While I am the only one in the world to receive my particular tattoo (since I created it), there are thousands of other people all across the world that have received tattoos of various shapes and sizes. These people have choosen, for a number of different reasons, to present these tattoos on their bodies, changing their apperarances to various degrees. While many only asociate tattoos with "freaks", there are enough people in this world who have made the decision to get a tattoo, to make them an important part of our culture. Through the use of of the steps in E.B. Fleming's "Model of Artifact Study", Identification, Evaluation, Cultural Analysis, and Interpretation, and a comparison with the observations of fashion by Fred Davis in the book, Fashion, Culture, and Identity, one can determine the cultural and social meaning of tattoos in American Culture and Society in the 1990's.