Woman inspired to tattoo her eyes like Aussie model goes blind
An Irish law student has shared her regret after copying a well-known Australian model’s eyeball tattoos – as she’s now going blind.
An Irish woman who was inspired by an Australian model nicknamed “Blue Eyes White Dragon” to get her eyeballs tattooed is now going blind.
Amber Luke, 24, from NSW underwent an excruciating and dangerous 40-minute procedure to turn her eyeballs blue, but hit headlines in 2019 when she revealed she was left “blind for three weeks as a result of her modification.
Despite warning people against the “brutal” and “extreme” procedure, it didn’t stop one fan from taking the risk.
Anaya Peterson, a law student, based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was urged by friend’s and family not to follow in her idol’s footsteps.
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However Peterson, who has also mimicked getting her tongue split like Luke, decided to go ahead and had her right eye tattooed bright blue in July 2020.
“I was just going to get one [eye tattoo] at first, because I thought that if I go blind, at least I’ve got the other eye. I should have stuck with that,” Peterson said.
“My daughter told me that I didn’t want to do that [the tattoo] asking, ‘What if you go blind?’ She wasn’t on board with it at all.”
She says she now wished she listened to her seven-year-old about the irreversible decision.
“I don’t have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance, I can’t see features on faces,” she said.
“If I didn’t have my eyeballs tattooed, I wouldn’t be having this problem. Even today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous.”
Initially, the procedure went off without a hitch – despite some headaches and dryness in her eye – so in December that year Peterson decided to do her left eye.
But things took a turn for the worst eight months after the procedure, when she woke up with swollen eyes.
She went to hospital, where doctors gave her intravenous medication for three days and biopsied her problematic eye.
“I just wanted to be at home watching [TV] to be honest. I can’t even put it into words. It wasn’t nice at all whatsoever,” she recalled.
“It was traumatising to go through. I just remember thinking, ‘I’m not doing that s**t again, with the eye tattoo. I’m definitely not doing that s**t again’.”
The body modification enthusiast left the hospital “on the mend,” but said she now regrets her decision to tattoo the whites of her eyes in the first place.
“I’m kind of recovered — on the outside, it’s recovered. It’s just inside. I’m basically on the verge of going blind,” she said.
“If I could go back in time, I would have done one black [eye tattoo] and left it. I would have done one black. Absolutely.”
Amber Luke, who is now based in Brisbane, has spent $250,000 on various body modifications since she was 18 – with tattoos covering 99 per cent of her body.
After seeing Peterson’s story online, she has since taken to Instagram to share her “heartbreak”.
“I am so sorry to hear this has happened – but also I’m heartbroken knowing someone did this to achieve a similar result to me and now they’re losing their sight forever,” she wrote.
“I just want to make it very clear – I never did this to myself to ‘influence’ anyone to do the same.
“I did all of this for me and I did it to reinvent myself into someone I could be proud of being and looking.
“I wanted to lead and inspire – but I also let ya’ll know the insane risks to this as well like how I went blind for three weeks.
“This woman is losing her sight forever. Do your research! I will preach it now until I die.”
After suffering her own temporary blindness, Luke explained hers was caused as a result of the procedure being performed incorrectly.
“Unfortunately, my artist went too deep into my eyeball,” she said at the time.
“If your eyeball procedure’s done correctly, you’re not supposed to go blind at all.
“I was blind for three weeks. That was pretty brutal.”
Despite declaring she had no plans for any more body modifications, the tattoo-clad woman recently added “fangs” to her extensive collection.