More than skin deep

Last year, Justin Miloro had to wear long sleeves to conceal the Buddha curling around his left forearm and the yellow/orange sun rays on his right. Trousers covered the depiction of Earth on one leg and wings on the other. The sun spreading across his back was under wraps. The plugs in his ear lobes were obscured by bandages.

"I thought it was really silly", Miloro recalled, "worse than seeing the tattoos".

This year he has nothing to hide - even though the 32-year-old worked last year for Whole Foods Market Inc in Boston, where he was a sales clerk, and now works as a manager for the same company in Los Angeles, overseeing health and beauty products departments at 25 stores.

The chain has looser dress and grooming standards in some parts of the US than in others. Setting degrees of tattoo taboos is how Whole Foods handles the increasing attraction to - though definitely not universal acceptance of - body art.

Once associated with drunken sailors, felons and Hells Angels, tattoos have gone nearly mainstream, putting employers in a bind. How to write rules that won't alienate unhip customers on the one hand or eliminate talented workers on the other?

Nearly 50 per cent of Americans between the ages of 21 and 32 have at least one tattoo or a piercing other than in an ear, according to a 2006 study by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Men and women alike say their tattoos make them feel sexy and rebellious, a 2003 Harris Poll found, while the unadorned of both genders see body art as unsightly and think those with tattoos and piercings are less intelligent and less attractive.

For Tumbleweed Day Camp in Los Angeles, this divide can cause headaches. Although counsellors' body art tends toward ladybirds or Asian characters for "luck", some parents complain that the inked and pierced don't look like appropriate role models.

But director John Beitner said that if he adopted a no-tattoo policy, he would lose excellent candidates for the camp's 120 counselling jobs. Just 10 years ago, he said, only 5 per cent of the staff had tattoos, and this summer it's close to 20 per cent.

Beitner's solution: the is-it-offensive test, applied on a case-by-case basis. "A butterfly is not such a big deal," he said, but a skull and crossbones with blood dripping out of the eye sockets would be a problem.

Like many law-enforcement agencies, the Costa Mesa police department in Orange County takes a relatively hard line. The department's 162 officers can't display any tattoos or piercings while in uniform. The only exception is one stud per ear (hoops pose a safety risk).

Policies vary hugely. PricewaterhouseCoopers' says only that employees must wear "professional" attire. Employees at aircraft maker Boeing can show off tattoos so long as the designs aren't what a spokesman called "offensive", but grocery workers at Vons are advised to totally cover up.

The dress code for Disney theme parks and resorts is among the most explicit and conservative: no visible tattoos, and the only permissible piercings are one per earlobe.

Earrings must be "a simple matched pair in gold, silver or a colour that blends with the costume", company spokesman Donn Walker said. Hoops can't be bigger than a dime.

James Morel, chief executive of Dr Tattoff's, a chain of tattoo removal centres, estimated that 20 per cent of the chain's clients undergo laser erasure treatments to improve their job prospects.

Financial planner Eric Cohen is having none of that. His boss at AG Edwards & Sons in Torrance is untroubled by the dragon that sometimes pokes out from Cohen's shirt cuff.

The 37-year-old got the tattoo, which envelops his right forearm, in 1996 when he was working as a hotel concierge.

"I still love it," he said.

When he interviewed with AG Edwards seven years ago, Cohen made sure to keep the dragon under wraps. He kept it covered during his first few years on the job.

Now, a string of solid performance reviews behind him, Cohen sometimes goes to work in short sleeves. "My boss is a relaxed kind of guy," he said. Besides, "it gets warm in here".

- (LA Times service)