine Bélisle, a daycare worker in Quebec, has been embroiled in a legal battle for five years now over whether or not she should be allowed to display the tattoo on her shoulder while on the job. Well, the results are in, and a Quebec Superior Court judge has decided that the policy that forced her to cover up was, in fact, a violation of her rights. Hot damn.

“Five years of frustrations have collapsed. I’m thrilled,” Ms. Bélisle, 35, said in an interview yesterday from her home in Saguenay. “This is a question of human rights, of freedom of expression.”

The May 27 ruling brings legal heft to the murky question of what’s appropriate to wear in the workplace, at a time of relaxing attitudes to dress codes. While body piercings and dressing down seem to be gaining acceptance, there are signs that more employers are drawing the line. This week, University of Montreal hospitals adopted dress codes for employees that prohibit jeans, short skirts and tattoos deemed to be in bad taste.

For Ms. Bélisle’s union, the visible-tattoo ban by the CPE La Pirouette, one of Quebec’s publicly funded daycares, went too far.

“Publicly funded” being the operative term there, I believe. I’m not sure whether or not this sort of ruling would apply to private businesses, and whether or not private enterprises should be beholden to the same standards of personnel decisions as public businesses is another matter altogether. As far as this case is concerned, the daycare’s position was that, while some tattoos are surely inoffensive, some may not be appropriate for the environment, and so a blanket ban was, for them, preferable to having to decide what was acceptable on a case-by-case basis. The ban, however, was determined to be prejudicial in nature, and that while violent or vulgar tattoos will still have to be covered, the majority will be free for display:

“Tattooing nowadays is a phenomenon that cuts across all levels of society,” [Judge Jean Bouchard] wrote. “If it was once associated with delinquents, that’s no longer the case.”

The daycare’s policy forced an employee with a tattoo of a butterfly or flower on her forearm or calf to wear pants or a long-sleeved shirt, even while working under a hot summertime sun, he wrote.

“This is, in the opinion of the court, ridiculous and outrageous.”

The daycare will still have the right to prohibit inappropriate tattoos including those expressing violence.

And that, well, that’s a fine precedent to set.

[Jason Dunn] And finally, Jason Dunn, a techie fella from Calgary, was vacationing in Japan when he came across this tattoo studio, bearing what he thinks may just be the worst (or at least the funniest) name for a tattoo studio possible. Oh, comical translations. We’ll let FailBlog decide.