Cindy Crawford’s ‘dark day’ over son Presley’s face tattoo

Parenting is rarely easy, but spare a thought for Cindy Crawford, whose son debuted his horrific new face tattoo on Instagram this week.

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Having kids is a bit like confronting a bear in the middle of the night outside your log cabin in Alaska. To be fair, I haven’t confronted a bear, and I’ve never been to Alaska, but as the mother of three kids I am confident that my analogy stands.

You’re pottering around your cabin, thinking you’re doing a pretty good job, and then you leave to get some wood, and BAM, you see a bear. You know you have to act – if you stay still, you might get eaten – but if you make the wrong move, you could enrage the bear, and he could barge into your cabin and eat the whole family.

So you force yourself to stay calm, think super quickly, and do your darnedest to keep the bear from doing something you’ll both regret.

“So, Bear,” you might say, “You want to sing Anaconda for the primary school talent quest? What an interesting choice. Let’s think that through!“

Or perhaps, “So, Bear, I hear you want to invest all of your savings in Bitcoin? Let’s chat about that!”

Or maybe, “Bear, darling, you want to get your tongue pierced for your fourteenth birthday? How festive! Shall we discuss?”

Or what about, “Oh, Bear, you want to get a tattoo that says ‘Misunderstood’? Across your face? Your actual face? Permanently?”

Because that is exactly what Cindy Crawford’s bear, whose name is Presley, did the other day. Twenty-year-old Presley, son of Crawford and her husband Rande Gerber, already had a number of tattoos, but his latest addition is on his cheek. The cheek on his face. His beautiful, 20-year-old face.

I can only imagine his mother’s horror when she saw his facial ink for the first time. Don’t get me wrong; I like a nice tattoo, and I have a couple myself, and I would have no issue with my kids getting their own nice tattoos if they chose.

But “nice” is the operative word, and “face” is absolutely not in the equation.

It’s one thing to get a tattoo on your bicep or chest or back; they’re interesting and decorative, but they don’t actually define you. People don’t stare at your bicep when you’re talking to you, unless you have a really fabulous bicep and they haven’t seen a bicep in a while.

But people talk to faces. People stare at faces. People relate to faces. A face is the purest representation of ourselves, the portal to our soul, the conveyor of our emotional states.

And now Presley Gerber’s face – his beautiful, 20-year-old face, will forever convey just one emotional state. Misunderstood.

Chip off the old block: Presley is a working model himself. Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images/AFP

Now, our kids all feel misunderstood at some point, but most of them work through it with a therapist, or by listening to Billie Eilish’s music. Few of our kids are still obsessing about being misunderstood once they hit 20. And only a very few of them take that feeling and ink it across their face for all the world to see.

For Cindy Crawford, this must have been a dark day indeed. She is now the unfortunate parent whose child has announced to the world how very misunderstood they feel. And she will be reminded of that fact every time she looks at her son. Because, until the end his life – or until some expensive and painful laser treatment – Presley’s face will register only adolescent angst.

But what is Cindy to do? Like all of us parents at some point, she has been faced with a bear. Does she stay silent, and hope he doesn’t do anything else stupid, or does she yell at the bear, and risk a full-scale attack?

The word “misunderstood” is bad, but it could always be worse. Perhaps young Presley will add the words “as f**k” under the tattoo, or ink in a picture of a mermaid, or the confederate flag?

No doubt, like all of us, Crawford is treading gingerly around the bear. She can only do her best not to provoke him further. It’s dark out there in the parenting woods. Sister, we understand.

Kerri Sackville is a freelance writer and author of Out There: A Survival Guide for Dating in Midlife | @KerriSackville