Tattooed Lady History

Tattooed Ladies on TV!

On Tuesday, I got a chance to appear on Milwaukee's Morning Blend TV show to promote the book and talk up that evening's book talk at Next Chapter Books in Mequon.

Check out the video here: http://www.themorningblend.com/videos/118679309.html

Want to come out and talk to me about tattooed ladies?

Of course you do!

I've done a number of book talks/presentations over the last year, and am still getting requests for them, which to me seems pretty cool.

 

Tuesday, March 29th at the Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, WI

Thursday, April 14th at 7pm at Green Apple Books in San Fransisco, CA

Saturday, May 7th at the Waukesha Tattoo Co. in downtown Waukesha, WI

Book Signing at the Riverwest Co-op: Sunday, Dec. 19th

This Sunday, Dec. 19th, from 11am-2pm- I'll be at the Riverwest Co-op (733 E. Clarke, Milwaukee) signing copies of the Tattooed Lady! Get your last minute Xmas gift for yourself or your tattooed love one!!

EW Blogger: Things Left To Do

So, in the first post, I mentioned that I really wasn’t done with my research. I guess with research like mine, there’s always something left to do, some fact left to dig up. I sit at my desk, surrounded by pictures of tattooed women that I’ve collected, and think about what else out there I think I need to find.

One of the main things I need to get around to is sending off to the state of Florida for Betty Broadbent’s birth certificate, which was unavailable to me (or anyone other than a blood relative) until November 2009, coincidentally, the month my book came out. Betty was born in Zellwood, Florida, as Susan Brown, Nov. 9, 1909, according to her 1940 Maryland marriage license to hubby number two, Charlie Roark. The form is filled out and waiting, I just need to write the check and get it in the mail.

(to read the rest, head over to EngageWisconsin!)

 

EW Blogger: The Problem with Parry

“Why do people get tattooed? Very seldom are the tattooed aware of the true motives responsible for their visits to the tattooers.” So begins Albert Parry’s 1933 book Tattoo: Secrets of the Strange Art as Practiced by the Natives of the United States. Parry, born Victor LeClerc in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in 1901 continues, “Tattooing is mostly the recording of dreams, whether or not the tattooed are consciously aware of it… much of man’s dreaming is, of course, of his true love- of his repressed sexual world fighting its way to the surface… The very process of tattooing in sexual. There are the long, sharp needles. There is the liquid poured into the pricked skin. There are the two participants of the act, on active, one passive. There is the curious marriage between pleasure and pain.” (Parry, p. 1-2)

...(to read the rest, head over to EngageWisconsin!)

Give a tattooed holiday gift!!

I was thrilled to see that The Tattooed Lady is on the top of needlesandsins.com's Tattooed Women Gift Guide!

Which reminds me... don't forget to order your personalized copy of The Tattooed Lady for $25 + $4 shipping for your tattooed loved ones and friends, or treat yourself!

Lady Viola says, "What are you waiting for? Order today!"

EW Blogger: Women at Work

 

In 1931, tattooed lady Ada Mae Vandermark commented, “When people ask me how come I’m a tattooed lady, I tell ’em it’s because I love Art…And that’s true, too—up to a certain point…I mean, I like to eat regular.” (“Art Means Grub to Tattooed Lady,” New York Post, April 7, 1931)

When most people think about the circus and sideshow, they think about the entertainment side of it, how interesting it is, how fun it must be to perform daring acts… they don’t think about it as a job. The circus was, and is, a job. It’s a very particular type of job, but it’s still a job. And it’s a job that women were employed at for longer than most jobs open to both genders. We have this idea that the majority of women in the past didn’t work. Totally not true. Wealthy women didn’t work, some middle class women didn’t work, but all working class women worked. The women who joined the circus over one hundred years ago were from primarily working class backgrounds- joining the circus or sideshow was simply a less awful kind of work.

...to read the rest, head over to EngageWisconsin!

EW Blogger: The Mystery of Research

When I read for enjoyment, I read mysteries. I love a good mystery novel- I always have. One of the first “real” books I read was The Secret of the Old Clock, the first of the Nancy Drew mysteries. My mom bought it for me when I was in the second grade. I soon devoured all the Nancy Drew books, and moved on to other mysteries, both fiction and non-fiction.

Part of the research process for me is like solving a mystery. When I first encountered the names and images of these tattooed ladies, it was like a challenge to solve the mystery of who they were. Names were fictional, biographies were created for audience entertainment, not to illuminate a researcher. Famous tattooed lady Betty Broadbent? Not her real name. Nora Hildebrandt? Probably the Nora part was original, but the Hildebrandt part she picked up from someone else. It’s very hard to find actual information from historical records when you’re dealing with false names and fictional details.

...to read the rest, head over to EngageWisconsin!

 

EW Blogger: Step Right Up!

Last summer, we went to the Wisconsin State Fair. We saw sheep, cows, and horses, ate bison burgers and maple cotton candy and fried things on sticks, and we also went to the sideshow! Well, what passed for a sideshow at State Fair. No offense, but comparatively speaking, it wasn’t much of a sideshow. The banners in front paid homage to a traditional sideshow, but they were small. The displays inside were even more faked than what you would expect from a sideshow (think spray painted baby dolls with fake deformities) but worst of all, no live acts.

At the turn of the 20th century, a visitor’s experience in a sideshow would have been much different. Sideshow-type acts have actually been around for centuries, given that people always seem to like to stare at people and animals that are unusual looking or odd. The traveling sideshows that attached themselves to American circuses were able to exploit that human curiosity, and combine it with entertainment-starved crowds who were already out to see the circus.

 (to read the rest, head on over to EngageWisconsin!)

 

EW Blogger: Highly Tattooed Men and Women

Bernard Kobel is a well-known name when it comes to pictures of tattooed people- many of the images published in popular tattoo books today come from Kobel’s “collection.” Kobel had a thriving mail order business for years selling photographs of tattooed people, sideshow freaks, and other shocking images, complete with catalogs with cryptic descriptions. In the pre-Internet days, this type of material was hard to come by- especially if it was particularly lewd or gruesome.

Bernard Lyle Kobel was born Dec. 19th, 1906 in Louisiana, and died August 1, 1985 in Clearwater, Florida. His father William H. Kobel was a photographer, and by 1942, Bernard was working with his father as a photographer out of their Frankfort, Indiana photography studio, Kobel Photo Service.

(to read the rest, head on over to EngageWisconsin!)