In a 2019 interview, Willie Cauley-Stein opened up about the stigma of having tattoos, particularly facial tattoos:
"The first thing that they see. They’re not even looking in your eyes. They’re looking at the tattoos on your face. I made that perception on me because I felt like that’s part of my movement. I want to look like the ’hood but … I want to get past the perception of what people put on people. The stigma that they put on, on people that look like me."In the same interview, he also mentioned that his mother has more tattoos than he does: "She knew all the things that come with having tattoos. She’s more tattooed than me, so she gets the stigma on it."
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Cauley-Stein has the letters "PPP" tattooed on his forehead. In January 2018, he discussed the tattoo:
Above his eyebrow are two X's. In a November 2019 interview, Cauley-Stein explained that they were added in tribute to a friend who had died: "Every time I look in the mirror, that's literally driving me to accomplish what we set out to do."
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In 2015, Cauley-Stein befriended Blake Hundley, a nine-year-old Kentucky Wildcats fan suffering from brain cancer. A successful crowdsourced fundraising campaign gave the Hundley family resources to bring Blake to the final four game between Kentucky and Wisconsin in April 2015. In May of that year, Blake died, and in June of that year, Cauley-Stein had the words "Team Blake" tattooed on his neck, as seen in the above photo.
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