Cheryl Cole and the Tattoo Dramas

If you live in the UK you probably haven't looked at a newspaper today without seeing this picture of Cheryl Cole's back at last nights National Television Awards.

I've heard so many opinions about this - mostly bad ones. To be brutally honest it's not a very nice tattoo but what is actually grating on me is that people don't actually realise the butterfly/tribal design is obviously really old and pretty badly done. I've seen comments on gossip websites saying that the butterfly is awful and that she should sue her 'tattooer guy'!!
She's obviously tried to take attention away from it with this sweeping feathery design (one wonders how far it goes down? The picture of her at Madame Tussauds below shows what I believe to be the end of the feathery design) which looks better than the other tat. I do wonder why she didn't just do a full cover up if she was going to cover some of it anyway...

Perhaps the smudgy butterfly holds sentimental value for her, or maybe she actually likes it? There would have been a time when it was the dogs bollocks but now it just looks like a dogs dinner unfortunately.
That's the way with tattoos though; what is in fashion one year may not be the next and this is where 'anti-tattoo' people tend to miss the point. A tattoo is something you get that means something to you. Whether it is in or out of fashion it makes no difference because it marks a time in your life when it was the right thing for you.
As the character Logan Mountstuart says in Any Human Heart - "We keep a journal to entrap the collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being." Tattoos are our journals. They entrap all of our 'selves' and show them on a living, breathing art form. For this reason I think that Cheryl Cole should be damned proud of that somewhat shitty tattoo.