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Tattoos and Knitting
Both are discernible microtrends in America, says pollster Mark Penn. And they contain powerful clues to what’s happening in society.
 istockphoto.com (left, center); AP New Identities: Pollster Mark Penn argues that individual choice is becoming just as important as group identities such as race and religion |
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Sept. 6, 2007 - Here are some factoids to take to the “Jeopardy” audition: Over the past two generations, the number of left-handed Americans has nearly doubled. Between 2004 and 2005, the purchase of fashion yarn increased 56 percent. The fastest growing group of knitters are teens and twentysomethings. The fastest growing group of videogamers? Moms over the age of 45. People making more than $75,000 a year are much more likely to be among the 30 million Americans with tattoos than members of lower-income groups. Of young Californians surveyed last year, 1 percent aspire to become military snipers. Only 77 of Harvard’s 6,700 undergraduates are majoring in math. At Yale, that number is 38 out of 5,300.
These seemingly random bits of trivia of American life are the stuff of “Microtrends,” a new book by pollster Mark Penn, which, he says, reveal the often baffling “under the radar” shifts that are reshaping American society—from one based on group identity and forces of circumstance such as race, religion and education to one based on personal choice. By the time a mere 3 million Americans have caught on to a trend, Penn writes, “it is ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book or new political movement.” These microtrends, which Penn defines as behaviors affecting 1 percent of the population, are, in effect, demographic tea leaves. Whoever correctly reads them—whether a soft-drink marketer or a presidential candidate—will be, as Penn knows, well rewarded. The pollster, who claims to have identified “soccer moms” as the key demographic in Bill Clinton’s 1996 landslide is now a strategist for Sen. Hillary Clinton but spent most of his lucrative career advising corporations, where for decades he filed away the arcana that became the book.
Penn’s microtrends contain clues to a society undergoing powerful, and often contradictory changes. Consider left-handedness. Two generations ago, only 8 percent of Americans were left-handed. Today, that figure has doubled. Absent some genetic mutation, the southpaw boom is better explained by social factors. While nuns once rapped the knuckles of deviant lefties, today’s teachers—and parents—are far more likely to allow a child to express his or her own orientation for handedness. The result, writes Penn, is a more permissive culture. “A society that tolerates people working with different hands is also likely to tolerate a lot of other freedoms.” While a slight majority of Americans still oppose gay marriage, a whopping 88 percent believe gays should have equal rights in the workplace.
The subgroup Penn dubs “the uptown tattooed” attests to the same phenomenon. No longer the mark of sailors and ex-cons, one in three Americans between the ages of 25-29 now sports body ink. (A trend, no doubt, behind the Army’s decision last year to relax its policy against tattoos visible beyond a soldier’s uniform.) Most striking, though, is the percentage of high-earners (22 percent of the tattooed population) who might have a rose or a tiger on their well-paid behinds. The microsurge in knitting among teens? It represents a turning away from the prevalent online obsession of most young Americans. “People are looking for new outlets of self-expression,” says Penn. “There is a premium on individuality that is rapidly rising.”
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