💖 The Gay Agenda: Why 2SLGBTQIA+ and Female Tattoo History Matters 💖

Tattoos by Ruth Weyland

I didn’t make COVERED because I thought tattoo history needed another cute Instagram. I made it because I kept googling “queer tattoo history” and “female tattoo history”… and got crickets. Nothing.

It felt like screaming into the void:Where were the lesbians who tattooed?Where were the femmes who opened shops when men wouldn’t even tattoo women?Where were the queer men who tattooed through the AIDS crisis while watching their friends die?

If you only looked at what’s been published, you’d think we never existed.

Because representation matters

When you’re queer or femme and in this industry, you’re already navigating spaces that weren’t built for you. And when you go looking for history — for proof you’ve always belonged here — and find nothing? That absence becomes another form of erasure.

I refuse to let that erasure stand.

Because these stories carry weight

• Tattooing through AIDS wasn’t just art — it was survival, ritual, grief, and defiance, all in one.

• Tattooing when it was illegal — in Boston, in New York, in military towns — was an act of resistance.

• Tattooing as a woman, when many shops refused to even tattoo women’s skin, was a rebellion in itself.

These aren’t side notes in history. They’re the backbone of it.

Because Tattoo history lied to us

The canon says tattooing belonged to sailors, bikers, and men with anchors on their arms. But that’s a fraction of the truth. Queer artists, trans artists, femmes, circus performers, immigrant women, hustlers, sex workers — they were here, working the needle, building culture, even when they couldn’t sign their names.

Because if I don’t do it, who will?

COVERED is me dragging this history into the light — not as an “exception,” not as trivia, but as the real, beating heart of tattoo culture.

I’m building the archive that I needed when I was a baby queer artist looking for proof that people like me existed in this craft.

The Gay Agenda

✨ To archive the erased.

✨ To show the girls, gays, and theys they’ve always been here.

✨ To honor the weight of what it cost them to stay tattooing.

✨ To make it impossible for anyone to pretend this history doesn’t exist.

This isn’t neutral. It isn’t academic. It’s personal. It’s survival. It’s COVERED - Tattoo history’s revenge arc.