Baggy jeans, we can cope with. Choker necklaces, not for everyone, but they can look fun — and, crucially, they’re easy to remove. Tramp stamps though — more politely known as lower back tattoos — are a ‘90s/’00s trend that we were confident was, well, behind Us.
But now the tattoos in question are having a shocking comeback: Gen Z are showing them off all over TikTok, tattoo artists around the world are reporting a big increase in women asking for them and Google searches for lower back tats are reportedly up 140 percent. And the designs haven’t evolved much either; it’s still tribal patterns, song lyrics and slogans like “angel.”
Back in the day, celebrities including Britney Spears, Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera loved proudly showing off the ink in the dip above their butt, with every red carpet awash with low-slung jeans and backless dresses designed to make those etchings pop. However, as one TikToker explains, it wasn’t long before the trend had been branded trashy: “The second women getting tattoos started becoming mainstream in the late 90s and early 2000s, men had to go ahead and suck the fun out of it by branding lower back tattoos ‘tramp stamps.’ There’s never been a male equivalent. It’s not based on anything. It’s just pure misogyny.”
One star who has since had her “tramp stamp” removed is Khloé Kardashian. Her chosen design featured a cross, a pair of wings and the word “daddy” — but what seemed like a good idea as a teenager just didn’t work for her in her thirties. “The end of an era,” she said when she finally got the design removed at 31. “Got this bad boy when I was 16, not so cute anymore. I should’ve listened to Kim when she told me ‘you don’t put a bumper sticker on a Bentley.’ Bye-bye bumper sticker!”
Harsh? Absolutely — but she’s not the only star who got their tramp stamp removed when the trend turned sour, just not necessarily so vocally. Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell got a panther etched into her lower back in 1998, only to start laser removal in 2004, while Nicole Richie’s cross — which she got with Khloé as teens — vanished in 2013. Meanwhile, other stars who embraced the trend, like Drew Barrymore, Eva Longoria and Christina Ricci, just tend to keep their lower backs covered a lot more these days.
What seems a little unfair is that the mere location of a tattoo has become loaded with meaning. Why is it that a butterfly on your shoulder or some stars on your wrist are deemed totally acceptable, but if they’re anywhere near your butt people call you trashy? Perhaps we can blame Vince Vaughn whose character in the 2005 movie Wedding Crashers crudely quipped “Tattoo on the lower back? Might as well be a bulls-eye.”
And yet Gen Z are all for it, proudly reclaiming the “tramp stamp” moniker and making it their own. “The lower back tattoo is making a comeback with 19 to 27 year olds who weren’t old enough for it the first time around,” tattoo artist Adam Turley told Grazia. “We’re still seeing butterflies, florals and twists on tribal designs, but the reinventions are softer, smaller and far more intricate.”
That may be so, but they’re still a pain in the ass — literally — to get removed, in the event of any Khloé-esque regrets when they inevitably go out of style yet again. Take heed, Gen Z, if you don’t want Kim snarking about your “bumper sticker” before it’s even healed …
