Joel Madden wanted a tattoo of his daughter… on his front tooth

Joel Madden and Nicole Richie on 12/3/07 at the launch of the Richie-Madden Children's Foundation. Credit:Dimitri Halkidis / WENN
Joel Madden and his twin brother Benji are covered in tattoos, but there's one place Joel's fiance Nicole Richie supposedly objects to seeing ink on her man - in his mouth. Nicole is said to have nixed Joel's idea of having his front tooth tattooed with a picture of their daughter, Harlow, six months. This story was in Star Magazine, so take it for the creative fiction it probably is:

Nicole Richie thinks Joel Madden has had enough body art. So she flipped when he announced his plans to get more. 'Joel promised Nicole that he wouldn't get any more tattoos,' a source says. So a friend suggested a tooth tattoo, which is a photo imprinted on the tooth. 'But when Joel told Nicole he wanted to get their daughter Harlow's face tattooed on one of his front teeth, she shrieked, ‘Absolutely not!''

[From Star Magazine, print edition, July 28, 2008]

There was just a feature on Boing Boing about tooth tattoos and I would bet that Star is pulling this out of their asses after reading about it. Star had a whole story about Nicole and Joel's nonexistent planned wedding blowout along with a complete itinerary, so I wouldn't put it past them.

Tooth tattoos run from $75 to $500 and you can get celebrity faces in your mouth along with symbols, animals and just about anything you want. They're tiny but detailed hand portraits made on crowns and placed over the existing tooth.

Unlike skin tattoos the version you get on your teeth can be easily sanded off at the dentist's office in a few minutes. At ToothArtist.com, they call teeth tattoos a 'white collar tattoo,' because they can hidden on the back molars if desired. That said, I wouldn't want my husband getting a tooth tattoo in the front and would prefer he go for more traditional ink on the upper arm. It's permanent but doesn't affect appearance as much.