1.4. Interactionist View 
SHANELL SANCHEZ 
Tattoos at Work 
An article by Forbes in 2015, encourages employers to revisit their dress code expectations, with a specific 
suggestion on lifting the ‘tattoo taboo.’ The article argues “allowing employees to maintain their style or grooming 
allows your company to project how genuine you are as a brand to employees and to the customers they support.” 
So, instead of suggesting tattoos are taboo in the workforce to employees, according to the article, one can 
encourage people to ‘project who they are’ by accepting tattoos and ultimately, improve your business. This 
example demonstrates how societal changes in how deviance can change through time and space. 
Read the Forbes article to learn more about this discussion: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2015/01/12/how-rethinking-employee-dress-codes-tattoos-and-
piercings-improves-customer-service-and-the-customer-experience/#7b923ad54312 
Typically, in our society, a deviant act becomes a criminal act that can be prohibited and punished under 
criminal law when a crime is deemed socially harmful or dangerous to society.
1 
In criminology, we often cover a wide array of harms that can include economic, physical, emotional, 
social, and environmental. The critical thing to note is that we do not want to create laws against everything 
in society, so we must draw a line between what we consider deviant and unusual verse dangerous and 
criminal. For example, some people do not support tattoos and would argue they are deviant, but it would be 
challenging to suggest they are dangerous to individuals and society. However, thirty years ago, it may have 
been acceptable to put into dress code, rules guiding our physical conduct in the workspace, that people may 
not have visible tattoos and people may not be as vocal as they would today. Today, tattoos may be seen as 
more normalized and acceptable, which could lead to a lot of upset employees saying those are unfair rules 
in their work of employment if they are against the dress code. 
Now that we have a basis for understanding differences between deviance, rule violations, and criminal 
law violations, we can now discuss who determines if a law becomes criminalized or decriminalized in the 
1. Goode, E. (2016). Deviant Behavior. Routledge: New York. 
20