Reading into Chris Brown and Rihanna’s new tattoos might make you feel like they’re trying to send some subtle messages. Everybody is thinking whether Chris Brown’s new tattoo of a battered woman is in fact Rihanna, while everybody else is raving over Rihanna’s tattoo of Isis underneath her breasts.

One thing is for sure: tattoo artists could thank their gods for sending them celebrities like Rihanna and Chris Brown. More and more young celebrities are getting ink on their skin almost just as often as buying diamond jewelry. The worst part is that from the outside it feels like their choosing weird designs, without knowing a tattoo is going to be permanent.

Take Chris Brown’s new tattoo on his neck. It’s without a doubt a shocker and it’s likely Chris Brown’s people aren’t doing their job when it comes to ill advised tattoos. During an event in Las Vegas at the beginning of September, Chris Brown showed up with a tattoo on his neck featuring a battered woman that looks surprisingly a lot like Rihanna.

This weird relationship between Chris Brown and Rihanna seems to have reached another peak. Only three years ago, Rihanna appeared all bruised up and Chris Brown took the fault for domestic battery. Now Rihanna tells us she forgave him and she and Chris Brown are working on becoming BFFs again.

So, as much as Chris Brown’s entourage and rep denies the neck tattoo has any connection to Rihanna, it really looks like it’s the opposite. “It’s a random woman” said Brown’s rep. But then RumorFix published another statement that read Chris Brown’s neck tattoo is in fact a “sugar skull” and something of “a MAC cosmetics design he saw”.

“It’s not Rihanna or an abused woman as erroneously reported” said Chris Brown’s rep. But that didn’t help calm down the spirits. BFF Rihanna took a stance too, obviously in favor of Chris Brown. She tweeted: “It’s a good day to shut the PH up, and reanalyze your SELF!!!”. She also used a bible passage to sink in the morale of her advice: “Whatever measure you use in judging others, it will be used to measure how you are judged”.

And then it’s Rihanna’s Isis tattoo underneath her breasts. Surely not as controversial as Chris Brown’s battered woman neck tattoo but just as sort of uninspired. Of course, everybody is impressed but at the same time we can not help wonder if Rihanna knows those tattoos are permanent.