The woman most famous for being on Eliot Spitzer’s payroll as "Kristen" is on the cover of Playboy this month. Eliot Spitzer wishes she was not on the cover of Playboy this month. Eliot Spitzer wishes she would just go away and stop dragging his infidelities back into the conversation, when we should be talking about Tiger’s twenty-third dalliance.
Christopher Napolitano, the writer of the Playboy article (yes, something like this can’t just come with "favorite color?" and "what turns you on?" fill-in-the-blanks), dedicates a paragraph to say that he likes Ashley. Like her or not, she’s not unreachably attractive. Most of the time, she looks like the result of Molly Shannon stopping half-way as she morphs into a rattlesnake.
What’s most apparent, most unique about Ashley (apart from her fake hair, fake boobs, fake eyelashes, fake lips, fake nails and fake nose) is also what’s most puzzling: her fake skin. Somewhere in the general area of where her uterus would be is a tattoo that reads: tutela valui. A butterfly next to it.
The tattoo is what it is – in and of itself, just a tattoo. What’s puzzling is how people reacted to the tattoo. Most sought erudite answers like they’d just discovered a new species of fish or were interpreting the Bhagavad Gita.
The NY Post has translated tutela valui as Latin for "fair value".
Helen Kennedy, a staff writer at Daily News reported: "Tutela, which is related to tutor, has to do with a protector or guardian. Valui appears to be a past form of the word strong."
The Daily News also sought out Daniel Nodes, a classics professor at Ave Maria University in Florida, who translated it as "I've been well and remain that way because I have protection."
And a Wall Street Journal blog said, "It’s something closer to ‘I was strong because looked after.’ Valui is a past tense of valeo ‘I am strong’; tutela is ‘being protected’ and a Roman & Civil Law state of guardianship over young people."
It’s as if Ashley Dupré were hiding the Holy Grail (according to Dan Brown, she is) and if we could just figure out what this nebulous, brilliant, puzzling tattoo means, we would be saved. Meanwhile, these same people, these same publications will translate the US Constitution based not on historical references or linguistics, but on what they think the writers of the document meant.
Perhaps we should take the same tactic with Ashley’s tattoo: What did Ashley mean by it?
Based on the Playboy article, this is what we know of Dupré:
"I watched my dreams of a singing career flash before my eyes," she recalls. "I saw the hurt in his wife’s eyes. I felt as if I had jumped off a building. I couldn’t breathe. I was dead."
[After having a three-some with a woman and her boyfriend:] "I think I definitely turned her into a bisexual woman."
"I love sex and I’m very good at it, but I’m saving that. That’s for my future boyfriend from now on."
She speaks in fantastic, redundant phrases: "watched…before my eyes," "think I definitely," "future boyfriend from now on." It only serves to reason that her tattoo, shares that syntax.
Therefore, through much research and think-tanking, weeks and weeks of doing nothing but looking at Playboy, we at the Eleventh Draft have conclusively uncovered the meaning of Ashley Dupré’s uterus tattoo. tutela valui (butterfly) means "I like butterflies." On to the next riddle.
