Ass antlers

Tattoos above the tailbone

Woman leans on pool table with tattoo above tailbone

Carrier of a so-called "ass antler" (2006)

The vulgarism of butt antlers is a colloquial term for an elongated, mostly symmetrical tattoo on the back of a person, usually a woman, just above the coccyx .

Body area and shape

The execution of the tattoo is mainly a curved, branched fantasy ornament ( tribal ). The line art is usually mirror-symmetrical to the spine . The horizontal expansion in width is two to four times the height. With this expansion, the shape corresponds to a cross or a widened “T” or “Y”, or a “V”. The name was given because of the appearance reminiscent of antlers and is supplemented by reference to the wearing position above the buttocks . This type of tattoo is worn almost exclusively by women.

history

The tattoo became popular as part of the pelvic fashion in the late 1990s . With terms such as tail antlers , tailbone tattoo or tailbone tribal , attempts were made to establish a neutral sounding term. The tattoo was particularly popular in the 2000s. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , the term butt antlers was invented by the well-known Austrian tattoo artist Pogo in 2002. After he came up with the term, he had 5,000 stickers printed with it and took them to a tattoo convention and spread the word.

The term “ass antlers” was popularized, for example, by the program Genial besides on February 7, 2004, in which the advice team could not answer the question “What is an ass antler?”. In 2004, the popularity of the butt antlers peaked. In the summer of 2004, Bild was looking for "the most beautiful ass antlers" and hundreds of readers sent photos of their ass antlers. There were elections for Miss Ass Antlers .

The comedian Michael Mittermeier also contributed to the spread of the term in his 2004 stage show Paranoid . At the same time, the devaluation of this tattoo began. This devaluation also occurred in other countries. In the USA, for example, there is the term trampstamp (slut stamp).

Many women had their ass antlers remodeled, enlarged, decorated or lasered away. The best-known German wearer was Sabrina Setlur .

In 2009, the first Barbie was marketed with a range of tattoo stickers, including one for the lower back. In the song Bye Bye Arschgeweih , the singer Ina Müller addressed the laser removal of the tattoo.

Since the 2010s, the butt antlers have been viewed as a sin of youth, and many a woman who wore them wanted to have them removed again.

literature

Hans Drab: The deer symbol. Psychological study of the origins and effects of the symbol. Self-published, printed by Industria Grafica Atesina, Trient 1974, Herbig, Munich / Berlin [1983], ISBN 3-87587-102-2 .
Wilfried Ferchhoff: Youth at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century. Lifestyles and styles of life. Opladen 1999, ISBN 3-81002-351-5 .
Elke Gaugele and Kristina Reis: Youth, fashion, gender, the staging of the body in consumer culture. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-59337-255-X .
Oliver Kuhn , Alexandra Reinwarth , Axel Fröhlich : Arschgeweih - The true lexicon of the present . Ullstein, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-548-37207-5 .
Karin Mann: youth fashion and youth body . Schneider, Hohengehren 2002, ISBN 3-89676-648-1 .
Kurt Starke : Fit for SexPower? A sexual science study on BRAVO GiRL! . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-63136-721-X .
Daniel Krause: Goodbye ass antlers: The art of avoiding shitty tattoos . Heyne, November 2014.