Ben Affleck Breaks Silence, Jokes About His ‘Garish’ Back Tattoo

After a week of enduring ridicule over a “garish” back tattoo that was previously thought to be fake, Ben Affleck seems to be joining in the joke.

The Justice League star recently tweeted to the New Yorker magazine, “I’m doing just fine. Thick skin bolstered by garish tattoos.”

While not directed back to a specific tweet from the outlet, Affleck’s tweet appears to be in reference to a tweet from the outlet that read, “Last Saturday, almost exactly two years after Ben Affleck denied its existence, the back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself a phoenix rising from the ashes of gossip rags past.”

That tweet from The New Yorker links to an article titled “The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck,” which has a line that reads, “Affleck was older, suddenly flailing; and his enormous, garish tattoo — whether real or not — was the least of it.”

It seems that Affleck at the very least skimmed the article, which likens him to a “lusty Gérard Depardieu in his prime” and “Homer Simpsonesque,” as well as suggest that “we’ve been living in a world run by Afflecks for so long.”

Many of Affleck’s fans took to showing support of the star, with one person tweeting back to him, “Ben, don’t let them bring you down.
You’re a good person who does so much…,” and another writing, “I’ve never seen so much crap slung at someone chillin on a beach. Come on leave the dude alone!”

The large phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes tattoo on Affleck’s back, as the outlet noted, was first noticed a year ago. At the time, the actor dismissed it as “fake, for a movie,” and for the most part everyone let it go.

However, while on the sandy beaches of Hawaii last week shooting the film Triple Frontier, which co-stars Charlie Hunnam, Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund and Pedro Pascal, cameras snapped photos of Affleck donning the same brightly-colored tattoo that he claimed was “fake” a year earlier.

Many have criticized Affleck and the tattoo, suggesting that it represents a “midlife-crisis” for the actor. His ex-wife Jennifer Garner is one of those critics, having said in a previous interview, “You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart,’” adding, “Am I the ashes in this scenario? . . . I refuse to be the ashes.”