Bride wants SIL to cover her tattoos at her wedding — and she's got a point

How many insane stories have we read about demanding bridezillas who lose all sense of humanity when they think their perfect photos might be ruined by a bridesmaid who doesn't look like a Pinterest model? Spoiler alert: It's a lot. 

So there's no way that a bride would ever be justified in asking that her sister-in-law, who will be in her bridal party, cover up her tattoos with expensive tattoo-cover-up makeup, just so her wedding will look how she wants it to look, right? Well, this story, posted to Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?" might complicate your opinion on that.  

It may have been removed from Reddit, but it's still preserved where all controversial posts haunt us in screenshot form: on Twitter. 

Twitter user @Sorrelish posted the screenshot of the AITA post along with the caption, "This will make you 180 so fast you'll leave your eyes behind like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon." And she's not wrong.  

The title of the post, "AITA for making my SIL cover up her tattoos with makeup for my wedding?" makes it sound we're about to hear from one crazy petty bridezilla.  

"For reasons that are about to become obvious," she dares to write, "I'm not close with my SIL, but it's very important to my fiancé that she be in the wedding party so I've agreed to that.

"However, she has tattoos all over her chest / shoulders and her dress is spaghetti-strapped," OP continues. Here's where your alliance will shift. Believe me. "The tattoos are very unfortunate," she writes. "One is the number 1488, another is the confederate flag, and another says 'white and proud.'" Surprised, aren't ya? To top it all off, she also has one of "Spongebob stoned smoking a joint."

The number 1488 is a popular white supremacist hate symbol — 14 is shorthand for the "14 Words" slogan coined by white supremacist and terrorist David Lane. The slogan is, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." 

The 88 is a reference to "Heil Hitler" (because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet). According to the Anti-Defamation League, "Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs."

Obviously, the Confederate flag is a racist symbol, "white and proud" also perpetuates white supremacy, and stoned Spongebob is just tacky. I wouldn't want these tattoos visible at my wedding, either. In fact, I don't think I'd want this person at my wedding. 

OP asked her SIL to get professional stage makeup to cover up her tattoos, and SIL got super upset. Her fiancé doesn't like the tattoos but thinks his future wife is "being a bridezilla" for not wanting visible hate symbols at her wedding. According to OP, "Her argument is that she's not actually a Nazi, she's just proud to be white but I don't want that in my wedding photos." 

Sorry, but's that's BS. You don't get 1488 and the Confederate flag tattooed on your body unless you're racist beyond belief. As one commenter wrote, "People who are 'just proud' tell everyone they're 62 percent Irish or whatever. They don't get known hate symbols tattooed on their bodies!" 

In the comments, OP clarifies that if her tattoos weren't offensive, she wouldn't care. It's just that they're enough to make plenty of people feel unsafe. 

And the fact that this woman's husband-to-be is taking the side of his clearly Nazi sister makes me seriously question whether she should get married to this dude. "He disapproves of the tattoos," she writes in the comments, "but because she got them many years ago (except Spongebob), he doesn't think it's fair to punish her for them."

However, this doesn't seem to be the case of a rehabilitated former white supremacist who is ashamed of their past, trying to course-correct, and is planning to remove those tattoos. This is a woman who is still "white and proud" and doesn't seem to think she needs to apologize for it. 

That's what's so baffling about the stance of the fiancé. He's way too lenient with his super racist sister, and way too quick to call his concerned wife-to-be a "bridezilla" for not wanting a loud and proud Nazi at her wedding.

This just goes to show you that you can't judge an AITA post from its title. Wowee. 

Editor's Note: The article was originally published in February 2020. It has since been updated.