Alysa Liu Opens Up About the Personal Meaning Behind Her Symmetrical Back Tattoo

Alysa Liu's only tattoo has a story most people never expected: a matching symmetrical design drawn by a mutual friend, inked onto her back when she was 18 years old, that she admits she can barely remember the details of.

"My first tattoo is on my back, and it's pretty symmetrical. It's in the middle," Liu told Teen Vogue in an interview released on YouTube on March 12. "I'm matching with my best friend. Got it at 18. Our friend drew it up, so it's like extra special because of that."

The revelation came weeks after the tattoo had already sparked widespread debate online. On February 26, an image of the design began circulating after being spotted in older TikTok dance videos, where it had gone largely unnoticed until Liu's Olympic profile exploded. She had just delivered a 226.79 free skate at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics to claim gold, then helped Team USA win the team event as well, becoming the first U.S. women's figure skater to win Olympic gold since 2002. Her Instagram following jumped from under one million to more than six million in a matter of weeks, per Sports Illustrated, and with that visibility came intense scrutiny of everything about her, including the tattoo on her back.

Some social-media users speculated that the design, which Hindustan Times described as featuring a central motif with two wing-like extensions, resembled Baphomet, a symbol associated with occult imagery. Those claims remain unconfirmed and were not addressed by Liu in the Teen Vogue interview. She focused instead on what the piece actually means to her.

"And there are little bits, here and there. Like, if you asked me to draw it, I probably couldn't draw it. I never see it," she said. "I wanted to do a drawing competition with my best friend, like who can remember what our tattoo looks like the best."

That last detail cuts to the heart of why the tattoo matters to the geometric ink community specifically. The design was not pulled from a flash sheet or lifted from an artist's portfolio. A friend conceived and drew it, making it a genuinely one-of-one symmetrical piece, and Liu has worn it on her back for two years without being able to fully visualize it. The symmetry is not incidental, either. Liu explained that her entire approach to body art is built around bilateral balance.

"I actually don't have the [Olympic] rings on me. I want to so bad, but I'm like, I can't think of a placement," she said. "Because I have this weird thing, I can't get it on one side, or else I have to get it on the other side. Like, I have to be symmetrical in that way."

That constraint has so far kept the five-ring design off her skin despite genuinely wanting it. For an athlete who just won two Olympic gold medals, that level of deliberateness about placement reflects exactly the mindset that draws people to geometric tattooing in the first place: symmetry is not decoration, it is a condition.

Supporters online pushed back hard against the backlash. "Backlash for a back tat is crazy," one commenter wrote. Another added, "Tattoos are a personal choice, and they don't change who someone is or what they've accomplished." The defense came quickly and loudly, which given Liu's six-million-strong following, carried considerable weight.

Whether she eventually solves the placement puzzle for the Olympic rings, the back tattoo she already has is, by her own description, something she and her best friend share and a trained friend hand-crafted for them both.