The original Suicide Girls roamed the earth before the advent of alt porn, when "pin up" was merely a verb and "cheesecake" a simple tasty treat.

They were traveling, independent, tattooed badasses before the reality shows, the blogs and merchandise. With monikers like Artoria, Serpentina, La Belle Irene, these women would have member pages that wouldn’t read too differently from today’s SGs: affairs with tattoo artists, performing before crowds, world travels, and stripping for the cameras. Of course, they had a harder time wiggling outta bloomers than whipping off a thong.

The tattooed ladies before our time can inspire. And so with little in modern news to report, allow me to get a bit nostalgic and look back at some old school painted pin-ups.

The First Tattooed Ladies

I’ll start at the beginning with the first “tattooed lady” in the US, but like many a title, there’s a cat fight.

Is it Nora Hildebrandt, who in 1882 had 365 tattoos, or Irene Woodward, aka La Belle Irene, who exhibited her heavily tattooed body before European royalty as well as American sideshow fans?


Nora Hildebrandt

The Tattoo Archive, a great source of body art history, says that Nora is the one credited for being the first female attraction in the US in the 1860s, just as her father Martin Hildebrandt, a German immigrant, is deemed the first professional tattooist in the country.

Nora’s dubious claim to fame was that she was not only tattooed but forcibly so by none other than Sitting Bull, who she claims had her tied to a tree and made her father tattoo her after they were captured. Whether audiences believed her, they marvelled at her nonetheless for her artwork.

But sometimes being first doesn’t make you the winner. According to Margo Mifflin’s Bodies of Subversion, a Secret history of Women and Tattoo, Nora may have beat Irene to the stage by a few weeks, but La Belle Irene was the more popular and enjoyed a longer career as the self-proclaimed “original tattooed lady.” Mifflin writes:

Irene had been tattooed by some of the rock stars of that time including Samuel O’Reilly who patented the first electric tattoo machine, and his apprentice Charlie Wagner who later enhanced the machine.

Like modern-day Suicide Girls, both Irene and Nora caused a stir, not just for their body decorations but for showing it off in skimpy outfits. To stop sensitive viewers from getting their bloomers in a bunch, Irene’s autobiographical pamphlet said that “her tattooing is of itself a beautiful dress.” I’ll remember that line next time I want to wear a bikini to the office.

With all that skin showing, tattooed ladies became a huge attraction. Men got to see some tantalizing flesh without being labelled pervs, and the attractions themselves got to travel and make a very good living on their own. They continued to lure men and women to the sideshows for decades.

Betty Broadbent



One of the most famous and the youngest of these decorated divas was Betty Broadbent. Betty devoted 40 years of her life to being a tattoo attraction. She had a full bodysuit from Charlie Wagner and Joe Van Hart, and in the 1939 World’s Fair, she showed it off in the first TV beauty pageant. She knew she wouldn’t win but it was great free press.

Betty’s first gig was with Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and later she travelled with every major American circus as well as shows in Australia and New Zealand.

Betty also became a tattoo artist, working many of San Francisco’s arcades. She retired in 1967 and died in her sleep—a legend—in 1983.


Mildred Hull
Before Betty tattooed, other women were needling skin behind the stage curtains. Many were wives of tattooers like Edith Burchett. Others were lone rebels taking on their male counterparts on both coasts. In New York, Mildred Hull commanded the Bowery in the 1920s. She epitomized cool. My favorite quote on Millie is also in Bodies of Subversion:

She was the ultimate tough chick. In 1947, she poisoned herself at a local tavern.


Cindy Ray



Australian Cindy Ray reigns supreme with the most photo-sets for a tattooed pin-up girl. Rocking bikinis or nude on bear-skin rugs, Cindy Ray (legal name: Bev Robinson) was deemed “The Classy Lassy with the Tattooed Chassis.” But touring as a tattoo attraction in the sixties was not all fun and adventure. In her book, The Story of a Tattooed Girl, she says that in some of the small country shows she did she “felt like an animal in the zoo.” But, she adds, her life in sideshow led her to learn tattooing and have a trade of her own. She still tattoos near Melbourne and was inducted into the Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Art Museum's Tattoo Hall of Fame in November 2005.

These five women are just a handful of the inspiring and sexy tattooed ladies that came before us. To learn more, pick up a copy of Bodies of Subversion and Electric Tattooing by Women.

I’d like to dedicate this post to the memory of Walter Moskowitz who passed away Saturday evening. Walter was one of the Bowery Boys, the legendary tattoo family, who had many a tattooed lady walk into their Lower East Side parlor in NYC. He will be greatly missed.

Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.