‘Body graffiti’ may be popular among celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Amy Winehouse, but that doesn’t make it classy, attractive or wise, says Simon Mills

‘Tattoos; not just for losers any more." So declared an article celebrating the art of body graffiti last weekend. It went on to reference a bunch of winning celebrities, all covered in badly drawn cod-philosophical/faux-tribal/cloyingly sentimental illustrations, to show just how gentrified tattoos have become. They included such aspirational figureheads as Pete Doherty (branded with his son’s name), Amy Winehouse (adorned with 1950s pin-ups and playing cards, among many others) and Peaches Geldof (a bow and a cross). Or, if you like, crackhead, car crash and airhead.

Tattoos not for losers any more? Hmmm.

Tattoos are in Vogue this month, too (which presumably means they won’t be in vogue in a few months’ time). The fashion glossy applauds the widespread cult of the illustrated woman by citing Angelina Jolie, Sienna Miller, Kate Moss and even Samantha Cameron (who has a dolphin on her ankle) as beautiful, classy examples of artfully needled ladies. But here’s the thing. It is hard to argue that any of these irrefutably beautiful women has been anything but blighted - rather than enhanced - by her rash decision to become graffitied.

Angelina is a particularly interesting case. Her body, indelibly violated from the neck down, looks like a more shapely version of that fellow in Christopher Nolan’s thriller Memento, who couldn’t remember anything and had to have notes inked into his skin. I’m sure every single dermal artwork has meant something to Angelina on her life "journey", but in among the elaborate tiger "tramp stamp" on her back and a laborious series of map references (don’t ask) is surely the most boring tattoo ever: the legend "Know Your Rights". Why would anyone have something that you might find on the noticeboard of a small claims court etched between her shoulderblades?

Then there’s Amy Winehouse. To my eyes, the daily tragedy of the staggering beehive is only made more wretched by the ugly marks that cover her emaciated body - tattoos that are modish, apparently ("old school" sailor-style designs being particularly in), but look to me as if some hyperactive five-year-old has been let loose with a rainbow pack of Sharpies.

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Victoria Beckham probably thinks her tattoos are classier than Amy’s because they are, you know, dead spiritual… like scented candles and Madonna albums. Her body is a holy war of Hindi Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin and Roman numerals, which represent her children’s birth dates. One doubts that Victoria (who once admitted she never had time to finish a book) has ploughed through the Zohar or four Vedas, or can confidently count to 100 in Roman (who can?), so why does she feel the need to cover herself in ciphers and foreign languages?

For that matter, why does anybody need to prove commitment to children and spouse and, most commonly, dead relatives, via some ill-conceived body modification? My wife would be horrified if I etched my thigh with some facsimile of her face and my mother, God rest her soul, would spin in her plot if I inked my arm with a mawkish tribute. What’s wrong with carrying around a photo?

Most tattoos are the cheap plumage of the attention-seeker, visual ice breakers for last-chance barflies and aspiring reality TV show contestants. They certainly aren’t scary or alternative any more. Now that they have been co-opted by the masses - the squares, the mortgaged, the Volvo drivers, the wusses and the girls - we have come to accept their fairground aesthetic in much the same way we have decided to allow Gordon Ramsay’s pointless swearing.