HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: Harry Styles and the tattoo that's divided the internet.

Don't delete all the pictures of your exes from your Instagram.

Don't scrub them from your Facebook feed.

Don't even go get the laser surgery that will remove their name, in a cursive, romantic font, from the blessed, unblemished skin of your outer thigh.

That is the unpopular opinion I found myself arguing this week, all because of a rock star. 

It was the incomparable Harry Styles.

I adore him. So do you. And so did Olivia Wilde, once. The actress-director adored him so much, and was so adored right back, that her name is inked on Harry's left thigh. And this week, a solid nine months after that relationship allegedly ended, he showed it off, on a yacht, in Italy.

Listen to the debate about Harry's tatt here on Out Loud. Post continues below. 

Headlines followed. 

Harry Styles Has Been Spotted With A Surprising New Tattoo.

Harry Styles flashes new tattoo seemingly dedicated to ex Olivia Wilde.

The idea that this tattoo is 'new' seems to be... wishful thinking. While what goes on between a famous man and his (doubtless achingly cool) tattooist is private, it's fair to assume that carbon-dating on the Olivia tatt would reveal its origin somewhere between September 2020 and November 2022, while they were dating (best not to think about which parts of my grown-up brain are being wasted storing this information). And he just hasn't got rid of it yet. 

And I, for one, don't think he needs to.

The etiquette of modern dating dictates that the moment your relationship ends, all evidence of your ex must disappear.

In a distant, pre-Facebook past, exes often actually did. You broke up with someone and you went on with your lives and every now and then you'd bump into them at a thing and it was a bit awkward and you'd wished you'd worn that new top, but broadly, if you never wanted to see them again, you didn't have to.

Those days are gone. We are all traceable, always. And to compensate for that lack of control, it's standard practice that the first sign of a breakup is a thorough scrub of social media. In the contemporary equivalent of taking a pair of scissors to a literal photo, you must remove every trace of them from the documentation of your life. Like they were never there. 

Don't do it, friends. 

It's at this point I must wave a disclaimer above my head. 

If a relationship was abusive. If you regret every moment of it. If the person you were with belittled you, betrayed you, broke you down – then, of course, delete them. And if, in fact, you just want to, then of course, delete them. 

But what I'm railing against is the expectation that you have to. That it's table-stakes. That not doing so is a sign. A sign to the world, or a sign to yourself, or a sign to an imaginary or literal new partner. 

Because that expectation is about more than the photo; it's about the relationships we consider worthy.

Harry and his Olivia tattoo are a ridiculous example of something that's all too real. 

The idea that every relationship is a mistake to be erased unless it resulted in forever.

And that's just not true. 

None of us have any real idea what happened between Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde, we probably never will and we certainly don't deserve to. But maybe it was beautiful. Maybe they had a glorious couple of years together, besotted. Maybe it ran its course, served its purpose, maybe when the heady haze of passion settled, there just wasn't that much there.

It happens. It's fine. That kind of relationship is a chapter, a season. Not an horrendous error of judgement that must never be spoken of again. Maybe (stay with me), Harry Styles can look at that tattoo and smile.

Portrayals of exes are everywhere in popular culture at the moment. Carrie and Aiden can't get out of bed. She thinks that maybe breaking up with him and marrying "John", was the Biggest mistake of her life. 

It wasn't. 

Aidan got his three little boys and his farmhouse and the life he clearly wanted that Carrie clearly did not. Now he's had it, and his boys need him less, they can write a new chapter (although, let's face it, it's unlikely to work out that way, since this is television, and drama is required).

Over in real life, the mega-wealthy are trying to divvy up big-money divorces. Kevin Costner and his wife Christine Baumgartner are embroiled in a court battle so toxic and costly, court documents are being filed about the whereabouts of dog beds and who pays for plastic surgery.

Strangely, we are more comfortable with this model of break-up than we are with the idea that maybe a relationship can be remembered without hate and rancour.

But however it ends, and whyever it ends, I will argue strongly you do not have to pretend it never happened.

Back to the vehement argument my Mamamia Out Loud co-host Mia Freedman and I had about Harry's thigh. Mia believes it's "disrespectful" to leave evidence of a former partner scattered about on your Feeds (or your thighs). And of course, it can be, if you are weaponising the presence of an ex to compare, or taunt, or provoke. 

But just by the fact of them having existed at all? Surely not.

You are allowed to have had a life before the one you're living now. You're allowed to have loved other people before the person you're loving now. There is no shame in having lived a life. 

And if someone is trying to convince you that there is, that – for me – is a bright red flag trying to draw your attention to control issues. 

There are people from my past I wish I had documented more. They're gone now, literally or figuratively, and the time I spent with them helped shape me, helped write my story. I wish I could flick back the pages sometimes and remember how those chapters felt to live. It doesn't mean I wish I was back there.

You are not a literal blank page. And your social media feed doesn't have to be, either. 

Or, you know, your thigh.

Feature image: Getty + Instagram/@justlikethatmax