“About 20 percent of U.S. adults sport at least one tattoo, according to a 2012 poll. Marie Killen/Getty
Tattoos have become so commonplace, so practically passé, that to be considered truly edgy these days, you have to really ink up.
That dolphin on your calf? The rose on your shoulder blade? That tough-looking barbed wire around your biceps?
Come on. Nobody’s going to buy that you’re some badass if that’s all you got.
"One or two tattoos really aren’t a whole lot different than changing your hairstyle," says Jerry Koch, a sociologist at Texas Tech who has built a career out of, among other specialties, studying body art. "After the fourth or fifth one or so — you’re talking about people that are aficionados or collectors, and really have the body art as a constitutive piece of their identity — that, then, correlates with other things."
Koch and his colleagues have been looking into tattoos and body piercings for the better part of 15 years. He’s seen tattoos move from being anti-establishment — think threatening bikers, prisoners and gangbangers — to appearing in classrooms and boardrooms. A 2012 Harris Poll found that 21 percent of U.S. adults had at least one tattoo. Koch’s surveys reveal that somewhere around 15-20 percent of American college students have at least one tattoo.
The researchers — Koch and Texas Tech colleagues Alden Roberts, Myrna Armstrong and Donna Owen — recently released a study dealing with tattoos, gender and well-being. It appears in the Aug. 28 edition of The Social Science Journal. The team surveyed nearly 2,400 respondents (59 percent female) in six geographically diverse universities in the U.S., and they’ve come up with some startling, and somewhat head-scratching, conclusions about the ever-changing world of body art and those in it.
Tops among their findings: Women with four or more tattoos showed a higher degree of self-esteem (40.0, on a scale of 10-50) than female participants with fewer or no tattoos.
· Women with 0 tattoos: 37.8
· Women with 1 tattoo: 38.4
· Women with 2-3 tattoos: 39.4
Yet these same women, in one of the paper’s more perplexing findings, reported attempting suicide at a rate nearly four times higher than women with no tattoos.
"We’re speculating that there’s a connection there, that the acquisition of body art up to that point might be an effort at a sort of emotional restoration," Koch says. "They’re using body art acquisition to sort of recover in a way, in the same way that breast cancer survivors will get themselves tattooed after a physical loss."
To these female college students (82 percent of whom were 18 to 20 years old), tattoos aren’t a way of showing off, or of being edgy, necessarily. Instead, they may serve as a way to reclaim a physical or emotional loss.
Koch says that’s all speculative, and it wouldn’t hold up to scientific challenges until further research is done to support it. But, just maybe, these women are telling the world, through their tattoos, who’s in charge.
"I would suspect that part of why people seek to attempt suicide is they get the idea that who they are isn’t worthy of life," Koch says, "and once they survive that, maybe they’re saying, ‘Hey, screw you, I’m worthy, and here’s the proof. I’ll adorn myself and present myself, maybe in a pretty dramatic way, just so you know for sure that I’m who I am.’"
NOW THAT’S COOL
A2010 study by Koch and his colleagues provided much of the basis for the current research. In that study of more than 1,700 American college students, the researchers found that, "respondents with four or more tattoos, seven or more body piercings, or piercings located in their nipples or genitals, were substantively and significantly more likely to report regular marijuana use, occasional use of other illegal drugs, and a history of being arrested for a crime."Koch, by the way, in addition to being the associatechair in the department of sociology, anthropology, and social works at Texas Tech, has been an ordained Presbyterian minister for the past 33 years. He has no piercings or tattoos.
HealthSkin & Your LifestyleHow Tattoos WorkHealthSkin & Your LifestyleHow Tattoo Removal WorksHealthSkin & Your LifestyleTattoos: Fast FactsHealthSkin & Your LifestyleAre there medical reasons to get a tattoo?HealthTreating Skin ProblemsCan sandpaper remove tattoos?HealthSkin & Your LifestyleAre tattoos bad for my skin?HealthPregnancy IssuesCan you get a tattoo if you’re pregnant?HealthPostpartum CareCan you get a tattoo if you’re breast-feeding?HealthSkin & Your LifestyleTattoos: Telling a Story of Self-esteem?HealthSkin & Your LifestyleDisappearing Tattoos for the Commitment PhobesHealthSkin & Your LifestyleCan you get a staph infection from a tattoo?HealthSkin & Your LifestyleTattoos May Be Good for Your HealthHealthSkin & Your LifestyleAt a Glance: Tattoos and Skin HealthHealthSkin & Your LifestyleI Got Tattooed With a Protostar ⦠For Science!HealthSkin & Your LifestyleBlackout Tattoos: Now That’s Some Serious InkHealthDeath & DyingTelling Doctors Not to Resuscitate, by TattooHealthSkin & Your LifestylePediatricians Group Releases First-Ever Guidelines for Teens and TattoosHealthMusculoskeletal ConditionsBeing a Tattoo Artist Is a Pain in the Neck â LiterallyPeopleFadsHow Animated Tattoos WorkPeopleSubculturesHow Scleral Tattoos WorkPeopleBody ArtDNA Tattoos: Iâve Got You Into My SkinPeopleBody ArtHistory of TattooingPeopleBody ArtTop Tattoo Mistakes: LA InkPeopleBody ArtCelebrity Tattoo PicturesPeopleBody ArtDo tattoos have a smell?PeopleBody Art5 Tattoo Removal TipsPeopleBody Art10 Tattoo Virgin TipsPeopleBody ArtDo tongue tattoos affect your sense of taste?PeopleBody Art5 Most Embarrassing Celebrity TattoosPeopleBody ArtCan you get a glow-in-the-dark tattoo?PeopleBody Art10 Celebrity Tattoos We Just Don’t GetLifestyleBody MakeupTattoo Concealer: Now You See It; Now You Don’tLifestyleHow Star Wars Works: Star Wars Celebrationâs Tattoo PavilionElectronicsOther GadgetsHow Electronic Tattoos WorkEntertainmentCircus ArtsHow did tattoos become a sideshow feature?ScienceSoldiersDoes the U.S. military have rules about tattoos?
