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Abstract
Introduction: The skin reflects each personal story through each line, wrinkle, beauty spot, scar, shape or color [Citation1,Citation2]. Today, tattoos have become works of art and/or a body accessory, serving as anchors that help to solidify a sense of Self, by narrating an individual’s conception of his or her identity [Citation3]. The present exploratory and qualitative study aims at understanding the mental representation of the skin in tattooed individuals and the role that tattoos playas a vehicle for the projected identity of the Self.
Materials and methods: The sample consisted of 387 individuals from both genders with visible/exposed tattoos, who were invited to produce two self-portraits, one before and one after they were tattooed. All participants answered a brief socio-demographic inquiry and provided a written answer on whether they had experienced any form of discrimination due to their tattooed body. We then proceeded to the content analysis of the 774 collected pictorial drawings, using a grid featuring analytical categories, purposely conceived for this study.
Results: The results revealed that the self-portraits drawn before the subjects were tattooed showed less body investment than the self-portraits drawn after. However, the mental representation of the self-portraits drawn after the subjects were tattooed showed a fragmented idea of the body – only the body part that was tattooed was pictorially represented. Additionally, they were associated to a state of happiness (e.g. smile, movement/flexibility/freedom) and/or a personal valorization.
Discussion and conclusions: From the content analysis of the drawings, we can subjectively interpret that the Body and the Self (seen as unit) seem to be caught in a “fatal trap” [Citation4] in the case of the tattoo individuals.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the lecturer Letícia Garcia within the scope of the course of the Psychology of Health Curricular Unitand to Ana Ferreira for the translation of the paper. No funding to declare.