Yep, people are now tattooing their eyeballs
Every Halloween there’s always a handful of coloured contact lenses floating around the room but this latest trend is something completely different. Part of a body modification movement, people are now tattooing the whites of their eyes.
“I’m aware of how insane that sounds, but I’ve been doing this type of thing for my whole life so I wasn’t coming from nowhere with this,” tattoo artist Luna Cobra tells BBC News.
After seeing a photoshopped picture of someone dressed up as a character with blue eyes from the science fiction series “Dune,” Cobra began to experiment with creating the real thing. On a few brave volunteers, he injected a small amount of ink into the thin layer of membrane coating the eyeball. The result: permanently coloured corneas.
“If you want to amuse yourself by decorating your eyeball, why not do it?” he says. “I do a lot of things that look like tie-dye or ‘cosmic space.’ I think it brings a realm of fantasy into everyday life.”
Cobra has been performing corneal tattoos since 2007 and continues to offer the procedure. Based in Toronto, he travels all over the world tattooing eyes as well as performing other body modification procedures. While black is still one of the most popular requests, a rainbow of other options are also available.
Many optometrists warn against the dangers of corneal tattooing, claiming there is a risk of infection and even blindness – not to mention it’s permanent. Some U.S. states have gone as far as banning the practice. That said, we easily sourced a number of coloured eyes through social media.
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