Adonis and his tattoos

First of all I wondered why we would call this obviously attractive male specimen an Adonis? This particular rugby player was also nicknamed Liefling (the loved one) by the Bulls' faithful supporters who sang a song of the same title for him whenever he appeared onto the hallowed turf of Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria.

Maybe the presenter's actions, the nickname and the song can be ascribed to  Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology, and her attachment to Adonis.

In Greek mythology Adonis was a handsome young shepherd who was killed while hunting a wild boar. But Adonis can also lay claim to a wider heritage - his name also comes from the Semitic word, adonia, which means lord, and which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old Testament.

Without a single narrative for Adonis, each of the variations have one thing in common: they have lead us to use Adonis as a generic description of handsome youths.

Tattoos

And what about the trick our modern-day, TV-screen Aphrodite to see her Adonis' tattoos?

Tattoos use ink and/or other forms of pigmentation to create indelible images or markings on the skin. The word comes from the Polynesians, who are known for their love of using their bodies for the creation of permanent works of art.

The first known written reference to the word tattoo appears in the journal of Joseph Banks, the naturalist who was aboard the explorer captain James Cook's ship the HMS Endeavour in 1769. It has since found its way in various adaptations into most modern languages.

But why would people get tattoos? The reality is that even though getting a tattoo may be painful, the person getting them sees something beautiful in the design that is being etched into their skin. Recently, in an extreme case, the 49 year old Mrs Ward in England has had the whole of her back tattooed with characters from the Twilight series. Edward Cullen, played by Robert Patterson who is clearly this her adonis appears inked on her skin no less than three times. “I love Robert Pattinson. I want to tone up so I can get his character Edward Cullen on my stomach,” she explains.

But the phenomenon tattoos dates back much further than even the myth of Adonis and is found among people of widely diverse cultures. In the early 1990s a 5 000-year-old frozen body of a man was found on a mountain between Austria and Italy. This is the best preserved corpse of that period ever found. It bears no less than 57 tattoos, the positions of which seem to suggest that they were probably applied for medical reasons such as the treatment of arthritis.

It is unlikely that those tattoos helped at all with treating arthritis but tattoos did the trick for our young presenter who was able to satisfy her desire to admire the body of her rugby player Adonis!