The Delta Xi Phi Multicultural Sorority will host a discussion about tattoos in the workplace called Tatted Up tonight at 6 p.m. in McCool room 100.
Tatted Up will be composed of a student panel with additional commentary by Robert “Coon” Koch from Coon Tattoo in West Point. The conversation will be based around tattoos in society and their role in self-expression. Tara Pflomm, Delta Xi Phi President, said discussion about tattoos is prevalent at Mississippi State University.
“We realize that students either have or know someone with a tattoo, and there seems to be cultural value within tattoos and those that have them,” Pflomm said in an email.
Tatted Up is a free event open to all students and faculty and offers free henna tattoos to those who attend. The student panel leading the discussion will consist of two girls and two boys, one of each sex having tattoos and the other without. Pflomm said she hopes audience members will leave the event with a more open-minded perspective on tattoos.
“I hope that people will walk away understanding that just because an individual has a tattoo, or even a visible tattoo, does not mean that they are not professional or not intelligent,” Pflomm said.
Teresa Gawrych, a communication instructor at MSU, received her masters in visual communication and gender communication with a large focus on body art. As a part of her research, Gawrych went to a tattoo festival in Austin, Texas and interviewed people about their body art.
“A lot of people tend to associate tattoos with being poor, being uneducated, and you can’t do that anymore because there’s doctors, lawyers and priests who are tattooed, as well as professors at MSU,” Gawrych said.
During the festival, Gawrych questioned people about how their tattoos affected their relationships with family, their perception of themselves and how society views them. Gawrych, who has tattoos herself, said she found clumping people with tattoos together difficult.
“After talking to different men and women for a three-day period, I found out that you can’t really group tattooed people into one group,” Gawrych said.
Coon has seen his share of tattoos. He has been a tattoo artist for 27 years, and he has been stationed at Coon Tattoo in West Point for the past 14 years. He said he thinks the negative stigma attached to tattoos comes from people making flash judgments based on how others look.
“I think most of the reactions we have are based on physical appearance. It doesn’t matter how ugly the vessel looks like as long as the inside is clean and the inside is pure,” Coon said.
Coon said he hopes to teach people at Tatted Up how to handle some of the negative stereotypes associated with tattoos. He said the best way to shed heckling comments is to show personality that runs further than skin deep.
“If you respond to them with very smart or wise remarks, that shows that you have some brain behind the art,” Coon said. “Not everybody who collects tattoo art has to be stupid or a mindless individual in society.”

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