TATTOO PRACTICE ON PIGSKIN
The tattoo practice on pigskin is an outdated and unnecessary way for learning and practicing the art of tattooing!
Pigskin has been a common and labeled normal “material” to practice tattooing as the skin of pigs is claimed to be close to human skin. Not only is it outdated, but an unethical and disgusting way of doing it. Especially nowadays where we evolved a better consciousness and more sensitivity to the suffering done to others for our purposes.
Hold your breath if you’re going to say “but the skin used is a byproduct” or “the pig was already dead”, because does it make any difference? The individual shouldn’t have been used, exploited, and killed in the first place. The animal’s life was forcefully taken from him*her for multiple reasons, which doesn’t make this immoral act any way better. You wouldn’t use puppy skin to practice tattooing on if those species were murdered in gas chambers for their flesh, would you?
Many do not even know how gruesome it is to murder other animals and skin them. Pigs are electrocuted or suffocated and then have their throats slit. Their thick hair then must be removed by throwing them into a hot water bath (60-70 °C) for several minutes or by a scraping procedure that involves body contact with simultaneous washing to remove the hair. Subsequently, the remaining hairs are removed by buffing and singeing.
There are and have always been many other ways to practice how a tattoo gun and certain equipment works, how much pressure needs to be applied to get the right depth and results, and to apply ink and adapt to different skin types (as in texture), and body curvatures.
Technical approaches, so I researched, can be practiced on fruits like oranges, honeydew melons, and grapefruits, fake skin (lacking skin tones tho), or simply on people giving consent.
To top it all, I even found a recipe online on how to make artificial skin for tattooing using only vegan glue, water, your preferred shade of skin color, and cornstarch as a base. The possibilities seem endless and proof that it is in no way necessary (aside from the ethical aspect) tattooing on pig skin for practice.
📷 @rauschbild_
with @loweraustriaanimals