Jinx of the ink: Zayn Malik and other make celebs who got a tattoo for love but lost it later

It’s almost like a rite of passage to get inked for your bae to profess your love for them and the world at large. Ditto for celebrities. In fact, you can credit them for this trend. Just like love isn’t permanent, so aren’t tattoos, thanks to technology. And post break-up, some painfully and successfully manage to either get the tattoos taken off or covered up, while some continue to wear them. Nevertheless, getting a tattoo of their lady love didn’t prove lucky for these men’s love lives and now, it seems like a jinx...

ZAYN MALIK

With Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid’s recent split after being together for two years, the pop star was the butt of ridicule for a tattoo dedicated for his love — he got a tattoo of Gigi’s eyes on his chest in January. And his fans are worried about what he is going to do about it. In the past, the 25-year-old singer got a tattoo of his then-girlfriend Perry Edwards in 2013, that love didn’t last either and he got it covered up. The British bloke also got a tattoo dedicated to his former boy band One Direction and he was the one to break up from the group that made him a global name.

CHRIS BROWN

In 2012, the rapper got a tattoo on his neck, which appears to be a woman’s battered and bruised face. In the tattoo, the woman’s facial structure, arched eyebrows, plump lips, and the bruises look similar to the image of Rihanna that circulated after Brown attacked her in 2009. Then, just when the world kept their fingers crossed to see if the rapper and his ex will rekindle their romance again, Chris got a tattoo of his then current girlfriend Karrueche Tran’s face. The tattoo is a replica of one of her photoshoots. Their on-and-off relationship continued for another three years before fizzling out in 2015.

JUSTIN BIEBER

Bieb’s on-again, off-again romance with Selena Gomez continues. In 2013, the bad boy was spotted with a tattoo that resembles a picture of Selena, which she shot for the July 2012 issue of Elle magazine. In 2016, the teen heartthrob revealed, “This is my ex-girlfriend,” he said, pointing to the body art. “So, I tried to cut her face up with some shading but people still know.” In 2010, the teen lovers began dating and have split and rekindled their romance numerous times and the saga goes on. Just recently, the pair got back together and called it off again because Selena’s mom didn’t approve of their relationship. She wanted to protect her daughter from getting hurt again.

SAFAREE SAMUELS

The Trinidadian rapper dated Minaj for a decade, and the couple kept it low profile only to end with an ugly public break-up in 2014, courtesy their Twitter wars. Samuels got not one but a total of three tattoos of the female rapper — Nicki’s face on his right peck, her name on the left, and her coloured face tattoo on his right forearm. After the split, he got them removed.

NICK CANNON

After they tied the knot in 2008, husband Nick Cannon got wifey Mariah Carey’s name inked across his shoulder blades. Five years after the marriage went kaput in 2015, Nick got a massive tattoo of Jesus Christ on the crucifix to cover up his ex’s name.

MARC ANTHONY

Marc got his second wife Jennifer Lopez’s first name tattooed on his right wrist, during their decade-long marriage (2004 to 2014). But after they announced their separation in 2012 (the divorce came through in 2014), the male singer was romancing his new girlfriend, Venezuelan model Shannon De Lima, and got a Statue of Liberty tattoo over his JLo inking. ‘Statue of Liberty’ was Marc’s pet name for Shannon. They married in 2014 and divorced in 2017. Looking back now, even the second cover-up tattoo turned out to be a bummer!