Tattoo Therapy

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Upon coming across the television show Rhod Gilbert's Work Experience (Season 2 Episode 3), I found that the main character, Rhod, and a sub-character, Maria, raised within it an interesting point about the giving and the acquiring of a tattoo.

Rhod asked Maria, "what's it like being a full-time tattoo artist, Maria?" to which she answered, "you get to meet loads of interesting people with lots of different stories, and you become a part of their life." Rhod then said, "one of the things that I have noticed about this place, is that it seems to be the heart of a community." In response, Maria said "yeah, yeah. It's like therapy for them [and] me, if I need to get anything off my chest... If I didn't tattoo I think I'd be a counsellor." Then, Rhod added: "everybody says tattoos are addictive. That once you get one you want more, and more?" "Yeah," Maria replied, "it's the whole bonding experience. They come back for that. It's the boost of peace when they're done. You know, you feel good."

Having a tattoo myself that I acquired when I was eighteen, I knew nothing of the bonding experience that it brings. The man who tattooed me, an old man in his sixties who resembled a stretched animated garden gnome with hygiene certification, grunted and huffed as he tried several times to position my head in the right way so as to reach the back of my ear. He told me continuously that I should not stop breathing, and that was about it. After a couple of hours I had gotten my first tattoo. He did not inquire about why I was getting what I was getting. I felt no "boost of peace" after it, I just felt a boost of ego because I had rebelled against the image of a perfect daughter that my parents held so dearly onto.

Months before getting my tattoo, I had become obsessed with watching LA Ink, and watching Kat Von D tattoo "loads of interesting people" indeed. Most of them were famous. However, they all had a story linked to their spectacularly executed tattoos. I think I watched it moreso for the stories towards the last phase of my obsession. It was interesting to see an image put to the story, whether it be parents who died in a car accident or a brother who had died in a war, or relatives in their younger years - whatever the subject matter, it was always shrouded with utter sentimentality and that made the tattoo being done more and more appealing to the eye, knowing that the mind was captivated. 

And it was always the reaction of the recipient that complimented the entire episode. Seeing their faces light up as their sentimentalism was revealed to them on their skin for the rest of their lives, etched in their flesh and beaming the same beam as they did in the original photograph that the tattoo spawned from. I suppose if tattoos and the act of giving and receiving tattoos were seen in this light, that they will cease to be known only merely as works of art located on the bodies of unfriendly unapproachable bikies who did jail time for using a person's blood as petrol for their motorbikes.