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Employers Should Probably Start Making Peace With Tattoos

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While it’s still absolutely a company’s prerogative whether it chooses to hire visibly modified folk, it’s becoming an increasingly poor business decision for a variety of reasons. Sure, there was a time when the conventional wisdom was that tattoos were strictly the domain of the lowest rungs on the ladder, but that’s a borderline indefensible position nowadays. Hell, when 24-percent of people in the coveted 18-50 age-range have at least one tattoo, it seems almost senseless. And apparently, human resource departments are catching on!

At some point, a blanket no-tattoos policy will almost certainly compromise your ability to hire the talent you need, and it would appear to move against a general trend to be more tolerant of tattoos. Educational level and social status no longer predict who has body art. The young financial officer who handles your business banking may have a Celtic symbol on her ankle. The lawyer who works your case may simply take out his nose ring when he goes to court.

As a result, many major employers have revised their tattoo policies, making them more lenient. Disney is good example. After polling the people who visit their theme parks and finding little objection, the company lifted tattoo restrictions. Faced with talent shortages, many hospitals have moved from a no tattoo policy, to a “no highly visible tattoos” stance.

This may seem like old news — indeed, it certainly is — but it’s undeniably positive and surprisingly progressive. Of course, the trend is not as far-reaching as some would hope:

That said, the professionals who responded to the SHRM survey made it clear that body art still leads to stereotyping. Furthermore, in a 2007 survey 85% of respondents said that tattoos and body piercings impede a person’s chances of finding a job.

Now, as someone who often laments the fact that he was born in an era in which wearing a three-piece suit at all times isn’t quite necessary, I personally love the cognitive dissonance of seeing an impeccably dressed person with hints of tattoos peeking out from behind cuffs and collars. There should be some sort of decorum when it comes to the way one dresses for work, but I don’t think a dress code and body modification are irreconcilable, either. My favorite take on this comes from Keith Alexander, who was, among many other things, a heavily tattooed ball-breaker that flourished in marketing and advertising:

[…] the older generations [are] dying off and the younger generations [are] coming up, and the majority of them have [tattoo] work. […] So, look, we’ve reached critical mass as far as public awareness goes: Everybody knows there’s people like us and people crazier than us doing these things. So, they’re aware of it, it’s just a matter of your resumé and experience being able to back it up. I don’t think that, given the choice between a person who is somewhat qualified and not pierced or tattooed and a person who is extremely qualified and pierced and tattooed, I think that the business environment is such these days that you have to make the right choice to go for the person that’s best for the job, visible work or not.

[…]

So it’s really … I hear so many people just whining about, “My quote-unquote mods keep me out of jobs,” and I really don’t buy into that. If you have a full facial tattoo and you got it when you were 16 and it’s shitty art, then maybe that is working against you, but I don’t have much sympathy for you. So again, I’ve never really had a problem, it’s always just a matter of setting the goal and going for it. I’ve counseled and helped so many of my friends with going through transitions like that because I’ve done it so many times, and the advice that I give them is to just pick what you want to do and go for it.

[…]

The best thing to do is just live your life and lead by example. You know, that’s what I like to do; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in big presentations, I’ve just given a great presentation, everyone’s just kind of blown away, and then I roll up my sleeves and people are like, “Holy shit, that’s a lot of work,” and you know, I’m totally aware of when I do it, how I do it, why I’m doing it, and so on. So you just have to set an example by the way you live your life.

Tattoo News [CollegeRecruiter.com]
RTFM: Keith Alexander [BMEzine.com]

BME needs YOU!

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In the past little while, we at BME have received e-mails from many of you complaining about the website at www.bme.com. Your concerns, namely, have centered around the site’s design, and that its links never led anywhere — and certainly not to BME content. This is the most recent version of the website.

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More versions can be viewed here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

This was not our website. We did not authorize it. We certainly did not approve of it. Worse yet, after investigating, we learned that this was a pay-per-click site. In other words, when people went to that site looking for BME, if they clicked on any of the bogus links, they put money into the owner’s pocket. This was a classic trademark infringement/cyber-squatting scam. Evidence that visitors reaching BME.com were often searching for ModBlog or BMEvideo can be seen here.

The site’s owner was a man by the name of Greg Ricks. He gets sued for this kind of thing all the time.

Despite the fact that we could have sued him in court, seeking damages, we tried to resolve this amicably.

When that failed, instead of trying to collect money in court, we filed an arbitration before the World Intellectual Property Organization (view the complaint here). They responded (their response is here), and all three judges, including a judge they hand-picked, ruled unanimously in our favor. (View their decision here.)

Immediately after losing the decision, the cybersquatter tried to shake us down for $100,000 in exchange for not filing a lawsuit against us. When we refused to be intimidated, of all things, he sued us. (View his complaint here.)

Now he claims, ridiculously enough, that he, and not BME, is the “real” BME.

Naturally, the cybersquatter has already begun to manipulate the evidence. He tried to scrub the Internet Archive of evidence and gamed the search engines so that things look much different than they have to this point.

During this fight, we’d like to call upon the BME community to help keep an eye on things.

If you see any evidence that you think might be helpful in showing that we are, have always been, and will always be BME, we’d like to know. We have set up a special email address at [email protected]. Feel free to send in anything you might find.

We are prepared to defend ourselves against this frivolous lawsuit through all appropriate means. We will keep you posted as things develop. You made BME the great community it is today and we need your help to keep it that way!

Please take the time to place links to BME on any websites that you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s your MySpace or your personal blog. Anywhere that you can put our links and banners are appreciated!