Skin Deep Disclosures: Motivations Driving Visible Forms of Disclosure among People Living with a Concealable Stigmatized Identity

ABSTRACT

Individuals with invisible disabilities continually undergo decision-making processes regarding whether or not, and if so, how to disclose their disability to others. While a great deal of theorization exists regarding disclosure processes, less work has considered how and why individuals with invisible disabilities forgo the disclosure process by making the invisible visible. This study examines motivations for using tattoos as a mechanism for invisible disability disclosure among the single-sided deaf (SSD) community. Interviews with 41 individuals with SSD across the U.S. reveal a complex set of motivations for permanently and visibly disclosing invisible disability through the use of tattoos. Motivations ranged from being (1) functionally driven, such as normalizing and naturalizing disability disclosures in mixed interactions (2) identity driven, such as showing pride in their condition with the goal of de-stigmatizing SSD (3) community driven, such as educating others about SSD and increasing camaraderie within the hard-of-hearing community to (4) personally driven, such as memorializing a loss, marking the legitimacy of deafness to the self and to others, and increasing disability identification. This study contributes to existing disclosure models by considering how this emerging form of disclosure bypasses and complicates some of the foundational assumptions of disclosure decision-making processes regarding whether, to whom, and how individuals with disabilities disclose. This provides important insights regarding how disclosure decisions can be predetermined and made independent of context, situation, and relationship(s), which has several theoretical and practical implications.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Rachel V. Tucker, Céline R. Doute, and Chloe Sacre for their assistance with various parts of the research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Passing refers to the process whereby an individual that perceives themselves as stigmatized or as someone holding stigmatized characteristics “manages undisclosed discrediting information about the self” (Goffman, 1963, p. 42). Individuals who decide to engage in passing holds a performance “wherein individual members of the minority/subordinate groups will achieve an identity as a member of the dominant/superordinate group” (Brown, 1991, p. 33).

2. The author collected images of these tattoos from participants who were willing to share. This supplementary data is available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Cincinnati Office of Research Integrated Research Advancement Grants Program.