Browsing by Subject "tattoos"

Social and cultural interaction is a very important aspect of the modern society. Body modifications are a clear sample of this kind of interaction. The process of body modifying has been started as a cultural issue many ages ago and remains current nowadays. The thesis explores modern nature of body modifications in terms of Helsinki, Finland. Body modifications are the phenomenon that has always existed in the human civilization and it should be studied properly as any developing social tendency. That research covers such aspects as motivation and inspiration for having a body modification and relation of the modern society to body modified people. The research is conducted in 2016-2018 in Helsinki. I used qualitative research method in order to analyze deeper every particular case. The base of the research is ten personal interviews conducted on the same questionnaire. The respondents have different gender, age, professional area and personal background, the only common point for them is living in Helsinki at the moment of the interview. The questionnaire consists of eight questions. The first questions explore the modifications that the respondent has: the age when the respondent got the first modification, the motivation for body modifying, the meaning and kind of current body modification. The second part of the questionnaire explores the respondent’s personal aspects. Facing criticism in the society, relationship with a family and friends, identity formation in terms of the body modifying and regret issues are in the list of questions. The interviews also divided according to gender factor. Five of the interviews are male and five are female. The gender factor has a great influence on the research. The interviews were analyzed in two groups, female and male. The results of each group were compared for the comparative analysis. The comparative analysis showed that women face criticism toward their appearance more often than men and stereotypes on the base of appearance are also more connected with femininity image. There is also a correlation between the gender and location, size or kind of a body modification that the respondents have. In terms of that research I explored so-called “the blue disease” that means addiction to the process of modifying body. According to the results, the age when the first body modification was made might have effect on following inclination to “the blue disease”. For proving of my hypothesis I used other sources in the field of tattoos and gender studies. Its overview and correlation between these studies and my research helped me to clarify the data I collected from the interviews. At its broadest, we can say that society becomes more and more tolerant to body modified people though some gender related stereotypes are still exist. Body modifications develop and change. Its historical sacral and social meaning remains in some way but nowadays body modifications are more about the perception of beauty and ways of self-expression. New kinds of body modifications such as eye balls tattoo or silicone implants appear often, so the body modification phenomenon will remain current for a long time.