*Content warning: topic includes self-harm, cancer, and surgery
Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog! As you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Tattoos can be used to cover surgery scars, like those from mastectomies, and can help those begin to heal mentally. Scar cover up tattoos are starting to become more and more popular for people to get. Sometimes the scar tissue is too thick for the ink to last or to even stay in. It all depends on the scar itself. This week’s blog is all about the different ways people use tattoos to help themselves heal mentally and make them feel better about themselves.
Mastectomy scars
One of the most common and popular scars people cover with tattoos are scars from a mastectomy. After a mastectomy many women feel like some of their womanhood, or what makes them feel like a woman, has been taken away. Mastectomy tattoos are a great way to help cover the scars and help the women feel empowered again. The goal of doing tattoos over the scars are not only to help cover them for some women but, also to help bring some of that feeling of femininity back to them. Typically, the designs are florals or some other more feminine design to go over the scarred or general area. Lately, artists have started to be able to tattoo realistic nipples on these women as well. Any support or tattoo that helps these strong women feel better about themselves is worth doing. This website gives more information on decorative mastectomy tattoos.
Self-harm scars
People that have self-harmed in the past usually have scars from it and if it is from their past, they may want to cover them to rid themselves of that memory. The tattoo cover up can help people heal mentally from a dark time in their lives. A lot of the times people don’t want to see that once they are past that time in their life since it can be upsetting or even tempting. Getting a cover up tattoo can help people that used to self-harm heal from that time in their life, move past it, and not be tempted to relapse.
Amputation scars
If the skin is able to be tattooed, some people will even tattoo over an amputation and sometimes make the site into something. Sometimes the skin or even nerves will already be so damaged from surgeries that the ink doesn’t stay in place or the tattoo is so incredibly painful that they can’t stand getting tattooed. These cover up tattoos are a great way for people to feel better about themselves and possibly begin to heal from a traumatic moment. People will sometimes have a design tattooed that represents what happened that led to the amputation. Some people don’t want that moment in time tattooed on them so, they may get some other design that they just like but still makes them feel better about their amputation.
Surgery scars
Scar cover up tattoos aren't just limited to mastectomy scars. People use them to cover or even distract from other common surgery scars just because, they don't like them or are embarrassed by them. Some people may want to even highlight them, though. It all depends on how the person feels about the scars and what they want the tattoo to do for them. Personally, I have a good-sized scar on my back from surgery when I was younger. Part of why I got a tattoo on my back was because of it. I want to sort of distract from it and give me a reason to like that area more.
Other insecurities
People have scars from other things than surgery or self-harm like dog or shark bites, wounds, or even from the effects of smoking. They may use tattoos to help hide, distract from, or completely cover them. The insecurities could be scars could be from an accident or injury that someone isn’t proud of. Other insecurities could just be a blemish or birthmark that someone doesn’t like and wants to cover. If it is a small blemish or scar, it could be easy to hide with a tattoo with little to no problem. If it is a larger blemish, it could probably still be covered; it just depends. The larger or deeper the scar, the more scar tissue which makes the area to tattoo harder to do like mentioned previously. Tattoos are a great way to distract or cover a small insecurity someone might have.
This video is from the show Ink Master when they did various scar cover up tattoos for women that had mastectomies and others that had scars from various things:
Comments