Dying hair, getting a piercing, plastic surgery, a crazy haircut, getting a tattoo, wearing shocking clothing...
all of this is done, they say, to “express themselves”.

But really it is a way to run away from yourself. To say, look at this shiny thing, not me...

These things indicate a person who is not merely “tired” of their identity (although boredom is one of the most pernicious evils bc it plagues a man so silently)
They are trapped in their identity. The radical change in an appearance is damage from their desire to claw out of it

When people got inculcated into gangs/cults, they got tattoos in order to psychologically transfer some of their identity toward the group. They are not the same person they were before the tattoo. They were also given for rites of passage. It is serious business to get a tattoo

No aesthetic decision is without consequence. All aesthetic choices have deep ramifications.

For both the personal psyche at the level of personal aesthetics, and collective psyche at the level of architecture and city planning.