A woman has been left with purple eyeballs after risking blindness to change the color of her eyes.
25-year-old Devon O’Kelly is a San Diego-based model and dancer who has long been obsessed with body modifications and eyeballs inking.
As the exotic dancer admitted, she believes that body art should be destigmatized even though many people still perceive tattoos and piercings as taboo.
Devon first fell in love with inking when she was just 11. In the following years, she received her first nose piercing and went on to get her back tattooed. By the time she was 15, Devon was already positive she wanted to express herself through body art for the rest of her life.
While she has had a total of at least 23 tattoos all over her body, the girl took things a step further as she decided to ink her eyeballs purple despite being warned that doing so could result in permanent blindness.
In 2018, after preparing for the procedure for several years, Devon finally had her eyeballs tattooed by Luna Cobra, the inventor of eyeball inking.
“I grew up with enough freedom to express myself and have my own style and while I was exploring that, I always felt that the outfits, hair and makeup weren’t enough,” the 25-year-old explained.
“I always knew my body needed some ‘decoration’ too so by the time I started getting pierced, I knew that was it. I fell in love with body modification and I knew I was going to be covered in art one day.”
Speaking of her many tattoos, Devon revealed that each of them has a special meaning that she can relate to.
“I have pieces representing personal experiences or beliefs, and small personal tattoos like my kid’s day of birth, a memorial tattoo for my grandpa, and some matching tattoos with my partner, mum and sisters,” she added.
“The castle on my legs definitely took the longest. It was done by two tattoo artists at the same time, one on each leg and by designing it, trying to make it symmetrical and tattooing it together, it probably took about nine hours. I remember we started on an evening and finished by five-in-the-morning on the next day.”
As the 25-year-old model revealed, she became obsessed with eyeball inking back in 2013. It wasn’t until 2018, however, that she actually went through with the procedure.
“The process didn’t take very long. He was very cautious and very good at creating a calm atmosphere. I did have to leave wearing sunglasses as he warned me that exposure to the sun in the first few days can be painful,” she said.
“I would say it took me around two weeks to fully heal, stop feeling pain, sensitivity to the light and start noticing the initial color in my eyeballs.
“Since then, I haven’t had any issues and my vision is still the same, but the color has been changing and becoming more noticeable with the years.”
While she absolutely loves her new looks, Devon admitted she sometimes gets mocked, challenged, and questioned about her tattoos and piercings by total strangers.
As the 25-year-old claimed, some people like to offer to ‘save’ her as if she was sick because of her love for body art. Others like to mock her looks openly or confront her for ‘destroying’ her body.
“I’ve had bad experiences in public places like bars or restaurants both by customers and employees such as openly expressing their disgust or disapproval, offering me a poor service or trying to deny me their service,” Devon recalled.
“People on the street will often give me their unwanted opinions on how it’s not OK, it doesn’t look good, it’s not girly to have tattoos and it won’t get me anywhere in life. Others feel entitled to try to grab me and touch me ‘to have a better look.’”
Despite the social obstacles she has been facing since she got her eyeballs inked, Devon shows no signs of slowing down and insists on further modifying her body to her likings.
As she revealed, her plans for the future include scarification, ear lobes enlargement, and getting a split tongue.
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