Sao Paulo (AFP) – In front of the mirror, Marlene admires her new flower tattoo on her left breast. She will finally stop seeing the circular scar left by breast cancer surgery, thanks to one of her initiatives in Brazil to overcome past wounds.
“Even if I didn’t show it, it hurt me to see that mark,” says Marlene Silva dos Santos, 51, who suffered from the disease about five years ago.
“But now I see flowers. I didn’t think it could look so pretty,” she adds excitedly, her skin still warm from the work of the needle.
For several hours, Marlene has endured without complaining her deep line, lying on the bed of a tattoo studio in Sao Paulo, whose color contrasts with her still latent memories of the hospital rooms where she was treated with chemotherapy.
The result is a floral design that descends down the torso until it becomes diamonds, while another small tattoo simulates the nipple that was lost in the operation in which a breast was removed and reconstituted.
Marlene is one of the almost 160 women whom Karlla Mendes from São Paulo tattooed as part of a social project to help symbolically close healed wounds.
Many of them are the product of illnesses, gender violence or accidents.
The initiative, called “We are diamonds,” began in 2017, with that gemstone as a symbol that Mendes turned into a personal brand.
“I want to convey (to these women) that we are like rough diamonds that we polish during our lives,” says the tattoo artist, who offers her work pro bono, in association with different NGOs.
“It is very gratifying to help them with my art to transform and change the meaning of a scar that brings back bad memories into something that makes them love each other,” says Mendes.
“Pride”
Kelly Pereira also wears flowers and diamonds, in her case, from her shoulder to her elbow, on the skin burned in a domestic accident that also left marks on her neck, chest and one hand.
The scars date back to her childhood, when fire engulfed her after her sister tried to cook by fanning the gas stove with alcohol while their mother was away at work.
“The scar tells my story; I’m not ashamed. It was something that I overcame and that made me be born again, and that makes me proud,” says Pereira, 36.
Therefore, the tattoo was not a way to hide, but “a motivation to talk more” about his brand.
“I want to show that we can (…) transform our lives with a gesture that not only marks our flesh, but also our soul,” he reflects.
Overcome traumas and complexes
In Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas Gerais, southeast), Augusto Molinari also offers a free solution to those seeking an aesthetic cure for moments of difficulty that are etched into the skin.
For example, he tells AFP, he printed a colored tattoo on a woman victim of gender violence, whose husband caused her serious burns, as well as people with traces of self-mutilation.
“You see a glow on the person’s face when they look in the mirror and they feel complete seeing that their body has changed, which transforms the pain,” says Molinari.
Tattoos “help many to overcome image or self-esteem traumas.”
Dulcineia Soares, 66, lost a phalanx of her left big finger at the age of six in a sugar cane grinder, from which its juice, a very popular drink in Brazil, is obtained.
On that mutilated finger, exposed every time he plays a piece of music on the keyboard, his art and his work, Molinari simulated a nail.
“Why didn’t I think about it before? It gave me a feeling of freedom, I don’t have to hide my finger anymore,” celebrates Soares, holding out his hands.
Betania Sartori, a medical specialist in plastic surgery, explains that tattooing reconstituted skin on a wound “is safe, under some conditions.”
“Scars that are still active, that is with hypertrophy (inflamed or reddened) or keloid (thickened),” that is, “still producing collagen,” should not be tattooed.
The scars can take more than one or two years to mature, that is, to stop looking red or hard, clarifies this professional who advises Mendes.
Marlene looks at herself again, smiling: “It’s the end of a cycle,” she says, before putting on her shirt.
© 2022 AFP
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