Should minors be allowed to get tattoos essay

WHY DO TEENAGERS GET TATTOOS? A RESPONSE 2

Why Do Teenagers Get Tattoos? A Response to Andrés Martin

Sean Barry

Pearson College

Why Do Teenagers Get Tattoos? A Response to Andrés Martin

My sister has one. My brother has one. I have one. Just take a stroll downtown and you will see how commonplace it is for someone to be decorated with tattoos and hung with piercings. In fact, hundreds of teenagers, every day, allow themselves to be etched upon or poked into. What’s the cause of this phenomenon? Why do so many teenagers get tattoos?

Dr. Andrés Martin has answered this question from a psychiatrist’s perspective in his article “On Teenagers and Tattoos,” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Martin advises fellow psychiatrists to think of teenage tattooing as a constructive opportunity for clinicians to understand teenagers better. Martin examines three different reasons that teenagers get tattoos. First, he argues that tattoos help teenagers establish unique identities by giving them a sense of control over their evolving bodies and over an environment perceived as adverse and domineering. Second, he believes that a tattooed image often symbolizes the teen’s relationship to a significant concept or person, making the relationship more visible and real. Finally, says Martin, because teens are disturbed by modern society’s mobility and fragmentation and because they have an “intense longing for rootedness and stability” (p. 112), the irreversible nature of tattoos may give them a sense of permanence. Martin concludes that tattoos can be a meaningful record of survived teen experiences. Although Martin’s analysis has relevance and some strengths, I think he overgeneralizes and over-romanticizes teenage tattooing, leading him to overlook other causes of teenage tattooing such as commercialization and teenagers’ desire to identify with a peer group as well as achieve an individual identity.

Some of Martin’s points seem relevant and realistic and match my own experiences. I agree that teenagers sometimes use tattoos to establish their own identities. When my brother, sister, and I all got our tattoos, we were partly asserting our own independence from our parents. Martin’s point about the symbolic significance of a tattoo images also connects with my experiences. A Hawaiian guy in my dorm has a fish tattooed on his back, which he says represents his love of the ocean and the spiritual experience he has when he scuba dives.

Martin, speaking as a psychiatrist to other psychiatrists, also provides psychological insights into the topic of teen tattooing even though this psychological perspective brings some limitations, too. In this scholarly article, martin’s purpose is to persuade fellow psychiatrists to think of adolescent tattooing in positive rather than judgmental terms. Rather than condemn teens for getting tattoos, he argues that discussion of the tattoos can provide useful insights into the needs and behavior of troubled teens (especially males). But this perspective is also a limitation because the teenagers he sees are mostly youth in psychiatric counseling, particularly teens struggling with the absence of or violent loss of a parent and those who have experience with gangs and prison-terms. This perspective leads him to overgeneralize. As a psychological study of a specific group of troubled teens, this article is informative. However, it does not apply as well to most teenagers who are getting tattoos today.

Besides overgeneralizing, Martin also seems to romanticize teenage tattooing. Why else would a supposedly scientific article begin and end with quotations from Moby Dick? Martin seems to imply a similarity between today’s teenagers and the sailor hero Ishmael who wandered the seas looking for personal identity. In quoting Moby Dick, Martin seems to value tattooing as a suitable way for teenagers to record their experiences. Every tattoo, for Martin, has deep significance. Thus, Martin casts tattooed teens as romantic outcasts, loners, and adventurers like Ishmael.

In contrast to Martin, I believe that teens are influenced by the commercial nature of tattooing, which has become big business aimed at their age group. Every movie or television star or beauty queen who sports a tattoo sends the commercial message that tattoos are cool: “A tattoo will help you be successful, sexy, handsome, or attractive like us.” Tattoo parlors are no longer dark dives in seedy, dangerous parts of cities, but appear in lively commercial districts; in fact, there are several down the street from the university. Teenagers now buy tattoos the way they buy other consumer items.

Furthermore, Martin doesn’t explore teenagers’ desire not only for individuality but also for peer group acceptance. Tattooing is the “in” thing to do. Tattooing used to be defiant and daring, but now it is popular and more acceptable among teens. I even know a group of sorority women who went together to get tattoos on their ankles. As tattooing has become more mainstreamed, rebels/trendsetters have turned to newer and more outrageous practices, such as branding and extreme piercings. Meanwhile, tattoos bring middle-of-the-road teens the best of both worlds: a way to show their individuality and simultaneously to be accepted by peers.

In sum, Martin’s research is important because it examines psychological responses to teens’ inner conflicts. It offers partial explanations for teens’ attraction to tattoos and promotes a positive, noncritical attitude toward tattooing. But I think the article is limited by its overgeneralizations based on the psychiatric focus, by its tendency to romanticize tattooing, by its lack of recognition of the commercialization of tattooing, and by its underemphasis on group belonging and peer pressure. Teen tattooing is more complex than even Martin makes it.

Reference

Martin, A. (1997). On teenagers and tattoos. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36. 860-61. In J. D. Ramage, J. C. Bean, and J. Johnson (2009), The Allyn & Bacon guide to writing (5th ed.) (pp. 110-113). New York, NY: Longman.