For the most part, celebrities are nothing like the rest of us. As the old Ernest Hemingway joke goes, “they have more money,” and that means a lifestyle of decadent wealth and fame the rest of us can only dream of.
However, celebrities have one important thing in common with the rest of us: making stupid decisions, especially when it comes to tattoos. As it turns out, some of the richest and most famous people on the planet can make the same awful choices when it comes to ink as anybody else.
Who are the biggest offenders, though, and what kind of ink are they rocking? Keep reading to find out!
Pete Davidson kept up with the Kardashians a little too well
For most of us, Keeping Up With the Kardashians is a trashy reality TV show that we love to tell everyone we hate before secretly binge-watching every episode. However, once Pete Davidson started dating Kim Kardashian, keeping up with her and her famous family was practically a full-time job.
Still, Davidson enjoyed their time together, and he might have been a little too enthusiastic about the relationship. He ended up getting multiple tattoos related to Kim as well as her family, including a tattoo with all of her children’s initials that really sent her ex, Kanye West, into a tizzy.
The punchline to all of this is that the two broke up in August 2022, and Davidson ended up having most of the tattoos removed. However, he still has her name etched in ink on his chest, perhaps as a reminder of not throwing himself into a relationship too quickly.
Stallone: not so ‘sly’ with his marriage
Davidson isn’t the only celebrity that expresses his love through ink. For example, Sylvester Stallone once had two portrait tattoos of his wife, Jennifer Flavin. Then she filed to divorce him, and this is where things get really weird.
To help himself move on, Stallone decided to have Flavin’s portraits covered up with tattoos of two animals: a blue-eyed leopard and his canine costar from Rocky. The ink looks good, but Stallone and Flavin ended up reconciling less than a month after the filing, meaning Sly is stuck with a constant reminder of a low point in their relationship together.
Ray J’s insane way of honoring his sister
It’s not uncommon that celebrities want to honor their loved ones with killer tattoos. However, when Ray J got a tattoo of his beloved sister Brandy, many fans openly wondered if he was really committing some kind of crazy prank.
Why a prank? To begin with, Brandy has red eyes in the tattoo and the words “best friends” and “4 ever” written on her cheeks. Fans debated whether the image was cringeworthy or even something dark and demonic, but one thing was for sure: nobody but Ray J thought the damn thing looked good!
Ariana Grande gets lost in translation
Sometimes, it seems like the most common tattoo mistake involves bad translations. For example, people want to get a tattoo in Japanese, and they only realize way too late that their ink doesn’t say what they thought it said.
And this ended up happening to singer Ariana Grande in a big way. After the success of her song “7 Rings,” she decided to get a tribute tattoo written in Japanese kanji. The only problem: her tattoo originally translated to “Japanese barbecue grill” (no, really). She’s since had it fixed, but her faux pas serves as a powerful reminder to always triple-check your tattoo design before it’s on your body.
Drake officially becomes the worst Beatle
Most of the time, controversies centered on Drake mostly focus on his strange interactions with underage girls. However, the singer also found the time to get one of the most bizarre and baffling tattoos in celebrity history that still has fans shaking their heads.
For reasons we will probably never understand, Drake got a tattoo of himself as a member of The Beatles. This was meant to celebrate getting more songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 than the legendary band, but the strange tattoo had music fans dragging Drake for both being petty and having absolutely awful taste in ink.
Orlando Bloom fails to crack the code
Another way that celebs are just like us is that they spend way too much time on Pinterest. And Orlando Bloom is proof that even the biggest celebrities can make bad decisions because they got caught up in some pinned excitement.
In this case, Bloom decided to get a tattoo of his son’s name in Morse code. It turned out to be misspelled, though, which the actor called a #pinterestfail. He has since had the ink corrected, but it’s hilarious to think that his research into the design began and ended with just reading a random Pinterest post and heading to the tattoo parlor.
Ben Affleck rises like the phoenix
Most bad celebrity tattoos are small and, at worst, easy to cover up. However, Ben Affleck does everything big, which is why his entire back is dominated by a giant tattoo of a phoenix, the mythological bird that rises from the ashes in Greek mythology.
Affleck originally spent years denying that this tattoo was real after paparazzi kept releasing pictures of this immense ink. These days, he owns up to having this beast of a tattoo and isn’t afraid to poke fun at himself for his strange taste in tats.