This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Tattoos have presently become works of art and body accessories, serving as anchors that help to solidify a sense of Self. The present exploratory and qualitative study aimed at understanding the mental representation of the skin in tattooed individuals and the role that tattoos play as a vehicle for the projected identity of the Self. The studied sample consisted of 387 individuals from both genders (146 males and 241 females), aged 16 to 72 years with exposed tattoos, who were invited to produce two self-portraits and a written answer on whether they had experienced any form of discrimination due to their tattooed body. We then proceeded to the content analysis of the 774 collected pictorial drawings, using a grid featuring analytical categories purposely conceived for this study. The results revealed that the self-portraits drawn before the subjects were tattooed showed less body investment than those drawn afterwards. However, the mental representation of the self-portraits drawn after the subjects were tattooed showed a fragmented idea of the body - only the body part that was tattooed was pictorially represented. Additionally, they were associated to a state of happiness (e.g. smile, movement, flexibility, freedom) and to a personal valorization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
