You’d have thought Rihanna would be the last person to want to have a tattoo personifying violence, given recent events with one time boyfriend Chris Brown. However, the lovely lady has turned up with a discreetly placed handgun tattoo. She apparently had her favourite tattoo artist, Bang Bang, flown from his home in New York to LA for the event.
Bang Bang thinks the gun tattoo represents strength and power, “It’s powerful, it’s protection”, he said. Initially, the plan was to put the tattoo below her shoulders near her armpits but according to him Rihanna changed it to her ribcage because “it takes away from her face. You don’t want to be starting at tats. You want to be staring at her face.” She had initially had two guns drawn on her arms but decided against having them inked as they were too prominent and would interfere with a modelling job she had booked.
The uproar caused by her new tattoo is predictable, with all sorts of media and blogs turning up with the opinion that she is glamourising violence and encouraging handgun use. You could be forgiven for thinking she was espousing gang warfare by having a handgun tattooed when so many yong people are killed and maimed with these all over the world. However, it could also be argued that she has been quite thoughtful in her choice. On the one hand it could be that she views the tattoo as a talisman, protecting her from violence, in much the same way as people wear a cross, another symbol of mortal violence.
In the meantime, ex-boyfriend Chris Brown showed up at an LA tattoo parlour with dancer Natalie Mejia (CW’s Pussycat Dolls Presents: Girlicious reality show)who reckons that Chris Brown is a gentleman. They wouldn’t say what they had done though because it is personal, apparently.
On her MySpace page, Mejia declares: “Love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t and believe everything happens for a reason.”
