Sarah's Rant

A Modified Librarian's Adventures, First in New Zealand, then in Scotland

by Sarah

Update 23 May 1999:  Sarah has finally been able to supply us with pictures of her tattoos.  Read her rant, then look at her modifications.

Update 12 February 1999: Sarah is leaving her job at the museum library for another as Resource Officer for ADAM based at the Glasgow School of Art.  If you wish to contact her, please use her hotmail address - sjcurrier@hotmail.com.  

Update 19 December 1998: Sarah is now working at the National Museums of Scotland library and is just as modified as ever! She has asked that her email address not appear on this page, however if you would like to contact her please email Gail and I'll pass your message on to Sarah.

I'm a 32-year-old librarian. I've been living in Edinburgh for 20 months, having moved here from New Zealand in March 1997. I've been working in libraries since Feb. 1985, and I've had my tattoos since 1984.

I got my first library job at the age of 19. I'd been messing around on the dole since leaving school at 17, and was heavily into the post-punk 'alternative' scene in Auckland, New Zealand. I already had my two tattoos. The first one I had done was a large red anarchy symbol with a black rose wound through it, on my right shoulder. Some six years later I had the rose coloured purple, and the anarchy symbol obscured by an even larger black design of swirling spirals; six years of being continually asked "What does the 'A' stand for?" was getting to me! I also wanted to distance myself slightly from a concrete symbol which means so many different things to different people. And, I wanted a bit of beauty on my body. The idea was to extend the black swirls up my shoulder and down my back, working them into the back-job I was going to get, which has never eventuated. My second tattoo, done a few months after the first, begins an inch or so below my left nipple, on the undercurve of my breast; a length of barbed wire entwined with a rose stem curls up around my breast. When it reaches the flat part of my chest, a number of roses branch off, leaving the barbed wire behind. A small black peace symbol is superimposed. I'm afraid I don't have any photos with me in Scotland just now.

At that time, tattoos on anyone other than bikers and sailors, particularly on young women, were beyond bizarre; they were freakish and shocking. I was spat at and abused in the street for them. My contemporaries on 'the scene' considered me extremely 'hard-core'. That, of course, was the point. They showed that I was no dilettante, no weekend wannabe. I had commitment. Apart from the tattoos, I had the usual weird, colourful hair, and three holes in one ear. The type of body-piercing you see today was beyond imagining then!

I showed up at my interview for Junior Library Assistant at Auckland City Libraries, with my hair characteristically dyed half black, half blonde, but washed and combed for this occasion. I was wearing some suburban twin-set arrangement borrowed from my mother. I remember I changed into it in the public toilets nearest the Library, to minimise my chances of being seen by someone I knew dressed like that. The only reference I had was my school testimonial; I still remember exactly what the 7th Form Dean wrote on it: 'Sarah has challenged the system on a number of occasions, mostly to do with uniform matters, and always in support of her highly held principles. Her integrity is to be admired'. With that, I was supposed to get a job! And I did! That was my entrance to the institution that would be a surrogate family for the next 12 years.

New Zealand has a very different culture than the UK, much more egalitarian, open, laid-back, democratic, and much much less class-ridden. Librarians there (as I believe, most everywhere), and esp. at that time, were by nature a liberal-to-radical, free-speech-loving lot. My boss in my next position in that library system became my first professional mentor. She was one of a new breed of young, hip, left-ish librarians. For 3 years she nurtured me and my career, and the outrageousness of my appearance was looked upon with more indulgence. The only official line drawn back then was at dirty or ripped clothing. Noone had thought to draw a line at tattoos! I did that myself; my experiences in the wider world told me that they would only be intimidating and off-putting to library users, unlike now when they're so much more mainstream. One day I daringly wore black lace through which peeked the colours of my shoulder tat. Noone noticed. One time a male library user looked down my top as I bent to retrieve something for him from a low shelf. 'Nice tatt' he leered. I was incensed, baby feminist that I was.

I used to enjoy being pulled out of pubs in the regular sweeps the police did to catch underage drinkers. They used to ask for name, age, date of birth, and occupation. The looks on their faces when I said 'Librarian', standing there in my black and blonde dreadlocks and tattoos, was hilarious.

Most staff members knew about my tattoos, and I was certainly well known for my appearance otherwise. I progressed quickly in my career, got my para-professional library qualification, and became the youngest person ever appointed as a Branch librarian in that system, at 21. In New Zealand there was no rigid division between para-professional and professional; talented people could cross the line based on skill and competence. This has started to change in recent years.

I was also a witch, and in my time in libraries I've met many others, as well as lesbians, gays, and bi's (like me!), anarchists, socialists, and radical Maori activists. There never seemed any reason to stay closeted about any of those things until recent years. Our union was active until the Employment Contracts Act effectively wiped unions out; then everything started to go downhill.

By my last 2 years in New Zealand, things had changed mightily, for me, and in libraries. I no longer turned heads walking down the street; my hair was its natural colour (although sometimes cropped to a 'number one'), and my clothes not so noticeable. I'd evolved into a dedicated feminist and practitioner of Celtic shamanism, and my focus became modifying my inner landscape and my social environment. At some point my perspective on my body became one wherein I'd had enough of suffering, my own and the world's, and I'm not now prepared to inflict any more pain on myself.

Also, I'm a snob. When I got my tattoos they were the mark of an outsider. It started to seem to me as if any trendy wanker could buy street-cred with a tattoo. I started keeping mine covered most of the time, because having a tattoo started to have a different meaning, and because people seemed to feel so free to show how cool they were and start a conversation. After 10 years, I got sick of that conversation: "Does it hurt? How much did it cost/who did it? How long did it take? I've always wanted a tattoo of … . Want to see mine? Got any piercings?" Don't get me wrong, I don't regret having them, they're part of the 'battlescars' that have made me who I am. I still take pleasure in them when I get really dressed up: a gorgeous sexy dress, glam makeup, heavy boots, a shaved head and tattoos is a mess of contradictions I still love. I always enjoyed looking spectacular, as well as challenging people's perceptions. I'm glad I got my tattoos where I did, as they are both easy to conceal and easy to expose in normal clothing.

Nearly two years ago I moved to Scotland, figuring my skills (now mostly as a cataloguer) were highly transferable. I was unprepared for how deeply class-ridden and conservative the UK still is. I found that my combination of excellent professional-level experience, and a New Zealand para-professional qualification, made it very difficult to get a job. I was either over-experienced or under-qualified. Luckily I found a niche in the museum library field, building on 2 years experience in a museum library in New Zealand.

Now I only let colleagues (in fact, most people) see my tattoos when they've known me a good few months. Something still contrary in me also refuses to use them as a passport to cred among the alternative crowd; if that's what it takes to be accepted by some people, then they're too shallow for me. However, some aura about me still tells the white-bread middleclasses of Edinburgh that I'm some kind of freak! It took me a good six months to start to learn in the workplace when to keep my mouth shut; I couldn't pick up on the subtle signals that told me when I'd crossed some middleclass line, which was probably at every single tea-break! I fretted about losing my radical bite- but I needed to survive in a strange land first.

The last few years in New Zealand has seen an emerging new breed of young librarians; heavily tattooed and pierced. In some ways they have it easier; these modifications are much more mainstream and they can show them at work. They make the library a friendly place for the hordes of young people like them. Most of them probably looked at me and saw just another 30-something liberal female librarian, with no idea that I pioneered the Librarian Look they're now having so much fun with. It did irk me somewhat (well, my ego, or perhaps that angry fifteen-year-old that still lurks in my belly). I still sometimes wanna have fun with shocking people, or to be accepted by the cool kids. I still enjoy the shock on peoples' faces when they see my tatt's for the first time, and really the frisson is greater now that I have a simple brown-haired bob and wire-frame glasses!

I still felt a swell of pride though, to see those modified librarians on the public desks: pride in my profession, which still holds onto its radical heart, if keeping it more underground now, and in them for doing so well what young people always do best: shaking things up with such purity of vision and panache.

As for you Modified Librarians in the UK, I can only salute your courage, and admire what you're willing to endure to be spectacular and challenge convention in this country. You're all simply gorgeous!

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