The rise of the text tattoo
By Tom de Castella, BBC News Magazine
It probably wasn’t on Shakespeare’s radar that his work would one day unite Megan Fox, Danielle Lineker and Lindsay Lohan. But it has – they all have Shakespeare quotations tattooed to their bodies. Why are more people getting such high-brow inkings?
The trend for long pieces of script is part of the tattoo’s journey from the margins to the mainstream.
Rarely a week passes without a celebrity being spotted with a defiant rallying cry, knowing aphorism or erudite quote inked to their bodies.
Angelina Jolie, the doyenne of written tattoos, was recently spotted with a long bit of text – thought to be Arabic – on her right arm. It joins a Tennessee Williams quote, the Arabic word for determination, and the geographical coordinates of her six children’s birthplaces, among others.