Parsons has expressed in articles a strong loathing for tattoos. In the 1990s he wrote a story titled "The Tattooed Jungle", suggesting that tattoos were symptomatic of the decline of the working class. In a 2012 article for "GQ" magazine, he lamented the fact that in the last 20 years in Britain, tattoos have become mainstream, common among both sexes and to all economic classes; he wrote that tattoos "remain ugly, hideous daubings that make my flesh crawl with revulsion every time I see one".