I used to think tattoos were just about looking cool.
Then I spent three weeks in Samoa, watching a tufuga ta tatau—a traditional tattoo master—work on a young man’s pe’a, the intricate body tattoo that covers from waist to knees, and I realized I’d been thinking about this all wrong. The process took roughly two weeks, give or take, and every single session involved not just the recipient and the master, but his family, elders from the village, and a rotating cast of people who’d show up to sing, pray, or just sit in respectful silence. The tools were handmade—boar’s teeth lashed to tortoiseshell, tapped with a mallet in a rhythm that sounded almost like drumming—and the pain was, from what I could tell, absolutely excruciating. But here’s the thing: nobody called it just a tattoo. They called it tatau, and the word itself carries weight that the English translation simply can’t capture. It’s not decoration. It’s not rebellion. It’s a covenant with your ancestors, your community, and honestly, with parts of yourself you didn’t know existed until someone spent hours driving ink into your skin while your grandmother watched.
When Pain Becomes a Language Your Ancestors Still Speak
The pe’a isn’t something you just decide to get on a whim. It’s earned.
Or maybe earned isn’t quite right—it’s more like you’re chosen, in a way, though you also have to choose it back. The decision involves your family, because you’re not just marking your own body; you’re carrying forward a tradition that’s been unbroken for something like 3,000 years, though pinning down exact dates in Polynesian history is always a bit fuzzy. What we do know is that when European explorers first arrived in the 18th century, they were so struck by the practice that the word “tattoo” itself comes from the Samoan “tatau.” Captain Cook’s crew brought the word back to Europe, but they definately didn’t bring back the meaning. The geometric patterns—all those triangles, lines, and intricate bands—aren’t random. Each section has a name, a purpose, a story. The pute, the navel area, represents the center of your world. The va’a, the canoe shape on the lower back, connects you to voyaging ancestors. Wait—maybe I’m oversimplifying, because different tufuga will tell you slightly different interpretations, and that’s part of the beauty. It’s a living tradition, not a museum piece.
Why Western Tattoo Parlors Will Never Quite Get It Right
I’ve seen tatau-inspired designs in Brooklyn studios and London parlors, and they always feel a little off.
Not because the artists aren’t talented—they often are—but because you can’t separate the tatau from the ceremony, the community, the pain that’s witnessed and shared. In Samoa, getting your tatau is a public act. Your family feeds the tufuga and his assistants. They sit with you through the pain. If you flinch too much or, worse, quit before it’s finished, that shame doesn’t just stick to you; it reflects on your entire aiga, your extended family. Turns out, that social pressure is part of the point. The tattoo isn’t about individual expression in the way we think about it in the West—it’s about belonging, about proving you can endure something difficult for the sake of something bigger than yourself. And honestly, there’s something both beautiful and slightly terrifying about that. When a tattoo artist in Portland offers you a “traditional Samoan design,” what they’re really offering is the aesthetic without the ontology. You get the look. You don’t get the three-hour ceremony where your uncle recounts your genealogy while someone drives sharpened bone into your skin. You don’t get the part where your grandmother cries—not from sadness, but from pride that you’re continuing something her grandfather did, and his grandfather before him.
The Malu, Gender, and What Happens When Tradition Meets the 21st Century
Women recieve the malu, a different but equally significant tattoo that covers the thighs.
It’s lighter in coverage than the pe’a, but don’t mistake that for it being lesser—the malu marks a woman’s commitment to service, to family, to the preservation of culture. For a long time, fewer women were getting the malu than men were getting the pe’a, partly because of missionary influence, partly because of economic pressures, partly because traditions evolve and sometimes contract before they expand again. But in the last couple decades, there’s been a resurgence. I guess it makes sense: as Samoan diaspora communities have grown—there are more Samoans living outside Samoa than in it now—the tatau has become a way to maintain connection to fa’a Samoa, the Samoan way of life, even when you’re thousands of miles from the islands. Young Samoan women in Auckland and Los Angeles are getting the malu, sometimes in modified forms, sometimes in traditional ceremonies that require flying a tufuga out from Samoa. The tradition bends but doesn’t break. It adapts without losing its center. And maybe that’s the real lesson here: authenticity isn’t about perfect preservation—it’s about continuation, about choosing to carry something forward even when it would be easier to let it fade. Anyway, that’s what I saw, sitting in that fale, watching a young man become something more than he was before, one tap of the mallet at a time.
