Public uses altered body in Mexican urban youth

Abstract

The present article inquires into the construction of the aesthetics and the resulting subjectivities in urban mexican young men through the tattoo. The question of investigation that articulates the present work is related to the question: why certain urban youngsters, men and women, are tattooing their bodies? The method used for the reconstruction of the notables (the resulting subjectivities) was an interpretive one.

The investigation was exploratory and ethnographic, because of the almost inexistence of researches in Mexico that consider the offer (making tattoos) and the demand (the tattooed ones) in the proper historical-social context of the meanings associated with the practice of tattoo as an aesthetic expression in the alteration of the bodies. The instruments used in the construction of data were related newspapers, and the observation of contexts; and a guide used for interviews in depth in order to find out the meanings that social actors themselves gave to their own practices.