when tattoo removal allows you to get a new look

Nearly 13 million French people are tattooed, including a third of those under 35. Among them, some regret it and decide to have their tattoo removed. The growth of this practice represents a windfall for specialized clinics.

Three centers dedicated exclusively to tattoo removal exist in France: in Nantes, Lyon and Paris, where franceinfo visited. Three others will open their doors in 2024. Although tattoo removal has existed for a long time, the practice has become completely democratized in recent years thanks to the latest generation lasers which must be handled by doctors. These are picosecond lasers that send extremely powerful light waves to break up ink pigments.

The manipulation lasts a few minutes and it is quite painful according to Éleonore, 23, who has already had two sessions. “Personally, I find that it hurts a lot more than the tattoo, she says. It’s a bit of a burning sensation, like a rubber band being popped on your skin.”

Intimate reasons often mentioned

Like Éléonore, there are thousands who wish to remove their tattoo, and a large number of those who come to the Ray Studios center in Paris do so for intimate reasons, often linked to a past love. This is the case of Charles, 33, who no longer wishes to see the tattoo of a sock, symbolizing an ancient story. “I feel that he no longer has to be part of my life, for me, it was a mistake, like this whole period of my life… Maybe indeed, it reminds me a little too much of this period and seeing him every day in the mirror, it bothers me a little.”

Other people simply don’t like what’s written on their body anymore, either because it hasn’t aged well or because it’s no longer trendy, like tribal tattoos or semi-permanent eyebrow makeup. what Marion did.

“It was kind of a trend, which I followed and quickly regretted it. I don’t even know why I did it.”

Marion, client of a tattoo removal clinic

at franceinfo

Finally, some decide to remove visible tattoos for professional reasons, such as joining the gendarmerie or working in luxury.

Several sessions are necessary to remove your tattoo and the price of the procedure depends on the size and the skin in particular. Overall, getting a tattoo removed costs more than getting a tattoo. For a small tattoo, you need to count on 100 euros per session, knowing that you need at least three. “Often, people compare it to the price of the tattoo, and so they will say to themselves ‘Ah well, my tattoo cost me this much and the tattoo removal will be a little more expensive’, explains Pierre Lecat, co-founder and general manager of Ray Studios. But we compare it more to laser hair removal.” He assures that for this price, the tattoos disappear completely and he specifies that there is no health risk.

Little scientific knowledge

Pierre Lecat’s assertion must be put into perspective, because as Doctor Jean-Claude Larrouy explains, “current scientific knowledge on the toxicity of nanoparticles is insufficient to really make a good risk assessment.” This dermatologist, based in Nice, has been warning for several years and explains that “picosecond laser manufacturers sell machines without having done the slightest study on the fate of ink nanoparticles. There is such an explosion of pigments that these nanoparticles do not have time to be digested by the cells of the ink. body, the macrophages.”

“The ink nanoparticles do not stay in the skin, they go directly into the blood, the kidneys and above all, unfortunately, into the brain.”

Jean-Claude Larrouy, dermatologist

at franceinfo

Last December, three American dermatologists also published an article in which they talked in particular about “allergic responses in the form of hives, and in some cases, anaphylaxis”an acute allergic reaction that can be fatal.

With this practice of tattoo removal, the question of the very meaning of the tattoo is called into question. You should know that tattooing is an ancestral practice that dates back to prehistoric man. Since the dawn of time, man has marked his body for life. For Thibault de Saint-Maurice, philosophy researcher at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, tattoo removal “is a sign of the way in which the will of the contemporary individual thinks of itself as being omnipotent. Even what was almost ‘eternal’, or in any case definitive, even that, today, the power of the will individual can call it into question. This does not mean that our contemporaries or all those who tattoo and remove tattoos are weather vanes, it means that they are of their time, where it is the individual will which takes precedence”, he concludes. This explains why tattoo removal is currently experiencing exponential growth.