The Prejudiced Look at the Practice of Tattooing

The word stigma is used to refer to disqualifying attributes based on body signs that were inflicted on slaves, prisoners or traitors. This practice < in the West has been related to disqualifying attributes for those who tattoo or are tattooed without their will. The stigma to this practice comes from learning processes with which we formalize, integrating these valuations into common sense. The unfounded nature of these discrediting attributes results from stereotypes with which social control is intended through control of the body. The first interpretative proposals of tattooing were made by Cesare Lombroso in 1876 in Italy. In the twentieth century continued the study of tattooing by criminalistics associating tattoos and crime, continuing with prisoners. In the mid-twentieth century proposed that tattooing was associated with sadomasochistic practices. To this fact we must add What approach has been based on the classification of tattoos. This type of interpretation suffers from a serious reflection, using arguments proposed since the nineteenth century, to which for convenience people returned to them a repeated mechanical application. These proposals do not take into consideration other aspects of behavior that are present in the decision to get tattooed and that are related to the way we build our identity. Nor do they consider analyzing the society where these social practices are developed. In these works, they also do not take into account aspects such as tattoos being imposed and not being the result of a personal decision; nor that it is a typical practice of societies where trademarks are used as a distinction, as a therapeutic or protective; resource as well as an aesthetic expression.