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  • 2016-06-03 (xsd:date)
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  • Are Eyeball Tattoos a Real Thing? (en)
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  • Humans have been modifying their bodies as long as there have been tools available to do so. Tattoos, piercings, corseting, and other practices generally characterized as transgressive actually come with centuries of historical weight, and even newer types of body modification generally have precedents. Eyeball tattooing is no exception to this, despite popping up mostly in news stories after 2015, when an inmate in Alaska appeared in court with one of his sclera evidently tattooed: Jason Barnum, also known as Eyeball, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for shooting a police officer. His face and eye tattoos came up during the sentencing hearings as well; the prosecution said that his tattoos showed a specific behavior pattern, and Barnum argued that poor decisions earlier in life had left him unable to find work. At any rate, eye tattoos are real -- and permanent. The BBC weighed in on the practice of eyeball tattooing in 2015, concluding that the tattoos are a strikingly visible way to proclaim one's individuality to the world: In 2007, a handful of stories ran on the practice of eyeball tattooing, mostly focusing on a tattoo artist named Luna Cobra who tattooed Garth's sclera and who claims to have invented the modern practice: The practice of tattooing the sclera or the cornea (mostly the cornea, over the iris of the eye) stretches back to at least the first century A.D. and has been documented as a cosmetic enhancement (e.g., a way to alleviate unsightly scars on the iris) since then: However, the procedure of coloring the whites of the eyes for elective cosmetic purposes has gained ground since Luna Cobra apparently developed it. That procedure is slightly less invasive, consisting of sandwiching pigments between the sclera and the conjunctiva of the eye, rather than depositing bits of ink just beneath the upper layer, as with a more traditional tattoo: The end result of this method permanently turns the whites of the eyes another color to create an otherworldly, striking look. (en)
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