tenderness

Now You Know That Dakota Johnson Has Her Favorite Word, Tender, Tattooed on Her Arm

Vogue 100: A Century Of Style - Red Carpet
Maybe she’s a big Blur fan. Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Hi, this is just to say that Dakota Johnson’s favorite word is “tender,” and that she has that word tattooed on her arm. Vogue reported this news in its cover story on Dakota Johnson, who —  let us just remind you —  loves the word “tender.”

Tender is actually Johnson’s favorite word, and last fall her friend Dr. Woo, Los Angeles’s current status tattoo artist, etched it in fine, looping letters onto her forearm. Another tattoo by Woo in white ink reads LIGHTLY, MY DARLING, words plucked from a book by Aldous Huxley. (Not to be outshone, her mother recently had Woo tattoo the word HUSH onto her knuckles.)

Is your life better for knowing that Dakota Johnson, star of the Fifty Shades movies, How to Be Single, and A Bigger Splash, has the word “tender,” her favorite word, tattooed on her arm? Is it worse? This is not for us to say. Here are some more of Johnson’s thoughts on the word “tender”:

I was recently at the Gucci show in Milan because Alessandro [Michele, the brand’s designer] is a good friend, so I felt like I could just go, see what he was working on, and be like, I’m proud of you; call me later. But normally I’m sitting there thinking, I don’t belong here, I don’t know all these people, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I have a thing with the exposure, with the experience of the past two years. I think I went into this weird K-hole of feeling so scared of people. I noticed myself becoming shut off to strangers, even cold. That’s not my nature. I prefer to be tender.

Dakota Johnson, who loves the word “tender” and has the word “tender” tattooed on her arm, prefers to be “tender.”

Treat this news with the tenderness it deserves.

Dakota Johnson’s Favorite Word Is Tender