Devil City Press

People Never Cease to Amaze me

Written by Michelle
Monday, 02 July 2007

So a bunch of us were over at Paladar the other night after work and Peggy tells me about this lady that came by the shop the other day. She didn't come in to get tattooed she came in as a sales representative. We were'nt interested, we don't need a water cooler the shop is waaay to small for such do-dads. So the lady is about to leave but then she says ,"Oh since I'm here I should ask you about a tattoo I was thinking of getting." She's like, " I wanted to get some clovers with a swastika in the middle"

Peggy - "EXCUSE ME"

Lady - "I'm half Irish and half German and was trying to think of something to represent both countries"

Peggy explains this may offend some people is she sure she wants a swastika maybe she could get something else to portray Germany (a bratwurst or even a big pile of sauerkraut). The lady ponders this and decides that maybe she should think about it a little more.

WOW. Peggy swears the lady wasn't a racist, just clueless.

The picture to the left is not the lates tattooed felon splashed across the news. No, that is Man Woman the artist and swastika advocate. Man Woman has made it his mission in life to redeem the swastika as a symbol of love and good fortune. Way back when I got my first tattoos I remember seeing the book Modern Primitives that featured Man Woman. Back then that book was FAR OUT this tattooing thing hadn't really caught on yet and there wasn't an option to pierce anything besides your ears unless you were punk rock enough to push a safety pin through your nose. Man Woman and all the people profiled in Modern Primitives were real radicals back then. There was no talk of tattoos as trends. This was the late 80's. No celebrities or movie stars were seen in People magazine bearing tattoos. It wasn't popular, there weren't even any good tattoo magazines.

You can read more about Man Woman's, "lifelong seach for the historic truth about the swastika and his journey to detoxify it from the sins of the Nazis" and check out some of hiw artwork at the links above.

Perhaps Man Woman would be pleased to know there's a new generation oblivious to the negative connotations of his chosen sign.

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