Whitney Thore Has Accumulated Quite the Collection of Tattoos Through the Years

Season 8 of My Big Fat Fabulous Life has been a tumultuous one for Whitney Thore. The reality star called off her engagement with fiancé Chase Severino after he impregnated another woman — and she's living in Charlotte far away from her friends and family amid a global pandemic while coping with the fallout.

Whitney decided this was the perfect time to get a matching tattoo with her BFF, Buddy Bell, adding to her collection of ink.

Let's take a deep dive into Whitey's other tattoos.

During an episode titled, "The Buddy System," Whit sketches out a tattoo she and Buddy had been thinking about getting.

"Buddy and I have been thinking about getting another matching tattoo," she explained, after drawing a sketch of a goose. "And I think doing this during quarantine, it really attaches it to like a time that we're never going to forget. And that makes the bonding experience even stronger."

Why a goose, you ask? It's actually an inside joke.

"Basically, he and Heather and I were watching this video on the internet of like unlikely animal pairs, and this goose sees his friend and he starts running with his wings out," Whitney recounted on the show.

She continued,  "And like I started crying because it made me so happy. And I just said like, 'It knows! It loves!' and then we died laughing. And that's really it ... It means something to us."

The other matching tattoo Whitney has with Buddy is on her left calf and his right calf. 

She also has a quote from the iconic film Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone. It's from a scene toward the end when Rocky's eye is so swollen from his fight that he instructs his coach to relieve the pressure by cutting it. Thus, the "Cut me, Mick," on her left forearm.

In February 2019, Whitney opened up with her Instagram followers about the meaning behind one of her other tattoos — a complex design that includes the words, "Rest in reason. Move in passion."

"Y’all ask me a lot about my tattoos, so I thought I’d share part of the poem that inspired the one on my right shoulder blade. It’s beautiful and I read it often," she captioned the post.

She also has a whale tattoo (on her ribs on the left side), which she shared with her Instagram followers in August 2019.

"Don’t tell the cats I got a 🐋 tattoo," she captioned the photo.

Whitney got another meaningful tattoo — this time, on her left shoulder blade — during an episode of My Big Fat Fabulous Life back in 2015. Not long after it aired, she shared more about the inspiration behind its design.

"The Venus symbol with a fist is the symbol of feminism — which many people consider to be a dirty word, but it is deeply important to me," she explained via Instagram. "Once I gained weight, I realized very quickly that I wanted to be valued for something other than the way I looked."

Whitney added, "In the eyes of the society, the more my weight went up, my worth as a woman and a person went down. Now that I KNOW who I am and what I'm worth, I value many more things besides my appearance and whether other people enjoy it or not." 

"The nails are red to remind me of my mother's," she continued. "My mom used to read a Dr. Seuss story to me called Gertrude McFuzz. The story is about a bird named Gertrude who is dissatisfied with her single green tail feather, and in attempt to grow more, eats so many magic berries and grows so many feathers that she is unable to fly because she is so weighted down."

Whitney went on to add: "When the extra feathers are plucked and the burden of her wanting to be more is lifted, the last lines of the story are: 'And finally, when all of the pulling was done, Gertrude, again, had behind her just one ... That little green feather she had as a starter, But now that's enough because now she is smarter.'"

We're loving the different meanings behind Whitney's tattoos — whether they're deeply symbolic or just funny inside jokes — and we have a feeling she's not done yet.

Watch My Big Fat Fabulous Life Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST on TLC.