Alice Wylie: 'For a drastic haircut I'll curb my honesty. Tattoos, however, leave me really stumped'

IT'S something of an eternal conundrum: how to respond when a friend seeks your opinion on their new haircut/garment/rapid weight gain? I tend to employ a sliding scale of honesty, one which depends entirely on the level of permanence of the alteration to their appearance.

If, for example, they ask about a moderately priced item of clothing, I'm honest. Often brutally so. After all, they can remove it immediately. They can douse it in petrol and set it alight. For a drastic haircut, I'll curb my honesty, offering just a few crumbs of criticism. After all, what use is my suggesting they look like Donald Trump if they've got to live with it for months until it grows out?

Tattoos, however, leave me really stumped. I rarely like them, but people always want to show me theirs. I'm a terrible actress, yet I feel I can only yelp excitedly whenever one's pointed out to me, since constructive criticism seems fairly pointless in such a situation. I just can't bring myself to be anything more than cartoonishly enthusiastic about something that will still be hanging around even when they're six feet under.

I was faced with this sticky social situation once again recently when not just any friend but Best Friend unveiled his first piece of body art: a pair of dice on his ankle. "It's still healing," he told me, "but you get the idea." I got it loud and clear. From the awkward positioning on his leg to the cheesy double sixes ("it's a luck thing") I thought it was hideous, tacky, hilarious.

Best Friend puts up with rather a lot of barbed jibes from me when it comes to his wardrobe choices, poor thing, but it seemed a cruel step too far to poke fun at something he's stuck with. I masked my contempt with an admittedly pathetic "At least it's small." He was not amused.

Even if a friend comes to regret a tattoo, I've learned the hard way that it's still de rigueur not to make light of it. One acquaintance just about manages to laugh through the tears every time she remembers that she's got an ex-boyfriend's name etched next to her crotch. His name was Nigel.

Another has a faded ring of thorns which sits slightly off-centre on her lower back. She was 17, she was drunk, she calls it her "tramp stamp" and she can laugh about it now. But can I? When I did, she looked a little hurt. After all, looking back and laughing at bad fashion choices in photographs is one thing, but when those choices happen to be etched inches above your buttocks for eternity, somehow it's not so funny.

During one summer job as a student, I asked a colleague one Monday morning what she'd got up to at the weekend, to which she replied "I got 'Ooh la la!' tattooed on my minge." Silenced, I knew what was coming next. She offered to show me, explaining that she had obtained three quotes for the work and had opted for the cheapest one at 5.

When she asked my opinion, I managed to respond that it was clever of her to go for something below the hairline so that the motif could be concealed when necessary. She seemed satisfied with this. And when she asked me the following week what I thought of her new haircut, I told her she looked radiant.