Tattoos: 7 million people in Italy have them.

Italians are now a nation of tattooed people. A constantly and rapidly growing phenomenon that, according to data from the National Institute of Health, has now affected nearly 7 million people, equal to 12,8 percent of the population. If we also consider people who have had a tattoo and then decided to remove it (former tattooed people), this percentage rises to 13,2 percent., with a significant majority of women.

The interesting thing about these official data concerns the typology of tattooed people: it's not true that it's a typically youthful habit. The population group with the most tattoos is between 35 and 44 years old (23,9 percent of the population), while tattooed people in the 12-17 age group make up 7,7 percent of the population. According to a 2018 survey by Dalia Research, Italy has the highest rate of people with tattoos in the world, followed by Sweden and the United States.

The boom in tattoos, well explained in its motivations by Censis, which included the phenomenon already in Report on the social situation in Italy 2017A language, that of tattoos spread all over the body, which in some cases, certainly not always, can have motivations other than aesthetics, and represents a form of narcissism, of a frantic and made-up search for physical beauty, with do-it-yourself methods, of an Ego that cannot find other easy outlets such as that of painting the body.

All this is backed by a veritable tattoo industry (ISTAT has included tattoos in the Italian shopping basket), contaminated by makeshift and dangerous centers. Hence the double risk of tattoos: a way to disfigure the body, even irreversibly, and wasteful spending.

Read also:

• How to safely remove tattoos
• Why not get tattoos in the summer?
• Tattoos may increase cancer risk