By Jordy Ginsburg
When Cal Poly freshman Aly Arkin Facetimed her mom during her second week away from home, she started the call with a warning: “Mom, I am going to show you something and you cannot be mad.” Then she showed her mom her brand new nipple piercings.
The body modification was Arkin’s way of marking her transition to adulthood after being confined by Covid-19 restrictions during her last year of high school.
“I needed something that was going to excite me, and I was like, I am out of the house, I am 18, I am an adult, I am gonna do it,” Arkin said. “It was just all of that combined that totally built it up for me.” Her parents took the news pretty well, she said.
Cal Poly has welcomed back socially deprived first and second-year students this fall. Many of these incoming students have spent most of the COVID pandemic under the same roofs as their parents for months when they should have been experiencing their first tastes of freedom. So as soon as they say their goodbyes to their parents, they are cashing in their first-time freedom cards. For some, that means getting body modifications.
That trend has been welcome news to local tattoo and piercing artists. “[Students] are used to being managed by their parents and they do not have that, so they are looking around wild-eyed like they are in a candy store,” said Christian Valentine, head piercer at Tiger Rose Tattoo, which just moved from Pismo Beach to a location next to Cal Poly.
“I have been piercing for a really long time in many towns and this is still a better, more chill vibe,” he said. “Everybody is just happy here and everyone comes in knowing what they want and then they leave happy and it is a very easy day.”
After interviewing people who had gotten their first tattoos, Professor Katherine Irwin in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado wrote the article, “Legitimating the First Tattoo: Moral Passage through Informal Interaction.” “Many respondents suggested that becoming tattooed symbolized liberation, independence, and freedom. This was especially true for individuals who felt inhibited by the conventional social opportunities available to them,” Irwin said in the article. “[Students] began to see getting tattoos as a way to step outside of the dominant peer politics surrounding them.”
Another way students have practiced self-expression is through hair. Since it can be less permanent than a tattoo, it is an alternative for college students who come in looking for a “change.”
Salon 62 in downtown San Luis Obispo is a hair salon that saw an influx of college students during the beginning of the school year. “A lot of first or second years coming in are wanting a change for the first time,” said stylist Brianna Archer. “Either their parents did not necessarily let them or they finally have their own money, and it is really cool to be part of that. You know, it is my form of art and they get to express themselves through their hair so it is pretty rewarding.”
Archer recently gave one student green hair, and another a halo-shaped headband of bright red that goes around the entire hairline, from front to back.
Psychology freshman Tristan Linker took a more drastic approach: he shaved it off completely. In an attempt to “reinvent himself,” he took away what he felt was his best feature. “It allowed me to focus less on my appearance and more on what makes me happy. It has eliminated a lot of stress from my life,” Linker said.
“Personally I had never shaved my head as I was nervous about what everyone at my small high school would think, but at college people tend to mind their own business,” Linker said. “No one is concerned how you look or what you wear, they just care about you as an individual.”
