Month: September 2021

Intervention1: Getting a temporary tattoo

My first participant is a Chinese girl. She is also a tattoo artist and the tattoo she designed was a pine. It’s a Zen state of mind. In Chinese, ‘pine’ and ‘relax’ have the same pronunciation. It’s a psychological hint for her to relax herself. Here are several questions I prepared for my interview with him.

I think there’s a lot of pressure now, and appearance anxiety is part of it, but there’s also a lot of pressure from other aspects of life.

It’s cool and I think the patterns are very artistic. As a tattoo artist myself, I appreciate people who have tattoos. And I am happy to discover the stories of other people and tattoos, because most people don’t have a tattoo for no reason.

MENTAL STATE DURING TATTOO DESIGN

It’s been two years since I last got a tattoo. I am very exited to get a new tattoo.I hope this new tattoo will bring out a new and different version of myself.

2 WEEKS AFTER OBTAINING A TATTOO

I ask my friend to tattoo this design for me. As a tattoo artist myself I believe in the power of belief when it comes to tattoos. I feel that each design can represent a different person and a different story. I think this tattoo is what I’m looking forward to in my following state of life.

4 WEEKS AFTER OBTAINING A TATTOO

So far, I’m still happy with my tattoo. Summer is coming and I’m happy to show it off to others. And whenever something in my life makes me feel anxious or someone criticises me, I look at the tattoo and tell myself to relax and not to take them seriously.

9 WEEKS AFTER OBTAINING A TATTOO

Now I’m getting used to my tattoo and getting on well with it. I really like it. I feel like the process is like burying a belief in my heart. I gradually accept it and make a belief strong. Through this tattoo I keep telling myself to relax. Some of the anxieties around me gradually stopped bothering me so much.

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My second participant is a Korean girl. Her temporary tattoo is ‘Eat Pray & Love’. It’s a film and a book. The film with the message that learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Eat Pray & Love is ultimately charming and inspirational. It will likely leave you pondering your life choices and forgiving your flaws. 

I am actually an optimistic person in life. I do have some anxiety about appearance anxiety because of the times we live in. And I work in the fashion industry, and we do focus too much on appearance.

I love tattoos and I would love to know the background stories of other people’s tattoos.

MENTAL STATE DURING TATTOO DESIGN

These three words are important in my life. And eat pray & love is a book that I really like. I want to to be brave, face my inner voice and love myself.

1 WEEK AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

I’m happy to have this tattoo and would love to show it to others. Although the tattoo is in an awkward place and I have to give others the middle finger. I look at it from time to time and it reminds me of the person I want to be and forget my flaws.

5 WEEK AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

I’m still happy with my tattoo. I’m happy to have one of my favourite books and my views on life tattooed on my body.

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The third participant was a Chinese girl. The tattoo she designed was a Spanish phrase. It means live for yourself. This girl wanted to use it as her talisman.

I feel like there’s been super stressful since I’ve been involved in work. Looks anxiety is also a part of it, I guess, after all, good looking people reap more goodwill in society.

These tattoos are beautiful. I think girls look good with tattoos on their collarbones, backs or arms. They look very charming. And they are confident to show themselves and don’t care about observations of others.

MENTAL STATE DURING TATTOO DESIGN

This sentence is super meaningful to me. Because I am a person myself who thinks about others and cares about what they think. One time over drinks I told my friend that I don’t know how to love myself anymore.

2 WEEKS AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

I’m still happy to have the tattoo. I don’t know if this statement is a protection or an inspiration for me. I hope that every decision I make in the future is for the sake of being a better version of myself before I make it.

6 WEEKS AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

The tattoo reminds me not care too much about external comments and perspectives. I would like make it a real tattoo on my body. Because I can feel its strength that it gives me.

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The fourth participant is a Japanese girl. She cares a lot about what other people say, so she designed this tattoo to tell people that I am good and to please focus on yourselves.

I feel deeply about looks anxiety because ever since I was a child, I was not the good-looking girl everyone thought I was. There was a lot of supposedly well-meaning advice from all around me.

I love tattoos! I think it’s a way for others to express themselves. It can show an attitude of others.

MENTAL STATE DURING TATTOO DESIGN

Because I really care about what people say about me. I want to be cool around people saying ‘Sorry, I’m good.’

1 WEEK AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

I am very happy with this pattern. Everyone around me says it’s interesting the person’s expression looks unruly. And I will tell them that’s me!

6 WEEK AFTER OBTAINING A TEMPORARY TATTOO

I still love this tattoo. But I’m not sure it has that much meaning for me. I got it at first just because it was fun.

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Intervention2: A new social account to gather feedback

I signed up for this new ins account to collect stories of women and their tattoos to see if tattooing is helpful in improving self-esteem.

At the same time I will keep sharing some of the women’s tattoos and the stories behind these tattoos. From the tattoos, some women gain strength and they use the tattoos as a reminder of their lives. They use it to gain the strength of belief and to help them improve their self-esteem.

I will continue to collect people’s views on these stories and how they see the connection between tattoos and self-esteem.

The second story about tattoo

The Flying Bird (on the right upper arm)

The Flying Bear (on the inner side of the left arm)

The second storyteller believes that everyone has many different images of themselves. She has a tattoo of a bird in flight on her right upper arm. It symbolises what the inner self aspires to be. What she pursuits is the desire to be free, to be uninhibited and to live for herself. What is slightly different from her pursuing self is her personality in life now. Her personality is very gentle and considerate of others. This means that she often has to compromise herself in order to accommodate others. She takes advice on even the smallest things in life such as dyeing her hair. The bear on her inner side of left arm represents herself. She added blue wings to the bear and herself. It implies that she should break her weak ego and not be overly concerned about others. At the same time, she happily shared with me her wish to discover her different self and have a zoo through tattooing on her hands.

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Intervention3: Tattoo workshop

Because of the first intervention on temporary tattoos, I communicated with the participants and collected feedback all online. And I think it was results-oriented too. A face-to-face interaction would be more direct, so I’m planning to run an offline tattoo workshop. I can keep communicating and exchanging ideas with them during this whole process.

It will be interesting to see different participants to share their own stories with each other. People may gain some insights from other people’s experiences and tattoo stories and think about them in a way they haven’t before.

I organised a workshop for two people to test it. And she is willing to participate it again in October. My project has not yet looked at whether tattoos have different effects on different body parts. Next time I will invite this participant to have a temporary tattoo on a more visible body part in order to investigate whether tattooing on a more visible body part has a better effect on self-esteem.

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Reflection：From last month’s tutorial with Sasha, I realised the answers I get from the tattoo artists are too general. So I’ve had a further communication with one of the tattoo artists for more details. He thought that I also could have more in-depth conversations with people who have been interviewed before.

The tattoo artist kyokuto told me that he was subjected to school bullying in high school. He was over 183 cm tall in high school and he was very thin. (He is 187 cm now). So at that time his classmates would call him all sorts of nicknames behind his back, such as ‘Giant Monster’. Because in Japanese culture being tall is not something to be proud of, even if he is a boy. One day he was attracted to the tattoos and felt that each tattoo was different and so were the people. He felt that he should not be discriminated against for being tall. After that he got his first tattoo and started to try his job at modelling. He gained a lot of confidence, partly because of what the tattoos gave him and partly because he started to really think about his life. Now he is a tattoo artist and model.

Last time we talk about some people think tattoo is just an adornment on the body and a means of attracting attention for women, just like cosmetics. On this topic, we discussed it more this time. He feels it’s undeniable that some people will use this as a way to attract attention, but it’s a very small percentage of people. It costs a lot of time and money to get the tattoo removed. Apparently, people still use other ways to attract attention externally, like dressing up or hair colour.

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Since I signed up for my new Instagram account, a tattoo artist liked my post the next day. I have to say that adding hashtags to posts is really useful. I immediately got in touch with the tattoo artist. And he was happy to help me with my project.

Questions：

• 1.What does tattoo mean to you? Why did you get your first tattoo?
• 2. Some people think tattoo is just an adornment on the body and a means of attracting attention for women, just like cosmetics. What do you think about this?
• 3. Do you believe tattoo has the power of belief?
• 4. Do you think tattoo will affect body image and self-esteem?

His answers:

1. For me, tattoos are both fashion and determination.
   That determination is unacceptable to the general public, and includes discriminatory views.
   The first time I got a tattoo was influenced by my parents, seniors and artists.
2. I understand a variety of purposes, but in my opinion, tattoos are not just adornments on the body. Firstly it is not something that can be easily removed. So when you have a tattoo on your body, it definitely means something to you.
3. Tattoos have the power of belief.
   Just as you have the power to believe in God. If you think about it, the power is born there.
4. It affects both.
   On the first day everyone gets a tattoo, they feel like they’ve gotten stronger.
   This is something I feel I have changed in a good way.

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The second interview with tattoo artist Daniel

I also interviewed a very famous Korean tattoo artist. He has done tattoos for many famous rappers in Korea. I’ve summarised some of his points from my conversations with him.

He says he likes to draw. And tattoos are a way for him to express his art. He is very cautious about painting on other people’s bodies. He is interested in listening carefully to people’s stories to design tattoos instead of a customer taking a random drawing from the internet and having it tattooed. Because he understands the importance of tattoos. He wants tattoos to express something that is really inside people and to give them strength.

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For research purposes, two experts in youth education and psychology were invited by me for my interview. Each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. According to the first respondent working in the field of youth education, low self-esteem mostly originates from the influence of the family and the early upbringing. Negative early experiences are very important for the cause of low self-esteem. As for the reason of low-esteem keep going, the other participating psychologist that points out that the reasons for the persistence of low self-esteem are related to thinking patterns. Additionally, a psychologist named Melanie Fennell(1997) believes that our negative beliefs about ourselves lead to low self-esteem and that the two are mutually reinforcing. A negative belief is a pattern of thinking. What we can do to improve it is to develop more hobbies and to think differently about life than our old negative thinking patterns. By thinking more about ourselves we will find ways to improve self-esteem and build confidence.