‘Ewww look what she's wearing!' Possibly one of the most common phrases of the 21st century, writes Matt Dunbar, of Logan Park High School.
Why you may ask? Because today it seems, image is everything.
Every image is socially judged and from just glancing at someone you immediately categorise them and decide what kind of person they are from that first glance.
Some image consultants believe that people make their initial judgement of someone within the first 4 seconds of meeting them and then spend the next several hours trying to find evidence to back up this judgement.
If someone has a black side fringe and some facial piercings they're 'emo'. If they have dreads they smoke dope. Short skirt and a tank top they're skanky.
And if they're covered in tattoos they are probably a bit dodgy.
The first 3 are quite common stereotypes and the last one really gets to me.
Firstly because it is almost certainly untrue.
So where did this judgement come from? That people wearing incredible body art are a bit rough? And why do tattoos influence people's decisions about others so dramatically?
Damian Burtanese, my media studies student teacher has some amazing tattoos. The most noticeable would be his full Maori sleeve covering his right arm and the cartoon bear on the inside of his left fore arm.
These tattoos hold significant cultural and family meaning for him. Yet he has to cover them up completely when he goes to job interviews to stop being harshly judged.
He told me that last week while he was buying firewood the man selling it was checking out his tattoos and asked what Damian did for a living.
When the reply was ‘I'm a teacher,' the man was very taken aback.
My dad is a partner in an accounting firm in town and one of the rules is that no one can have any visible tattoos at any time.
Because if someone walked into dad's office and he had tattoos creeping down his arms they would probably run out screaming and immediately change accountants.
Well, maybe not that dramatic, but their judgemental reaction would be equally offensive.
They would have made the assumption that dad was an unfit accountant just because of the way that he looks.
We should be asking how would tattoos change his ability at all?
In society we are constantly told to 'treat people the way that you want to be treated' and to 'not discriminate.' It appears that these expressions are really lip service.
Many people discriminate and judge others on superficial things.
This is proved by the way that people who wear tattoos are treated like second class citizens.
You can't turn someone down for a job based on race, colour or creed.
But can you turn someone down for having tattoos? Hell yeah!
- Matt Dunbar is a Year 13 student at Logan Park High School
