Elise, I gotta tell you something. My mom,
she just hates tattoos. This 90 year old
woman and and I I don't know what
to do with that. Like, it's a big
workplace issue. Right? Like so when I met
you at the Goldman Sachs conference, I was
like, wow. Enlighten
me. How do I teach my mom
to lighten up? This is a problem I've
dealt with with everybody I know, and I
have a solution. Once I make this film
and people have this film in front of
them, I promise their perspective about tattoos will
change. And my film is about people who
change their own bodies because of a scar
that they have or something that they have
on their body that they wanna look at
in a different way. The whole film was
inspired
unpacking here. Yes.
Thank you for joining. You all know I'm
Wendy Wallner. This is your job now. We're
talking about tattoos. So, Elise, why don't you
jump in and tell us who you are
and why I'm so excited to talk to
you today. So I'm Elise Jaffe. I'm the
owner and executive producer of Big Teeth Productions.
We're a production company in Chicago.
And, I've been producing for twenty seven years,
all different types of content. But I started
my company
almost twenty one years ago, twenty years ago.
And in 2018,
we were approached to bid on a job
with a haircare brand out of London
who was raising money for breast cancer research,
but they designed one hair straightener. There was
gonna be a tattoo artist who was going
to create the actual design that would be
on that straightener, and a certain percentage of
those sales were going directly to breast cancer
research. I'm getting it now. I'm getting the
vibe here. I'm getting it. Okay. So the
artist happened to be in Chicago. And even
though the company was in London, they were
coming to Chicago to film with him. So
they reached out to production companies here. And
as soon as we saw this land on
our desk, I was like, this is a
project I wanna do. I have not had
anyone in my immediate family die of breast
cancer, but I have had a lot of
people I know either go through treatment or
have passed away.
So I knew that this was something really
interesting and important. And as a Jewish person,
I was like, oh, and tattoos. Let me
stop there just to interject. For those of
you listening, you know that I'm also Jewish.
And just a point of clarification, it's the
idea of not not scarring your body is
right? There's a there's actually one verse in
Leviticus
nineteen twenty eight, and I can't remember the
exact I should know this, but it's like,
thou thou shall not make markings upon thy
skin and whatever in any way. We have
the tattoos that the survivors, anyone that went
to a death camp or a concentration camp,
the numbers. So tattoos have a lot of
unpacking
to do. Mhmm.
Right? We've got the rules. Religious unpacking. Yeah.
Jews are not the only ones that have
religious stigmas. Exactly right. Then we have the
unconscious bias thing where we see a tattooed
person. We're like, druggie.
Yeah.
Gang member, which is why I thought the
conversation would be if I want you to
talk directly to the leader or manager at
a company,
organization, hospital school, and their employee says, oh,
I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get my
twenty ninth tattoo or I'm gonna get my
first tattoo. What should the manager say or
do? I think that first of all, everybody's
decision to do to their bodies is their
own. Right?
But the fact that tattoos are scrutinized in
workplaces and that people think they're not gonna
get jobs because of it is awful. I
would ask about it. What what tattoo are
you getting and why? Because there's a story
behind every tattoo. That's your moral. Right? There's
a story behind every tattoo. There's a story
behind every tattoo. Yeah. How would you respond
to that tattoo is art? Tattoos are definitely
art. There are tattoo artists are artists
that are designing them. And,
a lot of people
will say that your body is the canvas
for the artist.
A lot of people are anti the idea
of your body being considered a canvas. I
mean, I would think that most tattoo artists
actually embody the idea of being an artist.
They're creating something. Even if they're copying a
design or something like that, they are there
is skill and and artistic ability that is
involved in this. Right? And what's art to
somebody is not art to someone else. And,
like, in the kind of tattoos we're talking
about in my film, there's an art therapy
angle to it as well. Like, we have
art therapists that are in the film talking
about using tattoos as a means for healing.
So if art therapists consider it a way
to heal and they're they're focusing on art,
then that's an even more of a thumbs
up for it being considered art. So and
that's why you did the documentary, to really
educate people on the skill and the art
of tattooing. Is that right? Yeah. So I
made the film
to really change people's
perspectives
on tattoos
and see them as a form of healing
for people. And what was really interesting as
I went down the path of learning about
this like, about tattoos in general is that
tattoos have been used for healing since the
beginning of time. Like, or since the beginning
that we've ever seen a tattooed person, a
mummy or a Otzi, this ice man that
was found in, like, the Andes. They have
been used for for healing. So this is
not a new concept. And this is way
before people thought, oh, they're just for sailors.
They're just for gang members. They're just for
branding. Like, you know, who owns me? But
then they've gotten this bad reputation, and then
it kind of has come back. And so
the history of tattooing is very interesting. And
I didn't wanna make a film about that,
but there is certainly part of that history
that that is really important for this film.
I wanted to make a film for people
who are physically scarred by trauma or illness
and have something on their body that they
look at in the mirror and they don't
feel whole and they don't feel right, and
they want to turn that into something that
they see as beautiful. And there are artists,
tattoo artists that specialize in this kind of
work, and they have that artistic ability.
They have this skill because it's not easy
to work on scars, and you have to
know how to work on scars. You can't
just go to any artist and assume they're
gonna be able to do it. And they
also have this empathy and this ability to
listen. Because if you think about it, when
you're I'm I mean, I assume that you
don't have any tattoos, but maybe I shouldn't
assume. So I do. When you're sitting in
the chair or on the table being tattooed,
especially if you have trauma, especially if you
have a scar, something's gonna be unlocked.
Yeah. And that artist has to be prepared
and be trauma informed enough
to be able to listen and know when
to interject or when to be there. And
not every tattoo artist has that, you know?
I think that's the beauty, sir. Is that,
you know, we're doing this to heal. This
is a healing arts form, whether it be,
you know, the Japanese art form of kintsugi
or whether
many healing art forms. This is one healing
art form. So it sounds to me like
what you're saying to the leader or the
manager is you've got an unconscious bias, you
gotta recognize it, and you gotta talk about
it. Yep. So many people have unconscious bias.
Like, when I say what I'm making a
film about, people will be like,
or, oh, I'm really interest. Like, there's such
a, like, a A divine. Visceral response to
it. Yeah. And, and and, like, from my
family, it's been it's I've been working on
the film for almost six years, and I've
seen sort of their ideas and thoughts about
tattoos transform. And I got my first tattoo
while working on this film, and I could
tell that my mom was like, oh, no.
And then I just had some work done
on the tattoo to kind of enhance it,
with one of the artists from my film.
And I showed my mom in December. She's
like, oh my god. It's beautiful. And so
that's one person that already has their perspective
changed. You know? I always say that it's
sort of that, like, women in their to
sixties probably that were, like, raised as, like,
okay. I'm gonna do what my parents I
don't I don't wanna isolate women, but but
I do think that a lot of it
is. It's a female thing. Oh, we're good
girls, and we we do what our parents
tell us, and we're not challenging. And today's
generation, because I have a teenager, there is
a lot of, like, pushback of, but why
and wanting to understand.
And I don't think my generation did that.
It was, okay. I get it. This is
what we're supposed to believe. And so it's
it's having us sort of think about
why and how, and it's interesting because as
a Jew, that's what we're told to do
is question
and and take a phrase from the Torah
and interpret it in all different ways. And
yet people aren't doing that with this one
phrase. So it's been a very interesting journey
for me over the past six years. So
drum roll. When can we expect it to
come out? So the film is called Unscarred,
and the website is unscarredfilm.com.
So one of the stories in our film
is about a woman named Shalik who, at
the age of 16,
had a,
flesh eating bacteria that ended up causing her
to have a mastectomy and
shoulder surgery where she lost a lot of
her skin, and she's been scarred since then.
And in her thirties, decided that she wanted
to get a tattoo to cover it. So
it's been an incredible
experience getting to know her and watching her
transform throughout this process. I hope it will
be done this year. But Okay. Fingers crossed.
The problem with making a documentary when you
own a production company is it is all
based on grants and donations. And we have
done this whole film for a fraction of
the original budget that I anticipated because we
just didn't have the donations,
and we still need money to finish it.
Right now, it's we can work on it
when we have the time, but a lot
of the things we're doing at this point
are out of pocket costs. So my company
internally can't do it. It's the color work.
It's the music and the scoring. And so
I have great relationships with people that are
helping me to get it done no matter
what. You talk bootstrapping. You're bootstrapping.
Yeah. So everything is We will go ahead
and put a link if you feel like
supporting NICE and you feel like supporting the
work, that would be great. We'll put a
link in the podcast.
I think most importantly is that I think
I have better talking points for my mom
and my, any bosses or leaders out there.
So, it was great meeting you, Elise, and
thank you so much for joining.
Thanks for listening to This Is Your Job
Now, produced by me, Kai. If this episode
made you think or made you feel, we
hope it also made you realize. You don't
have to figure this out all alone. Leadership
today is about presence, not perfection. To learn
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Balancing Life's Issues on YouTube, or stream the
podcast wherever you listen. Because if you're leading
people, this is your job now. Anything else
to add, Miles?