Self-expression in the modern times has not just confined itself to celebrities, politicians, or the omnipresent media anymore as such the anonymity and enormous freedom of self-expression was given to one and all by the powerful medium of the Internet which cannot be discounted, herewith stating. Put through this, self expression has very well led to overtures of self-exhibition with youngsters worldwide posing for dippy selfies (and not excepting even some breathtaking ones at that), racy videotape adventures, wacky hairstyles, funky fashions, and taking the cake among all of these is the ‘tattooing’ body-art ‘piercing’ its way into the hearts and bodies of many a youth that is gradually falling out of context with time as a new big moral and health hazard for the world to face.
Contemporary young adolescent/adult culture has subsumed body-art forms like tattooing and piercing, purportedly as a way of self-expression which is not a celeb statement any longer. The body art culture has become so barefaced that in one such incident a young woman was tattooed 56 stars on her face even after requesting only three of them. Incidents like these will move us to ponder on whether this phenomena of multiple and multi-site tattooing and body piercing is seriously a social warranted form of disfiguring oneself?
Piercing for tattoos – Self-gratification or Mutilation?
- In 1999, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry released a statement stating that tattooing and ‘excessive piercing’ coupled with picking, head-banging, cutting, and burning as possible forms of self-injury. Though this may somewhat look like an alarmist conclusion to the masses who champion body art from head to toe, the AACAP is not the foremost on the block to reach this illation.
- As per some of the mainstream professional journals like Deviant Behavior in 2009, The Journal of Psychosomatic Research in 2006, The Journal of Adolescent Health in 2005, Adolescence in 2002, and Pediatrics in 2002, body-piercing and tattooing have been proved to be dangerous and at times even lethal with risk-taking behavior, self-loathing, eating disorders, depression, substance abuse, and social alienation as these findings and interpretations are particularly based on the well-founded collected samples.
- There are several real incidents of this horrific body-art that make people swathe themselves in both benign and ghastly tattoo images and piercings where some people have gone to extreme lengths by tattooing whiskers and cat’s eyes over their own besides with having sharpened incisors.
- There are even some over-the-top instances in the body-art culture where people will surgically implant horns on their forehead and become a look-alike of demons by permanently painting their faces.
( Surgically implanted horns and devil tattoo paints – Images Source: The Telegraph )
- As per the survey by Pew Research Centre, the implication and perception of tattoos at workplaces offer some important takeaways for prospective employees which can influence their decision to sport a tattoo or not as only 12% of employees seem to flaunt tattoo that can be easily seen by their colleagues and managers during work hours whereas 39% of those surveyed believe that employees with tattoos can convey their employers’ brand image shoddily.
- Walmart doesn’t permit facial piercings while allowing inoffensive tattoos whereas Booksellers Borders considers the body-art culture favorably as it makes employees look interesting. Form Motor Company takes an in-between route that allows senior executives and other employees to tattooing but no piercing as it could possibly endanger the factory settings and worker safety.
So, the debatable point is the entire body-art thing not just a form of self-expression but also a way of self-mutilation? The answer to this lies in the hands of youngsters with their devil-may-care attitude making a devil-like mockery of themselves thinking that all this body bling adorns and enhances them while enduring self-chosen physical pain but actually throwing their lives to irreversible risks and endless danger.
( The highly controversial Shiva tattoo on the right leg of actor Kunal Khemu – source: post.jagran.com )
