Ben Affleck defended his back tattoo this week on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

The massive ink is a full-color picture of a phoenix taking flight, which completely covers his back. Some fans thought it was sexy AF, others thought it was… eh, a bit tacky.

“It’s not something that I sort of kept private, It wasn’t like I was doing photoshoots or whatever, we were two hours north of the city on an island in Hawaii and we didn’t know the paparazzi were there,” he told Ellen of the shot taken while he was in Hawaii, which prompted fans to take notice of his enormous tattoo.

“So they got a picture of my tattoo. And sentiment ran … you know, against.”