Indeed, these days we aren't seeing the full bombshell on Fox's arm, but rather a faded one, like a photo of Marilyn that's been left out in the sun. Is that really what passes for tattoo removal? I found out. I also found out why so many stars are really getting their ink blasted. The intel may surprise you, because, heck, it surprised me ...
Fox, of course, isn't the first star to try removing or altering a tat. Angelina Jolie famously removed a tattoo of ex Billy Bob Thornton and replaced the image with a tribute to her children. Paris Hilton went through laser removal to get rid of a tattoo honoring ex Nick Carter. Charlie Sheen got Denise Richards' name removed from his wrist. As for Fox, she says she's removing the Marilyn ink because it conjures "negative" energy.
"I'm removing it," Fox told Italian magazine Amica. "It is a negative character, as she suffered from personality disorders and was bipolar. I do not want to attract this kind of negative energy in my life." (As for why she got it in the first place, I have that, too: ""It warns me not to let myself be treated so badly by the film industry so that it breaks me down."
The results of Fox's removal efforts seem almost wasted. After all, in the most recent photos, we still, clearly, can see a Marilyn on Fox's arm. In fact, rarely do we ever see photos of a celeb tattoo that has been removed with complete success. So does that mean that a tattoo is totally forever?No. According to Ian Kirby of the Beverly Hills-based removal practice Dr. Tattoff, what you're seeing isn't a before or after, but rather, somewhere in between. Too often, when we see a paparazzi photo celebrity's tattoo "removed," what we're really seeing is a star's body in the middle of the slow process of nixing it.
During a proper removal procedure, "the laser comes in like a hammer and smashes the ink pigment, allowing your body's immune system to more easily take it away," Kirby explains. "Your body does half the work in removing a tattoo that way."
In other words, that faded Marilyn we're seeing? Those are blasted, weakened bits of ink that Fox's own body is now working to finish off. Eventually, Kirby predicts, "it seems like she'll probably see a full removal" of the image.
As for why Fox is really removing the image in the first place, sure, maybe she doesn't want all that "negativity" around. And, yes, a lot of stars remove the tats after a breakup. But here's another reason that you may not know: Stars hate sitting in a makeup chair. Kirby says that many of the celebs who use Dr. Tattoff tell the doctors there that they want to decrease their time in that makeup chair, so they're getting their tats, well, off.