Sunday, February 22, 2015

Tattoos as a Way of Branding

This week in class, we discussed mainly about tattoos, and more specifically tattoos on girls. Although I have always been a fan and admirer of tattoos; however, after our class discussion, I was able to see another side and perspective about certain types of tattoos (which are not very desirable, especially for women). Most of the time, I wouldn’t mind to see girls with a few tattoos (actually is something that I find attractive), but after discussing about using tattoos as a form of dominance (on girls) it kind of made me question tattoos. Despite hearing cases in the past about girls getting used as products, I never paid too much attention to it, but finding out that many of these girls are forced to get tattoos in order to get branded by their “owner” or pimp was eye opening. I don’t want to act too naive when it comes to what has happened and probably still happening in less fortunate places around the world, but this was actually the first time I heard about girls getting branded with tattoos by their procurer, and I have no doubt that many cases like this exist. I believe using tattoos in order to brand girls will cause a lot of mental and psychological pain on the victims (along with the physical pain they already experience) because it will remind them of the actions they must make in order to survive. Tattoos are made with permanent ink, which means it will stay with you forever, and I can’t imagine a girl having to look at a tattoo on their skin telling them that they belong to someone as if they were an object. It is sometimes hard to see and imagine how cruel some human beings can be to others. Sex slavery is already bad as it is, and making the girls get tattoos to let other procurers that they already belong to someone is really downgrading them to another level. We also discussed that some girls are forced to get tattoos as a form of punishment when trying to escape prostitution. The procurer of the girls who try to escape will brand them with tattoos as a reminder that they can’t run away. Some girls who cannot afford their exit from prostitution will try and escape, but if they aren’t successful they will have an even worse time than they already had. Absolutely nobody should ever have to go through this kind of misery and more actions should be done to stop and avoid such circumstances. I am still a fan of tattoos and still find it attractive when girls have one or a couple tattoos, but seen how tattoos can be abused and used for the wrong reasons made me realize that tattoos aren’t always as great. I do not consider forced tattoos as a form of art, but I see it rather as a form to belittle and humiliate another human being.

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