Heavily tattooed women’s emotional and embodied geographies of (non-) belonging in Wollongong, Australia

Abstract

This article addresses embodied geographies of (non-) belonging for six heavily tattooed white women in Wollongong, Australia, as part of a larger project on tattooed bodies. The article employs the concept of ‘embodied belongings’ to consider the felt dimensions of how ideas, things and bodies combine in various ways produce shifting inclusionary and/or exclusionary places. Feelings of non-belonging are generated by how women’s heavily tattooed bodies combine with things alongside whiteness, Christian faith and patriarchal femininity to comprise public, familial, and work places. The direct challenge of tattooed bodies to social norms surrounding patriarchal femininity can also, however, within the socio-material relationship that comprise certain pubs and chance encounters in public places create feelings of belonging for heavily tattooed women. This article contributes an embodied spatial and relational understanding of how the faithed, racialized, and gendered politics of women’s heavily tattooed body plays out in daily life.