A US woman has been forced to defend the deeply unfortunate 'anti-mask' tattoo she received early last year, before the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world.
Twenty-five-year-old Lee Holland says she dreamed of her tattoo for at least two years before finally getting it done: an inscription on her arm that reads, "courageously and radically refuse to wear a mask".
Holland says it references her viewpoint that it's pointless to pretend you're something you're not.
She finally got the tattoo in March last year - only two days before her state of Kentucky received its first case of COVID-19.
Holland recently got the chance to show off her tattoo to the world thanks to a new TikTok trend asking people to show off the "dumbest tattoo they've ever gotten".
She told Buzzfeed she's been continually worried about people thinking she was anti-mask during the pandemic - which she says she's absolutely not.
"I spent the entire summer wearing cardigans so that could not be misconstrued," she said. "For most of the summer, I was mortified."
Her mother even posted a photo of Holland wearing a mask, jokingly labelling her "a hypocrite".
Luckily Holland says she can laugh about it now - as could the amused commenters who watched her TikTok.
"Tell me you have bad timing without telling me you had bad timing," one person commented.
"Can I suggest adding another line: hindsight is 20/20," another wrote.
"That curdled faster than milk in the sun," another joked.
