#Betty boop tattoo amy winehouse plus#

Not so much a role model for the nation’s young women, more a distillation of all the evils with which they are often associated. She drinks too much, swears too much, mutilates herself, suffers from anorexia and bulimia, smokes cannabis, beats up her boyfriends and misbehaves in an epic manner.

This in spite of any number of bad habits. Unlike Pete Doherty, whose disgraces just make him seem pathetic, Winehouse is relentlessly endearing. Talking of her parents’ reaction to her first “ink”, she says: “My parents pretty much realised I would do whatever I wanted and that was it, really.” She got her first tattoo at “about 15” and now has around a dozen.

#Betty boop tattoo amy winehouse plus#

She has the name of her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, etched on her left breast plus a horseshoe, a lightning bolt and an anchor on her midriff emblazoned with the words “Hello Sailor”. She has the cartoon character Betty Boop tattooed on her back. She’s got danger written all over her almost literally in the fact that her tattoos depict pneumatic women with impressive figures. She is the kind of woman you’d expect to meet slinging hash in a hick-town diner who’s just got out of jail for taking an axe to her boyfriend’s mistress. The weirdest thing is that Winehouse looks and, to a certain extent, sounds like Tennessee trailer trash. She is the diabolical Ms Hyde to the wimpish Jekylls represented by Joss Stone, Dido and Norah Jones. She is part panto bad sister, part street-smart guttersnipe. Onstage she is barely coherent, slugging back glassfuls of wine or some form of alcohol to keep her machinery oiled.

She is a strange, elliptical, jazz balladeer, composing complex confessional songs that expose the underbelly of her addictions, her lovers, her personality. She is not just a bad girl bellowing male-oriented rock songs or playing the riot-girl game.