A body art work that has been misunderstood

by Soh Li Nah

Michelle is a 21-year-old skinny girl. She is dainty and cute in many people’s view. However, under her clothing there is actually an “owl” tattooed to her back, that symbolizes her hidden desire looking for freedom.

Society has bad perspective of people with tattoo on one’s body. Even in drama, gangster and mafia are not only masculine; there will be tattoo all over their body. In the past, a person had to go for tattoo before they join the mafia group to prove there are fearless.  Tattoo can even be used as a logo to identify the gangster group.

Today, although people become open minded, there are still some of them cannot accept it, especially the elder generation. This problem is also happened on Michelle with her parent.

“They are unhappy of my tattoo, they blamed me. My mum even cried when she helped me applied the lotion after tattoo since the that is on my backside,” Michelle’s parents are traditional Chinese parents which believes that the body are granted by parents and therefore they should appreciate the body.

Michelle emphasized that as a child of parent, we should understand their feeling because they really love and care for us since they gave birth to us. So, she never wants to conceal the truth that she went for tattoo from her parents.

“Honest and communication is very important. Now, they already accept me.” She said.

This is the first tattoo on Michelle's body. It represents freedom and independent as her birthday gift for herself.

Inform is not a right way
From counseling perspective, Lim Dao Yong, counselor from UTAR mentioned that the communication is a two-way traffic. He claimed that parent nowadays should change the feudal way of education, and try to be more understanding of youngsters’ thinking.

“We cannot have the impression that our children are ignorant keep thinking that children don’t know what they are doing, don’t forget it’s an era of information, they know the things more than what we know, maybe we are the one that are outdated and over conservative,” he said.

However, he advised teenagers should be honestly expressing their feeling to their parent before they go for tattoo. 

He said there are many teenagers use the wrong way to communicate with their parents.

“They like to straight away go for tattoo, and then show to their parent after they get a tattoo, it’s just informed, but not communicate.” He said.

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