243 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 3 historically tattooed themselves to show Roman enslavers their devotion to Christ. Devotional tattoos were comprised of images and symbols representing religious themes (e.g., a cross), often used as a source of strength and identity. Foundational tattoos represent significant moments in life, such as major life transitions (e.g., the date of one’s conversion) or mystical experiences. Morello’s last category is akin to devotional tattoos, but the relational category was created to represent devotion to loved ones, such as images or symbols of one’s children. In a related study examining the beliefs of religious women with and without tattoos, Morello et al. (2021) identified several common themes. This mixed methods study of 48 women in a conservative Christian college indicated that tattoos were not considered taboo by their religious friends and family and that tattooed participants spent considerable time determining which tattoo to receive. Predominant reasons for obtaining tattoos included social justice, friendship, and spiritual values. Summarizing previous research, individuals primarily choose tattoos to express their identity and uniqueness or to take ownership of their bodies. However, as discussed in the following section, there exists a bias against tattooed individuals. Tattoo Bias Unfortunately, with any practice that diverges from dominant cultural values, there is bias (Broussard & Harton, 2018). Although evidence indicates less discrimination against tattoos in the 21st century, negative judgments still exist explicitly and implicitly (Broussard & Harton, 2018; Williams et al., 2014; Zestcott et al., 2018). For example, Kaufmann and Armstrong (2022) found that law enforcement and the medical community hold negative sentiments toward tattooed people. They found that medical professionals who expressed negative judgments about their tattooed patients were likely to have patients not return. In fact, patients reported better rapport and increased trust with medical professionals who asked about the meaning of their tattoos. In other words, negative judgment toward, and lack of acknowledgment of, tattoos were detrimental to building the trust needed to provide optimal and consistent care (Kaufmann & Armstrong, 2022). Unjustly, women and people of color with tattoos experience more significant discrimination than men or White people (Baumann et al., 2016; Camacho & Brown, 2018; Guégen, 2013; Solanke, 2017). For example, women encounter prejudice when failing to gain employment due to having visible tattoos regardless of having excellent job qualifications (Al-Twal & Abuhassan, 2024; Henle et al., 2022). Moreover, women of color have experienced job discrimination by being questioned if they have visible or nonvisible tattoos (i.e., inkism), being forbidden from having or being required to cover tattoos regardless of cultural relevance (e.g., covering a traditional Māori tattoo), or being required to prove that they do not have tattoos—as alleged in a legal complaint against a Singaporean airline that required female attendants to wear a swimsuit and demonstrate to their employers that they did not have tattoos (Solanke, 2017, Chapter 8). Women with tattoos also experience ambivalent sexism due to rejecting the feminine apologetic (i.e., not acting or dressing in stereotypical feminine ways); they are also perceived as wanting attention and sexually promiscuous (Heckerl, 2021). For instance, Guéguen (2013) found that women on the beach displaying a lower-back butterfly tattoo were significantly more likely to be approached by men compared to women without the tattoo, and the men interviewed indicated that they thought they had a better chance of getting a date and having sex with the tattooed women than the nontattooed women (Guéguen, 2013). In other words, men in this study had the biased perception that women with tattoos were more sexually promiscuous than nontattooed women.
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