A day at the beach or a walk around the city in the heat leaves no doubt: the fashion for tattoos has reached an unprecedented scale. What motivates many of us to put on skin patterns that are difficult to get rid of? Expert opinions and first-person stories.
They happen to professors and students, intellectuals and athletes, teenagers and adults. David and Victoria Beckham, Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, Gisele Bundchen and other celebrities proudly display drawings on different parts of the body. Our experts, fellow journalists have tattoos…
I also have a tattoo. She showed up before graduation. Now I understand: it was my way of saying that I became an adult and I can manage my own life. The stories of other people who have decided to decorate their skin with an indelible pattern prove that a tattoo for its owner is much more than just fashion.
encrypted message
On the back of the hand of 35-year-old Daria, a successful lawyer, are the initials of her ex-boyfriend. “They are slightly faded, but I am glad that they are visible: let them remind you of what I almost lost – myself! I was like crazy. I lived only for him, I thought about him all the time. And when he left, she grieved for six months and could not calm down … I didn’t even know how lucky I was that we broke up!
Daria lifts her hair and shows a pair of wings around her neck: “I did it last year, just for myself. This is my freedom.”
The skin is the boundary that separates us from others. She tells the outside world about our inner life. “Everything we cover or decorate the skin with is a kind of communication language,” says psychoanalyst Didier Anzier in I Am Skin (Ergo, 2012). “With the help of tattoos, we can express the unspoken – emotions, feelings and desires.” What do the drawings on the body say?
Step to freedom
“My parents got divorced, quarreled and acted like I didn’t exist,” Galina, 26, explains the origin of the tattoo, made in the last grade of school. “I wanted a flower on my ankle, so that something would please me and that my relatives would pay attention to me.” And 25-year-old Dina with a smile shows a tattoo on her arm – a memory of the day she entered the university.
In the collective unconscious, a tattoo is an act of defiance, a violation of a taboo. “But young people use it not only for provocations. Thus they declare: “I am here,” says psychologist Alessandra Marcazan. – Tattoos made in adolescence refer us to the rite of initiation in primitive tribes. They symbolized the transformation of a child who was the property of the parents into an adult who can do whatever he wants with himself and his body.
Teenagers with tattoos actually behave more freely. Pediatrician Timothy Roberts from the University of Rochester Clinic (USA) interviewed six hundred 16-year-old boys and girls and found that 83% of those who had a tattoo entered into sexual relations, and only 36% of those who did not have a tattoo.
Today, a tattoo is a way to achieve bodily uniqueness, a kind of identity card that is read on the body.
But not only young people assert their “I” with the help of a tattoo. Increasingly, successful, accomplished people use it as a means of self-expression. “I don’t look like an informal person at all, but after watching David Fincher’s film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I realized that I was just like that at heart, and went to the tattoo parlor,” says 37-year-old Yana, an economist. “I follow the dress code, but I am pleased to know that under the formal clothes I have my own dragon on my back.”
The desire to get a tattoo can be due to various reasons. “If earlier it served as evidence of physical endurance, an expression of protest or belonging to a certain group, today it is rather a way to achieve bodily uniqueness, a kind of identity card that is read on the body,” says the anthropologist from the University of Göttingen (Germany) Silke Wolrab, who investigated the motives of those who decided to take this step.
Notch for memory
On the wrist of the 29-year-old manager Vitaly is an exact copy of the drawing of his little son, with all the errors and irregularities. “I miss my son,” he admits, “because I spend a lot of time on business trips and see him less often than I would like.” But thanks to the drawing, Vitaly has the feeling that they are still there.
“Before going to different cities to study, my boyfriend and I got tattoos,” recalls 30-year-old Tatyana. – I chose an abstract drawing, many take it for a Celtic sign. To the question: “What does it mean?” – I answer: “Eternal fidelity.” And for me it means just that. After five years apart, we moved in together and have been living together for eight years.” Tattoos can be symbolic signs that keep the history of feelings and events.
“I have met Jews more than once who categorically do not accept tattoos – because of the concentration camps. And I respect their choice,” says Tin-tin, a Parisian tattoo artist whose clients include quite a few celebrities. “But I was also approached more than once with a request to stuff a number on the skin that one of the ancestors had in Auschwitz.” Such signs bring us back to important moments that are easy to forget in the daily hustle and bustle.
The fashion for tattoos is a consequence of the accelerating social changes. Are we sure that our place of residence, occupation and marital status will not change in five years, in a year? Tattoos appeared as a cure for transience, as a way to do at least something for the rest of your life. You can reduce only a small tattoo, and still a trace will remain on the skin. Therefore, in our fickle world, a tattoo calms rather than inspires anxiety. What does she give? Tart, almost forgotten by us smack of irreversibility.