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38th out of 101 books
—
20 voters
The Tattooed Lady: A History
by
Amelia Klem Osterud (Goodreads Author)
Living in a time when it was scandalous even to show a bit of ankle, a small number of courageous women covered their bodies in tattoos and traveled the country, performing nearly nude on carnival stages. These gutsy women spun amazing stories for captive audiences about abductions and forced tattooing at the hands of savages, but little has been shared of their real lives...more
Hardcover, 160 pages
Published
November 1st 2009
by Speck Press
(first published October 31st 2009)
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Tattoos have always held intrigue for me (working in #8 this month!) and I was delighted to stumble across this gem, Academic librarian, Amelia Klem Osterud, pieces together a largely forgotten/overlooked past female tattoed performers and accompanies the text with beautiful photographs and illustrations.
Amelia does an excellent job describing the early tattooed beauties and their influence on women's rights, tattoos, and stereotypes in America's past and current culture. This collection is tru...more
Amelia does an excellent job describing the early tattooed beauties and their influence on women's rights, tattoos, and stereotypes in America's past and current culture. This collection is tru...more
OK... nice pix... overall, enjoyable. Came off as as a not-terribly-scholarly casual research project cobbled together with a couple of other not-terribly-scholarly casual research projects, but if you treat this as light entertainment and a fun collection of photos, you won't be disappointed. Well, except by the bits on contemporary tattooed lady performers. Ugh, boring strippers with a few tattoos, big freaking deal; it would have been much more interesting to see and hear from some of today's...more
A good looking book with wonderful pix, sources and index and even an attached ribbon bookmark. The writing could use some editing, information was frequently repeated from one chapter to the next and before I became accustomed to this flaw I found myself confused about maybe having lost my place; no matter how elegant or well employed, a bookmark won't help in that respect. I'd like to see more photos and less redundancies.
great book. really inspired me to be proud of my tattoos. It was also interesting learning the femme history of tattoo ladies, and how brave they were.
A truly wonderful book about women making their own way in a time when there were so few choices for women.
There were a few great nuggets of information but overall redundant and I remain disappointed.
Great information about tattooed ladies, circuses and how they fit into American culture. Lots of interesting pictures and many life stories of the tattooed ladies.
A really interesting read, nice to learn about the origins of the women and how they lived within the circus and in everyday.
This book is highly entertaining for the first 40 pages, but suffers from poor editing. Much of the latter part of the text reads like an undergraduate research paper-- a paper that deserves an A but not full-length publication. The pictures are fascinating and from a librarian's point of view the captions provide excellent reference points for resources in this genre.
Great pictures, but the writing could use some editing.
I liked this one a lot more than bodies of subversion. Way less into the feminine thing and focused more on the actual women themselves. It also had a lot of really great photos.
A really pretty book. Lots of amazing phots and a peek at life as an oddity. As a tattooed lady myself, I found it fascinating.
May 13, 2013
Annabel-lee
marked it as to-read
May 11, 2013
Angelia Herrin
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Mar 19, 2013
Anna Sanchez
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Mar 14, 2013
Gwen
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Lisa Benenati
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Feb 11, 2013
Alice Gillibrand
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Jan 21, 2013
Cara
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Jan 19, 2013
Jesse Ortega
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Jan 19, 2013
Sarah
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