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Ink.

Happy Eid …….

oh and Yes, I am a fan …….

You’ve gotta love tattoos whether it’s the “fake” ones that come with bubble gum packs that you lick and stick, hennah tattoos or the more traditional type, tattoos have often been seen as a fashion statement or a form of self expression. Personally I’ve always been a fan of them for various resons, namely the fact that that they just look cool no matter how you slice it.

They’ve actually been around since the 5th centruy BC and were found on human popsicles that date back to that era, and have been used in darker times to identify prisoners of war and by doctors (well …. witch doctors) for everything from fertility to acupuncture) and is still used to mark out areas for radiotherapy and to fashion nipples in breast reconstruction.

By and large tattoos have had a bad name …. for the most part people tend to associate them the unsaviory which is rather unfortunate and pretty darn wrong as a couple of plastic surgeons from poland came to find out in their european study.

Dr Antoszewski and his team conducted a suvey within their community asking why people got tattooed, when they got tattooed and whether they have more than one and the results are quiet interesting. For one thing most men get tattoos rather than piercing first where as (for obvious reasons ….. i.e. their mother wanted cute pictures of them) most women tended toget pierced first and for the most part people tended to get on average 3 tattoos over their life time. Also, most people were motivated by trying to express a certain aspect of their identity rather than pee pressure (a close second) where as most people got pierced ’cause of peer pressure. They also found that whether it was tattoos or pieced hoo hoo’s social background and drug taking/risk taking behaviour were not as closely linked as other surveys had shown, meaning that the image of a coke snorting, herion mainlining, toothless disease vagrant is dieing down in tattoo culture. Granted few rocket scientist get them but since when did rocket scientists have a sense of style or identity; they;re usually the annoying kid in class who kept breaking the curve and had his mother check his homework.

Another survey conducted by a dermatolgist, Dr Armstrong hailing from Texas Tech asked people why they wanted their tattoos off. For the most part people tended to get rid of tattoos because they’ve experienced a major shift in their personality such as finding God, a change of lifestyle or risk of social stigma given their current jobs, they also found that women tended to choose to keep their tattoos for them selves and pick areas that are hidden by clothing while men tended to want to chow them off picking their arms and for arms as the site of choice and that people tended to get rid of their tattoos about 20 years after they get them done.

And yes, unfortunately like most surgical procedures tattoos and piercings tend to harbor a risk of HIV, heptitis C and various other infections of the skin and do require care after the procedure to prevent things like keloids and scarring but I’m quick to point out that those risks are fairly minimal thanks to regulation of the industry in most countires and the introduction or sterile tattoo equipment.

It’s very hard not to think that tattoos are more so associated with our over all need for self expression that we’ve come to enjoy these days, just take a look at ur social networking sites, twitter and blogs, we’ve become people who like to scream it loud and proud and tattoos are just one more medium. Another thing that seems evident from these studies is that alot of people tend to regret tattoos that aren’t associated with personal meanings, in other words you wont regret a tattoo that means something to you (well you’re less likely to hate them in 10 years time)

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