Tattooed lady
At the height of their popularity during the turn of the 20th century, tattooed ladies transgressed Victorian gender norms by showcasing their bodies in scantily clad clothing and earned a salary considerably larger than their male counterparts.
During her family's westward emigration along the Santa Fe Trail in 1851, the Yavapi took thirteen-year-old Olive Oatman, along with her seven-year old sister Mary Ann, captive.
[2] Under the assumption that her entire family were deceased and that rescue proved impossible, Oatman assimilated to Mojave culture and acquired chin and arm tattoos as a means of identifying herself in the afterlife.
According to Amelia Klem Osterud, Oatman's story parted with traditional captivity narratives and Victorian gender norms since she didn't "wither and die" due to her experience.
[3] Oatman deliberately reconciled her identity as an adopted Mojave with her new one as a marked white woman by traveling on a lecture circuit with her ghostwriter, Royal B. Stratton.
Since US society would not have tolerated Oatman's choice to assimilate into Mojave culture, or even accept her as a transcultural individual, she purposefully recast herself as a victim of outside brutality.
Using the victim narrative allowed women such as Oatman, and the ones who copied her story, to maintain respectability while displaying their bodies for profit during the Victorian era.
Circuses and dime museums searched for new and exciting acts, including posting wanted ads in newspapers for tattooed ladies.
[8] The Roanoke Daily reported in 1895 that an unnamed tattooed woman received $100 a day, and that... the fairy tale about her, as told by the showman, only heightened the crowd's interest and harmed nobody.
[9] Many knew the falsehood of these captivity stories, but spent their money to hear them for the sake of entertainment, as well as a chance to satiate their curiosity to see the female body in an uncharacteristic form.
The young lady during that time suffered, of course, but were we to undergo such a delightful piece of needlework, it is needless to say that we would want in close proximity a bottle of ... St. Jacob's Oil ...
Irene Woodward's appearance served as a mark of deviancy, and most members of society found her exposed tattooed body repulsive outside of the high top.
[12] The reference to her reluctance to reveal herself in front of men for the first time reflects the attempt to legitimize her respectability, and softens the transgressive nature of her appearance.
In order to stay exotic within the realm of changing ideas concerning respectability, these women thought of innovative narratives to compete with each other and recapture the attention of audiences.
In a greater sense, the act of exposing their bodies for pay, and even operating independently without subordinating themselves to a male boss, defied traditionally held social expectations concerning a woman's bodily autonomy.
[17] Though the process of tattooing during this time period involved crudely hand-poked images and long hours of intense pain, Hildebrandt's reward for becoming a self-made 'freak' was not kept secret.
For example, the New York Clipper reported on March 22, 1884, that during her visit to Mexico, she received "a mustang menage pony, a silver-mounted cage containing an American eagle and lion, a pet tiger which follows her about, a performing monkey, parrots, mocking-birds, etc.
"[18] In an 1882 review, the New York Times criticized Hildebrandt's stout stature and masculine facial features: "her face is [so] hard that you wonder they ever got the needle through the skin without a hammer.
As women began to experience greater social freedom due to suffrage, the New Woman Movement and the absence of male competition in the workforce during both World Wars, the tattoo evolved into a solidified marker of working-class folk art.
"[20] In the same article, Pictoria is referenced as the person who introduced Vandermark to Charles Wagner and helped her gain a full body suit over the course of ten months for the bargain price of $130.
By the time bathing suits and hemlines rose, Broadbent decided to shock the public when she entered a beauty pageant at the World's Fair in 1939.
[21] While she had no chance of winning, Broadbent enjoyed the attention and free advertising, and assured her audiences that her wholesome act stood apart from "those carnival floozies with one or two tattoos who would bump and grind.
"[21] Like Vandermark, Broadbent's tattoos also bore references to pop culture icons and ones suited to her individual taste; she sported images of Charlie Chaplin and Charles Lindberg.
1888 as Genovefa Weisser, m. Forst, presumably in Löchau (Lachov) / district of Braunau (Kingdom of Bohemia); † 1963) was a well-known showwoman during the 1920s, who appeared under her stage name Maud Arizona as a "tattooed lady" and was a model for several works by Otto Dix.
As the postwar era hailed a sense of conformity and normalcy, tattoos decreased in popularity and once again became stigmatized due to their longstanding association with criminal activity.
Historically, tattoos have been viewed as a masculine trend but women are challenging this stigma by choosing to artistically enhance their bodies as a form of self-expression.
Some fashionable tattoos are chosen for cosmetic reasons, such as permanent eyebrows and lips, or masking scars after a mastectomy in place of reconstruction in breast cancer culture and self-care.
Many of these same women eventually evolve their tattoos to larger pieces with more meaning, often to help drive a cause or make a statement about an important topic.
