In the 2000s, at the height of rocky celebrity romances, Angelina Jolie and Billie Bob Thornton set the tone for a decade of passionate, screaming rooftop romances. They wore necklaces containing each other’s blood and had a quick Las Vegas wedding – which actually happened while Thornton was still technically engaged to Laura Dern. In a very contemporary gesture, Angelina even had her name tattooed on the upper arm above a dragon. Memories can last a lifetime, but not the tattoo. After the divorce, in 2003, she had it removed (and later had the coordinates of her children’s birthplaces listed in the same place).
Today’s Y2K revival has brought back an eerily similar romantic spirit among celebrity couples. Megan Fox and MGK have openly talked about drinking each other’s blood and Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker have kissed tongues on red carpets everywhere. It looks like the tumultuous and extremely public romance is back – and it also ushered in the return of the cringe couple tattoo.
In March 2022, Pete Davidson was spotted with Kim’s name stamped on his chest as a token of their newfound love. He has since had three more public tattoos in his honor, including “my daughter is a lawyer” and the initials of his four children, which he may now – or not – regret since their split. has been announced. romance with Ariana Grande, Davidson and the singer got matching cloud tattoos (among several other Ariana-themed tattoos), which he later covered up after their split. Some other celebrity couples are still together and wear their ink proudly, like MGK and Megan Fox, who jumped on the matching tattoo bandwagon with identical voodoo doll tattoos, featured in an Instagram carousel post from MGK earlier this year.
Obviously, couple tattoos are nothing new. UK-based clinical sexologist and therapist Ness Cooper says couples have long used tattoos to mark milestones and as a bonding experience. Other celebrity duos have done it too, like John Legend and Chrissy Tegan who got ‘family tattoos’ in 2019 and Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott who revealed matching butterfly tattoos in 2018 However, it seems that celebrity couples are increasing the number of dedicated tattoos and speeding up the process, with Davidson as the notable leader.
Cooper advises against this practice during the “honeymoon” of a relationship. “During different stages of a relationship, certain people may be more likely to get tattoos together,” she says. “Especially if they’re still in the obsessive stage and they think everything should be common.” Her advice: “It’s important to wait until people in the relationship can see their individual reasons why the tattoo is important to them and not just the common reasons. This, Cooper says, helps avoid post-breakup tattoo regrets.
Of course people are going to do what they are going to do. Cooper says the current fixation on the “brand” of new relationships may be partly due to lockdowns limiting people’s access to romance, making everyone want to cling more tightly to what they have. When it comes to celebrities, “the information shared in the media around celebrity romances makes us feel like part of the relationship dynamic,” says Cooper, “it can make us unconsciously connect with stages of relationship development. “. So really, what they’re doing is just helping us in.
While many couple tattoos inevitably end up being covered up (or removed), tattoo artist Hannah Byrne considers them “fun and pretty harmless.” “Celebs probably have the money to take them out or cover them up if they want to in the future, so why not?” they say. However, that’s not the case for everyone, which might explain why Byrne finds these tattoos not a common request.
Rachel Wright, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Shame Free Therapy, says our favorite celebrity couple tattoos could signal a new revolt against old-school romantic traditions. “Rings are the old-school standard for showing your commitment to someone, but it has roots in property and anti-feminism,” Wright says. She says, recently, “many have moved away from the traditional ‘I give you a diamond, you give me your daughter’ model, and decided to make their own decisions,” she says. The tattoos are visceral, (mostly) permanent and, in the case of couple tattoos, mutual. “We like to show our relationships with people – a ring is one shape, and tattoos and nail art are just two other shapes.”
As for why we can’t look away from the car wreck that is the rocky celebrity relationships (and the tattoos that bind them together), Wright says it’s a voyeuristic distraction. “It’s partly the same reason we love shows like The single person,” she says. We think to ourselves, ‘wow, that’s a plot drama,” comparatively, our lives seem pretty normal. Plus, because we don’t know what relationships are “meant” to look like, Wright says we often seek out different patterns and “enjoy looking at things we wouldn’t necessarily participate in for ourselves.” These models may or may not involve the consumption of blood.
For those looking to jump on the cringe tattoo bandwagon, Wright wants to remind us all that all relationships (romantic, platonic, sexual, and family) can eventually break down. “Make sure whatever you get is something you always love because whatever your relationship status with that person is, it will stay on your body,” she says. It might sound more like a nod to a common interest than a name, though Byrne says the lettering is an easy cover-up. “I think tattoos with a story are cool, and blastovers (a new tattoo over an old tattoo that doesn’t completely cover it up) are even cooler,” they say.
Celebrities have always sought to entertain us and signature couple tattoos are just another way to give us something new to talk about. Their meteoric and chaotic comeback, however, ushers in a new era of over-the-top celebrity couples, eager to outdo each other in an increasingly crowded fame landscape. Love ’em or hate ’em, the cringe couple is back and we should expect to see more ink to match. Only a few, however, will enter the couple’s chaotic history and join the ranks of Angelina Jolie and Billie Bob Thornton and their vials of blood.
