News for Queer Women

Nancy Mace’s Lesbian Tattoo Has the Internet Asking the Same Question

August 19, 2026
Nancy Mace revealed her tattoos on YouTube podcast. Photo courtesy of YouTube/Nancy Mace
Nancy Mace revealed her tattoos on YouTube podcast. Photo courtesy of YouTube/Nancy Mace

Do we think she knows?

Rep. Nancy Mace made headlines this week after revealing her jarringly tatted up arms, causing LGBTQ+ people to take note of one bizarre tattoo choice in particular.

Mace showed off her tattoos during the inaugural episode of her new podcast, Get Maced. The tats themselves aren’t new. The former politician previously told Politico that she got nine tattoos a couple years ago to feel “the pain that I need to feel” and to “reclaim” her body.

At the time, her tattoos largely remained hidden beneath her sleeves during public appearances. Now that she’s turned to podcasting after her failed bid for governor of South Carolina, she seems more comfortable exercising her right to bare arms.

The visible tattoos include the word “justice,” religious iconography, some flowers, and, most notably, the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway.

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” it reads.

Quotes and stories mean different things to different people, and there’s plenty to be taken from a Virginia Woolf novel. BookRiot previously published an analysis of this specific line suggesting that it conveys she knows exactly what she wants her upcoming party to look like, and that it tells us “nothing in this story is going to be handed to us.”

But we can’t consider a line from Mrs. Dalloway without looking at the novel as a whole. And it’s notably a story that explores queerness, sapphic desire, and concepts of identity in the 1920s.

In other words, it’s not the kind of novel one would expect to be celebrated by a far right Republican with a history of fighting against trans rights and a seemingly devolving view of broader queer rights.

After Mace shared a picture in which the tattoo was even more prominently displayed, people online started calling out the absurdity of her getting Woolf’s words inked on her body.

At this rate, perhaps Mace will end up casually getting a tattoo of a double-headed axe next.

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