Each person is entitled to their own opinion. This is a phrase we heard most from our contributors when we asked them what views people had expressed about their tattoos. Closely followed by people saying they ‘wouldn’t care’ if someone was negative. However, for the most part, as I am sure you will be pleased to hear, are positive.
PERSONAL AND FAMILY PERSPECTIVE
Nicola, George, Ruby and Kam all spoke about how their tattoos have changed their own perceptions of themselves and increased their self-esteem. Kam, Nicola and Ruby all discuss how they disliked parts of their body and by getting tattoos they now want to show it. Successfully, feeling more confident in themselves.
Perception
Neil also mentioned this when stating he felt more confident.
However sometimes tattoos can make us more self-conscious such as Connors dad who had naked ladies on his arms and was then afraid to take his children swimming in fear of other parents judging him. So although tattoos can increase self-esteem they can also damage it.
Some people’s families can also not be accepting of their tattoos as we have seen in Kam’s case and Giggs. This can be very difficult when the person feels like they are expressing themselves. Giggs said that his parents associated tattoos with gangs and how this has affected their views on them. When asking him ‘what is the biggest misconception of tattoos?’ he states this.
If you would like to
learn more about Asian culture, click the button above.
Both Kam and Kath have been badly affected by perspective. Both of them have faced prejudices from tattoos. Watch and listen below to find out what happened to them.
Sometimes it could be your own children who do not like your tattoos. Keisha expresses her feelings on her fathers tattoos below. To see Keisha’s father’s extreme tattoos,
explore the Love page.
Most of the people we spoke to were not the first people to be tattooed in their family. This is when the term ‘first and second generation’ was coined. William, Connor, Ruby and Keisha all fell into second generation as they had people in their family - in particular their parents - who have had tattoos. Whereas Carys and Kam were first generation when it came to tattoos. This often is reflected in how the family reacted to them. Many of the negative reactions came from people who didn’t have them as they did not understand the culture or why someone would get the tattoo.
What we were surprised by was that many of our interviewees had not faced any backlash for their tattoos and most were positive. There was an expectation that there would be more issues with them as we thought, as Gemma puts it, that people still thought tattoos are for ‘sailors and ruffians’ or related to the lower classes. But we were wrong.
Perhaps this is because it seems that more people are getting tattoos that are associated with memories and meanings or just beautiful artwork. We saw this previously when Giggs mentioned his tattoos being artwork and memories on his body.
Our audio interviews with Neil, Kath, Nicola and William all came up with these responses when they were asked about the perceptions they had faced.
Some of our contributors talked about how they believed the stereotypes were outdated. Ruby labelled herself as ‘basic’ and that she knew people would be surprised that she had tattoos. Kam also experienced a similar event and was quizzed on her tattoo knowledge. Funnily enough we did not find evidence of this within our male interviewees, bar Brandon who acknowledged how women with tattoos are treated unfairly in comparison to how males are treated.
Although the view has defiantly changed as have perceptions on tattoos this seems to have happened a while ago. Many people felt that they were never questioned on their tattoos. And it is almost that the perception has changed but our perception of the perception of tattoos hasn’t. As we still believe it can be controversial when in fact it is very excepted.
