In the backroom of a tattoo parlor on North La Brea Avenue in L.A., Miley Cyrus is about to get some new ink. “All right, face down,” says the tattoo artist, a bald guy named Mojo. Miley flips onto her stomach and sticks her ass in the air. On the bottom of her dirty feet, in ballpoint pen, are written the words ROLLING (right foot) and $TONE (left).
“People get tattoos of the most f*****-up s***,” Miley says. “Did you know Alec Baldwin has Hannah Montana’s initials tattooed on him? No, wait – Stephen Baldwin. He said he was my biggest fan, and I told him my biggest fans have tattoos. So he got hm tattooed on his shoulder.” She shakes her head. “People do fucked-up shit.”
For her first Rolling Stone cover story, Miley wanted to do something fun. “I thought about going to play laser tag,” she says. “But laser tag sucks. And we could have gone bowling, but what are we, 90?” Naturally, the next idea was getting a tattoo.
“All right, darlin’,” says Mojo. “You ready?”
“Ready,” she says. Mojo fires up the needle, which begins buzzing extremely loudly. “I hate seeing the needle,” says Miley. She cranes her neck backward. “Does it hurt? It hurts, right?”
Mojo: “Yeah, it hurts.”
These are the 20-year-old pop star’s first tattoos on her feet, but she has lots of others: a peace sign, an equal sign, a heart and a cross (all on her fingers); the words love inside her right ear and just breathe over her rib cage; a Leonardo da Vinci sketch on her right forearm, and above it, the Roman numerals VIIXCI, for 7/91, the month and year her parents first met. And on the inside of her left forearm, the words so THAT HIS PLACE SHALL NEVER BE WITH THOSE COLD AND TIMID SOULS WHO NEITHER KNOW VICTORY NOR DEFEAT. “It’s from a Teddy Roosevelt speech,” she says. “It’s about how people judge who wins and who loses, but they’re not the ones in there fighting.” In other words, “It’s about critics.”
