Jenna Bush Hager Reveals A Tattoo Artist Once Turned Her Away Because She Wanted A Hand Tattoo: “They Said I Would Look Like I’m In Prison”

By Radhamely De Leon
Published Jan. 5, 2024, 12:16 p.m. ET

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Jenna Bush Hager

Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb spent much of the start of Friday’s Today broadcast fawning over Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo‘s matching hand tattoos, so much so it inspired them to possibly get their own.

“Wait, I was told we can’t get tattoos on your hand,” Bush Hager announced. “I tried to and they said I would look like I’m in prison. It was in France.” She added that the tattoo artist also claimed hand tattoos can fade due to hand washing.

Her confession made Kotb and their Today stage crew laugh. “I know ya’ll knew me! But that’s what somebody told me in France,” Bush Hager explained.

Kotb then demanded, “Why didn’t you Google it?”

“Because I was embarrassed and they were the professional tattoo artist, I’m just me,” she replied.

Bush Hager went on to explain what she had planned: “I was gonna get it underneath my rings — which shows I shouldn’t have gotten it if I’m gonna hide it — and we were gonna do ‘choose joy’ with all of my high school besties for my 30th, and he was like, ‘No,'” she said.

Kotb then shocked Bush Hager by asking her, “What if we got matching tattoos?”

Now, that’s a segment of Hoda & Jenna that we would tune into!

After Bush Hager accused her of “teasing,” Kotb insisted she was serious. The Today hosts attempted to plan what their first tattoos could be. After they both agreed that they could get a wave tattoo, Bush Hager said, “You know what I would like? If our kids could draw the wave. Is that cheesy?”

Kotb paused before replying that it would, in fact, be cheesy. “We would spend the rest of our lives [explaining]… ‘It’s a wave, our kids drew it!'”

This isn’t the first or last time Bush Hager attempted to get a tattoo. She revealed during an earlier episode of Today that she once tried to get a Destiny’s Child tattoo after going through a “terrible” breakup.

 “I almost got ‘Survivor’ tattooed onto my back,” she revealed, much to Kotb’s shock.

“The Destiny’s Child song was popular [at the time],” Bush Hager explained. “We actually went to the tattoo parlor on 6th Street and thank you, Jesus, it was closed. Imagine me with ‘Survivor’ tattooed on my back?”

Today with Jenna and Hoda airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.