Tattoos, body experience, and body image boundary among violent male offenders

The author compared a measure of body image boundary and medically significant bodily experiences between 21 tattooed and 24 nontattooed men incarcerated for violent crimes. Although the tattooed and nontattooed subjects had no significant differences in their body boundary concepts or most other bodily experiences, the tattooed men were found to have a different distribution of scars on their bodies. Upon more detailed examination, it seemed that these different distributions could be explained by the observation that the tattooed subjects were the only ones with self-inflicted cuts. This finding further supports the notion that tattoos, despite their ostensibly decorative quality, may be a form of self-mutilation.