Could a child as young as six months really be tattooed from head to toe? Several readers of 20 minutes asked the Fake Off column to verify the authenticity of a viral video showing a baby in the middle of a tattoo session, gold chain around his neck and bracelet on the wrist.
Relayed on Instagram by the account ”
@vamsovideo “(290,000 subscribers), these images, probably filmed in the United States, aroused indignation among many Internet users, who described the sequence as” disgusting “or even a” torture scene “. Because under the tattoo artist’s needle, the toddler is in the middle of tears.
We reassure you, as shocking as these images may seem, This is a hoax: the tattoos of this baby, worthy of an American rapper, are only temporary.
FAKE OFF
The original video was posted by Shemeka morris, the mother of young Treylin, six months old, on
Facebook and
Instagram on June 19 and 20. Contacted by the press agency
Reuters, she explained that the drawings visible on the body of her son were only temporary, in the manner of
these decals available for purchase on Amazon. “I thought I was just a mother showing creativity and thinking outside the box,” she told Reuters, surprised at the outrage over her video, also posted on
Youtube.
Shemeka Morris, residing in Belle Glade, Florida, explained that she immortalized each new month of her son’s life by taking a themed photo. Passionate about tattoos, it is therefore around this theme that she decided to celebrate the sixth month of her son. If some Internet users quickly understood that it was a video and pictures of a humorous nature, others “threatened to call the police and said that this [qu’elle avait fait] was abusive and negligent, ”she reports.
This is not the first time that Americans have created controversy over the issue of tattooing their children. In 2016, a mother from New York State was thus prosecuted for having tattooed – this time not a hoax – the inscription “Ride or Die” and a lightning bolt on the hands of her sons of twelve and thirteen years. In 2018,
a woman from Ohio was in custody for having filmed her 10-year-old son getting a tattoo without any respect for hygiene instructions.