An Australian model has spoken up about how difficult it was for her to get hired due to her tattoos.
According to The Daily Mail, Amber Luke, who has 99 percent of her body inked, including her eyeballs, has spent more than $25,000 on cosmetic surgery.
The model, who goes by the moniker “Dragon Girl,” acknowledged that her tattoos had limited her.
Luke was quite frank in a radio interview with Robin, Terry, and Kip in Brisbane. “I’m not going to sugar coat it, it has limited my [employment] options.”
She continued by saying she doesn’t regret a thing, even if her tattoos made it difficult for her to get employment.
“The way I see it is, I don’t want to work for a company that’s shallow-minded [and can’t] look past my image. They won’t look at my work ethic, they won’t look at my morals or my values or what I have to bring to the table,” she continued.
In other parts of the conversation, she attacked those who criticised her appearance, claiming, “everyone has their own opinions of what beauty is.”
“You see these cultures [where people] stretch their necks, their ears, their lips. But at the end of the day, we all are entitled to our opinion and that’s okay. But, what gets to me is when someone expresses their opinion to me in public and comes up to me and says, ‘Oh, you’re ugly’, or, ‘You’ve ruined yourself’,” she added.
“It’s very distressing to know that people have that strong opinion and they can just voice it without any repercussions,” the model said.
Luke has seriously strained her body to attain her distinctive appearance. One of the most difficult times was when her eyeballs were tattooed blue and she was left unable to function independently while crying brilliant blue tears.
Luke decided to record the agonizing experience with a tattoo of a woman crying blue tears on her chest rather than letting the horrific event discourage her from further body changes.
The fact that Luke is having trouble finding employment as a model is not the first time she has faced prejudice due to her unusual appearance.
Her Instagram account was deleted a few years ago for “breaching restrictions,” thus she lost the 218,000+ followers she had worked so hard to amass.
Luke called the deletion of her social media presence “devastating” in an interview with the Daily Star.
“It took me about six years to grow my Instagram account. It took a lot of effort to build what I had made. Instagram removed my account because I ‘violated the community guidelines’ – which in fact I did not,” she explained.
“It felt absolutely devastating to see six years worth of journaling and tattooing gone,” the model continued, adding: “I feel almost as though a part of my life has been taken away – business opportunities and being able to have such a positive influence on so many people.”
