The country music star Jelly Roll is speaking out this week to defend his face tattoos from critics.
Jelly Roll Defends Face Tattoos
Jelly Roll, 41, was interviewed for the cover of Men’s Health. His interviewer pointed out that some feel that Jelly Roll’s face tattoos are a call for attention. Jelly Roll responded to this with a laugh, saying that it’s actually “the polar opposite.”
“The way shame sometimes shows itself is not always the way we expect it to be,” Jelly Roll said. “We think shame is somebody in the streets on their knees, with their head down. But shame sometimes is pride.”
“Behind real bravado, I can normally find shame,” he continued. “I can normally find guilt, I can normally find insecurity. I was the biggest, the loudest, the toughest, the meanest, the growliest, the fattest.”
Behind his walls, however, there was “a really, really small, insecure human.”
“I was that, for sure,” Jelly Roll admitted. “Then a by-product of that was I got fat as [expletive].”
These days, Jelly Roll regrets getting “almost all” of his tattoos.
“Like core philosophies are rooted in my life when I was 17 and now I’m 40, I’m like, ‘What the [expletive] was I thinking?’ ” he previously told GQ. “I hate them all.”
Jelly Roll’s Weight Loss Transformation
In his latest interview with Men’s Health, Jelly Roll said that he “may remove the face tattoos” as part of his personal “journey,” which has included a massive 275 pound weight loss.
“I’m loving my body,” Jelly Roll gushed to the publication. “This is a whole new thing for me, y’all, I’ve been imprisoned to a fat suit for 30-something years.”
“I am on the cover of Men’s Health magazine,” he boasted with pride. “You know, I was thinking, when I was 500-something pounds and walking a 40-minute mile, probably, I was screaming [that] I was going to be on the cover Men’s Health. And, even to me, as wild as I think, and big of a dreamer as I am, that was pretty ambitious.”
Check out Jelly Roll’s cover for yourself below.
Jelly Roll’s ‘Never-Ending Sadness’
At his heaviest, Jelly Roll weighed 540 pounds. This left him with feelings of great shame.
“It was never-ending sadness,” he recalled. “And anger. I was a prisoner to my own body. Dude, wiping my ass was a problem. Washing myself properly was a problem. Getting in cars. Every decision I made in life had to be based on my weight. If it could hold me, facilitate me, or fit me — people don’t think about every facet of ‘I still want to be able to do that and I can’t.’ I was so inspired by that kind of stuff.”
“I was killing myself, literally, I mean, I was eating myself to absolute death….I can’t talk about one area of my life it was not affecting,” Jelly Roll continued. “I’m ashamed of it. When I think of it being disgusting, I feel shame again. And shame is the exact same thing that will send me right back into the pantry. It’s the same thing that sends an alcoholic right back to the bar.”
Jelly Roll Loses Weight
Thankfully, Jelly Roll was able to turn his life around through diet and exercise.
“There’s this magical thing that happens when you start exercising. And you get through the absolute misery of the beginning of it. This thing happens in the middle of your workouts where it just sucks, and all of a sudden, it opens up and you feel incredible,” he stated. “I can touch my toes now. I seen my knee caps the other day, standing up. That’s a real thing. That’s a whole new concept for me, man.”
Jelly Roll is clearly in a period of transformation in his life. Now that he has his weight under control, only time will tell if he decides to start the process of removing his face tattoos!