Body ink and piercings

Description

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A picture of one of my dads tattoos and piercings.


Sociological Imagination

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Tattoos and piercings have been around for thousands of years, all cultures and all types of people get tattoos. Tattoos and piercings are a way of expressing yourself to the world, making you unique, your own person and different looking from anyone else. Does painting our body with irreversible ink make us different from society?

The sociological imagination describes the ability to connect seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces to the incidents of an individuals life. This is a main reason to why people get tattoos, something happens to them in their life, whether it be a near death experience or a memory they never want to forget , usually caused by social activities. In Western culture and society back in the day it was wrong to "ruin" your body with irreversible ink, it was a sign of rebel and was frowned upon, it was to remove you from the normal, conventional society, and where those people now had to deal with the reactions of the people in "normal society." Some companies such as Walt Disney wouldn't even hire someone, no matter how qualified, or how much schooling they have had, Walt Disney would not hire them, to uphold a "normal" image for their company and that they don't hire "freaks." Tattoos are now widely respected throughout the world, its now viewed as a way of art , and people are astounded by the work that some people put on themselves ,the tattoo and piercing industry is booming, especially in North America, which is making the tattoo/ piercing industry very respected. My dad was very against tattoo's and piercings up until a couple years ago, when he realized that they were "socially excepted" and went outside the boundaries of his job, where he wasn't supposed to be tatted up.

Although tattoos and other forms of body modification are getting much more accepted around the world, we still live in a generation where the older, more classic folk , see tattoos and piercings as a prison sign, anyone who has a tattoo is a bad person and feared, but in my opinion it lets people be who they are, sociology is a study of human behavior , and tattoos can play a big role in a humans behavior, it makes them proud to be who they are, and I'm glad body modifications are being more socially excepted, they express who you are as a human being and allows people to comfortably live in a social world.