Of course not! They are part and parcel of the same thing. Think about the purpose of images and adornments on bodies. People are trying to express themselves. They are trying to communicate something about themselves. We all know this intuitively, and so we attempt to interpret what they are trying to say.
The problem is that what we say is colored strongly by the culture and subculture we come from, as well as our own aesthetic taste. Most of the people who see us, aren’t going to know a lot of that, so it is easy to get a different message from what the person is trying to convey if you do not share a cultural heritage.
When I say share a cultural heritage, I mean that very narrowly. I don’t mean “American” or “British” or something. I mean as specific as the cultural references that are known only within a family. Sometimes even that is not enough to understand another person.
When we talk about withholding judgment, I think we are trying to recognize the idea that there is personal history here that is important and that we don’t know. If we want to understand the aesthetics of the person, we need to know their personal history.
So, in the example of the cat called mushroom, you need to know that there was a cat named mushroom (or whatever the story is) in order not to make the mistake of thinking that the mushroom tattoo is a drug reference. Thinking the mushroom tattoo is a drug reference is probably a common reaction because people like to place hidden and socially subversive messages into images. If you choose to place such an image on yourself, then no matter how much care you take to make it look non-drug related, someone is sure to think it is about magic mushrooms.
Communication is difficult. People have different frames of reference. We have different aesthetics. And we must always be analyzing and, hence, judging what we see in order to make our best guess at what the images mean.
Even then, we usually need to look at images on several levels. One is the level of what the artist meant. In the case of the tattoo, I guess it is what the wearer (is that how to say it) meant—why they chose to have that image inked on their skin.
However, it is also impossible not to think about what you, the viewer, think of the image. What associations does it have for you? What does it mean to you? This has nothing to do with the wearer, since your life is unique and the wearer has no idea what the viewers experiences might be.
Another way of looking is in a social context. What do you think others might think? What is the social consensus about this work of art?
Judgement is required for all these views, and I don’t think it is possible to be human and to view without judgment. Maybe if you were semi-brain dead. What makes us human is our capacity to judge and decide what things mean. We might try to hold off on creating final judgment until we have more information, and that’s generally a good thing, unless we are in life threatening situations.
However, there are many situations where we need to make snap judgments before we know much of anything. In those cases, we often make judgments from prejudice, and that, I believe, is healthy. It is an art to know when you can wait to judge and when you can’t, and when you don’t know if it is safe to wait, it is safer to judge quickly. Thus we end up with prejudice and discrimination. I think that there is no way around this. Nor do I think it would be desirable to find a way around this. yes, prejudice can cause harm, but it also keeps people safe. What we need to work on is eliminating the harmful prejudices while not also throwing out the useful ones.
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