«At 58 years old and after a breast operation, I dared to go topless»: this is what paramedic tattoos look like

"I can finally go to the public pool and change in the changing room without fear of people looking at me and seeing me as something strange." Arantxa admits that after having undergone a radical lateral mastectomy, the result of an operation due to breast cancer, she felt "like an alien who is missing something." Browsing through Instagram, she discovered a paramedical tattoo artist who changed her life. "I am delighted with the result. Not only would I do it again, but I have recommended it to a friend who was in a similar situation to me," she explains. Resident in Madrid, Arantxa is one of the people who have decided to get a paramedical tattoo, an action that has noticeably improved her day-to-day life.

The paramedical tattoo is far from what usually comes to mind when one thinks of a common tattoo: it has no artistic intention, but is done with the aim of covering up some problem that has arisen within a medical field. Whether due to an illness or an operation, an intervention of this nature is applied when a part of the body has been affected and the patient wants to change it. In these cases, the aim of the paramedical tattoo artists is to restore the affected part with ink. According to the specialists, it is like making a drawing that does not want to be seen. On the contrary, what it wants is to go unnoticed: "What we do is a tattoo that is not intended to look like a tattoo," explains Isa Cercós, a tattoo artist with a studio in the Sant Gervasi neighbourhood and the person who tattooed Arantxa.

One of the most requested jobs, and which is also Cercós's great specialty, has to do with the breast, an area that, according to the specialist, is very grateful to work on because of the change in the color and texture of the areola. Other cases that he encounters are the scar resulting from abdominoplasty – long and extensive scars that need to heal well – or a navel. "My job is to deceive the eye: I can make it look like there is a navel when there is no navel, or a nipple when there is not one," he explains. Paradoxically, what makes the work of a tattoo artist of this style excellent, or not, is the opposite of that of an ordinary one: their work will be better done the less noticeable it is there.

Cristina Andreu is another person who has had a tattoo of these characteristics. In her case, to camouflage periareolar scars, which are those that remain around the areola after a breast operation. The woman remembers how, a year and a half after breast surgery, in which the colour of her nipples was visibly very light and part of the scar was visible, she decided to go to a tattoo studio. "My surgeon told me that I could tattoo my nipples to hide the scars. So I looked for tattoo artists," she explains. She also ended up in this Sant Gervasi shop: "They told me in a clear, honest and understandable way what they did. Then I sent some photos and made an appointment," she remembers.

A fairly high volume of clients, around 60%, decide to get a paramedical tattoo after surgical interventions that, for whatever reason, have not gone well or have left them with unwanted scars. The rest, on the other hand, want to improve something that they do not like. In these cases, they have also gone into the operating room, but even if everything has gone well, they think they can be better. "People who seek this type of service want to go back to their origins, to look natural again," says Cercós, who began doing this work almost by chance. Graduated in fine arts, during a sabbatical year deciding what she wanted to do with her life, she ended up signing up for tattooing, although she had always been terrified of needles. Shortly afterwards she was already doing tattoos in her father's office, a doctor, and from that relationship between art and being close to patients for aesthetic reasons, the profession emerged.

A special relationship

A tattoo artist of this style has a relationship with the client that is quite different from that of an artistic tattoo, since in many cases they work with their clients' complexes: being outside the norm can generate insecurities, especially when it is not decided but due to an intervention, and even more so when it is not desired. Hence the relationship established between tattoo artist and tattooed person is very special: "Most clients want to feel that they are in the canon, that they are as little different as possible from the rest," explains Cercós. In the case of Arantxa, she assures that getting this tattoo has caused her to not feel "that constant pain of thinking that something is missing" when she looks at it. However, there are also clients who ask for artistic tattoos to hide scars. In these cases, the procedure is not very different from a conventional one, which comes from a conversation between tattoo artist and tattooed person about what the client wants. Another case would be the fact of getting an artistic one in certain areas where it is really difficult to hide the color from the scar. In this case, the aim is no longer to achieve a natural look, but rather to create a drawing that makes the area more attractive.

According to the specialist, people often visit her with fear, especially because there are quite a few clients who end up in a tattoo studio after having tried other things that have not worked. The tattoo artist explains that they must be clear that "there are things that they may think have no solution, and they do." Or at least something can be done to make it better than it is. "For those of us who have suffered this type of surgery, very aggressive and psychologically very traumatic, work like this has helped us a lot to make us feel good again. In my case, I have even dared to do topless "I am 58 years old. I had never done it before, not even when I was young. I am very happy and thrilled," says Cristina Andreu.