POST 10 : TATTOOS & GANGS

Is very well known that in todays society, especially between the young people, is more and more attractive to be as lawbreaker as possible. Maybe these people don't want or are not able to live in this way of life, but it just have an interesting aspects that catch the eye of the youth.

Why do you think more and more people wear tattoos (regardless of whether they belong to gangs or not)?

Presonally speaking, at first sight, I think that tattoos are very attractive to people because it's a way, first of all, to represent their thoughts but as well another way of rebelion and individuality, something that people are looking for since the beginning of the world. To do not belong to a group makes people think they are original and special. Tattoos are one of those ways to leave this groups to join others. But actually, at the end, everyone keep having the same tattoos so we don't know who becomes, then, a rulebreaker, breaking the walls of standardisation and becoming really unique. Maybe before but in any case, nowadays, I don't think we should relate tattoos with gang street bands because even old people (who should not be in favor of these kind of actions) have sometimes some tattoos.

Why do young people join gangs? 

As we have already said, people are constantly trying to be different, or to belong to some groups and not to others. In this phase where you are young and you don't know what you want to be, and what to do with your future, young people, might have the necesity to join a group where they will be accepted. Gangs may open their doors to those guys and show them a world which is not true at all, they promise them things that will never happen and a life they will never reach, just because this not the right way to do it. Those young people obnubilated by the shinning world they "can" reach, and in their situations, where they are totally lost, they will join this kind of corporations without a thought.

What link can you see between both topics and the notion of power?

Maybe the posibility of a person to change his body the way that person wants could be a kind of power; They have power on them, but on the others as well because, as far as I'm concerned, I think that doing what you want with your body do not let the others to tell you what to do, nobody can't say to do not put ink in your skin, because your decision, so in that way your are prohibing other people to do what they want to do. On the other hand, we have the gangs, I truely think that the manipulation that young people suffer by these kind of groups is an incredible form of power, because as it was said in the Newsweek, to leave a gang is extremely difficult. And I think it's because they use things to retain people, as they can't leave these groups, like family threats and these kind of staff that could make the manipulated people be affread of leaving these gangs.

To put it in a nutshell, I, personally speaking, think that tattoos do not have anymore the same image that thay once had. Now, even if I think we should evolve much more in tattoos mindset, we are in front of a era much more permissive in the tattoos topic.