Body art is a way of expressing oneself, but when you apply it over a period of time, it can change your whole appearance.
A heavily inked Australian woman is saying that she underwent $10,000 in bodily modifications to transform from a blond-haired teen to a “blue eyes white dragon,” as she calls herself on Instagram.
Amber Luke, 25, who has over 21,000 followers on Instagram recently, posted a selfie with the remark “body modification is the ultimate form of self-expression.” She also has an Instagram account dedicated to before and after photographs of her procedures, which include breast augmentation and butt enhancement.
Luke has a split tongue, a lip tattoo, gauged ears, tattoos on practically every part of her body, and even has the sclera (whites of her eyes) tattooed blue.
Amber maintains she has no regrets about her decision or course of action.
“I got the name ‘Blue Eyed White Dragon’ from my friends, they call me that because I resemble a dragon with my eyes and tongue,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
“I see myself as very plain looking when looking at before and after photos, I absolutely hated the way I used to look. I was boring,” she added.
At 16 her obsession with tattoos began.
“As soon as I turned 16, I was inspired by those around me to get tattooed. I craved to know what the feeling was like,” she recalled.
She continued:
“I developed an addiction at 16 years of age. By the time I hit 18, I already had three tattoos. And when I turned 18, I decided to get my first big piece. Now, I have over 50 tattoos, I haven’t been able to count all of them.”
Amber also risked going permanently blind after getting her eyeballs tattooed with blue ink.
She said:
“The procedure for getting my eyes done was only 40 minutes. It was very intense and very painful. My eyes got held open while a syringe was injected into my eye four times per eye. I was blind for three weeks.”
And turning to the split tongue she said: “My tongue split was very uncomfortable as well, I wasn’t able to speak or eat for a week afterwards.”
While some people enjoy body changes, doctors warn that they can be harmful to your health.
Dr. Edward S. Lee, an associate professor of surgery at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School said, “Surgery is a challenge for the healthiest of patients, a larger body contouring operation, like having breasts done…we compare that to running a marathon. You need several months to recover.”
According to Lee, every surgery carries the potential of consequences, including infection, which is amplified when someone undergoes treatments on a frequent basis. “If you get a tattoo and then have breast implants put in with only a tiny gap between them, you put yourself at a slightly higher risk of infection,” the doctor says.
Lee is particularly skeptical of radical physical changes, such as tongue splitting.
Lee says, “The people who are doing it are usually not licensed practitioners. The materials you are using are questionable in terms of sterility. Also, the tongue does bleed quite a lot.”
Dr. Gary Goldenberg, an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City said that even tattoos carry the danger of communicable diseases like HIV and hepatitis C if they’re not done in a sterile atmosphere. “Infections like staph are also a problem,” he explains.
Watch it here: Youtube/This Morning