Body piercing, tattooing, self-esteem, and body investment in adolescent girls.

Abstract

Postmodern perspectives of body piercing and tattooing interpret these as signifiers of the self and attempts to attain mastery and control over the body in an age of increasing alienation. In this exploratory study, 79 adolescent females, ages 15 to 18 (M = 16.08, SD = 1.36), completed the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI; Coopersmith, 1981), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, 1978), the Body Investment Scale (BIS; Orbach & Mikulincer, 1998), and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI-2; Spielberger, 1996). Analyses revealed that body piercings and tattoos were significantly correlated with trait anger (Angry Reaction subscale scores). A multiple regression analysis indicated that three of the dependent variables (Trait Anger-Reaction, BDI, and Feeling subscale of the BIS) were predictors of the total number of body piercings and tattoos.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 92 citations exist upstream.