Thinking about getting a tattoo? They may have more benefits than we originally thought.
The study, “Tattoos, Gender and Well-Being Among American College Students,” was conducted by Texas Tech University sociology professor Jerome Koch. Dr. Koch examined 2,395 college students from six public universities in the U.S. to test “the correlations between escalating numbers of tattoos and depression, suicide ideation, number of suicide attempts and self-esteem,” according to Mic.
“The only significant correlations we found [were] that women with four or more tattoos had a statistically significant elevation in self-esteem over others in the study,” Dr. Koch said.
Although women with four or more tattoos had higher self-esteem than other in the study, they also had more previous suicide attempts. How do these two go hand in hand?
Women may actually be using their tattoos as a means to overcome past experiences or feelings of depression, Koch found. Women have used tattoos as a method of self-recovery by “moving on from a dark period by reclaiming their bodies as their own with art, which then sends their self-esteem through the roof,” Mic reports. This can include covering scars from surgeries, domestic abuse or self-harm. It makes sense—After going through something terrible, a tattoo is a permanant reminder that you survived and could do so again.
“This study is, we believe, the first of its kind in reporting elevated levels of positive emotion as connected to higher levels of body art acquisition,” Koch said.
Perhaps more research on this topic will cause people to do away with negative stereotypes about women with tattoos. We can only hope that people will come to accept that some women use tattoos as a form of personal expression or as a means of overcoming hardships.