This is an international hi!
So I've lived in London for nearly 3 years now but originally I'm from Poland. For a long time I'd been neutral about tattoos, found some of them beautiful, some of them ugly, never been critical or specially in favour of them either. Possibly because my parents tried to encourage me to get a tattoo (ironically, none of them has a tattoo up until this day!) when I was 16, so for me somehow the idea of getting a tattoo to be 'different' or to 'rebel' against my parents just wasn't there (don't get me wrong, now I don't think that tattoos are a sign of rebellion but as a 16 year old this is what I thought). I'm also scared of pain (hate pain and cold!), so that was another aspect of tattooing that was really putting me off it. However, around a year ago my perspective on tattoos started changing. I started travelling more, being more independent and experiencing new things. I went to Australia for an exchange from university and this is when I decided that I wanted to get a tattoo. I suddenly became fascinated by them, they started to have a completely different meaning to me and the pain didn't play much role any more.
My adventure with tattoos started when I went to Thailand last summer. I was quite tempted to get a tattoo done there because I knew it would be cheaper than anywhere in London. I spent a month in Thailand and it was the best time of my life. I had gone through so much before I got there and had experienced so many amazing things in Thailand so it made a perfect sense to me to get a tattoo done in a place that really opened my eyes and was a breaking point in my life. I did loads of research before choosing a tattoo parlour (in the end went to Max Tattoo in Bangkok), however, I spent a little bit less time on choosing the design. I had loads of ideas but ended up getting a pocket watch with a map of the world in the background on my forearm. The piece is beautiful and I'm really happy that I had it done! I've had it for just as long as 8 months and any time I feel upset or lose motivation, I look at it and remember what I felt at the time of getting it and how much it is to put effort into things you really want.
I have only one tattoo for now, but I'm thinking of getting more in the future. For now, however, my adventure with tattoos is continuing as my university project.
I'm a 3rd year Psychology student and I'm conducting a research on personality and attitudes towards tattoos.
I was wondering if I could post a link to my study on this forum, so I would be able to obtain data from a reliable source of people who are truly interested and passionate about tattoos?
The study is a short questionnaire which takes about 15 minutes to complete. I'd really appreciate your time if you complete it.
https://cityss.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eaO6FsmQ8VzCdJX
I would also appreciate if I got permission to post the link to the study in other threads in this forum. I am not going to do so without a permission from Admins of the forum out of respect to the community and I don't want to spam the forum.