Lydia the Tattooed Lady Lydia the Tattooed Lady "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" is a 1939 song written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen. It first appeared in the Marx Brothers movie "At the Circus" (1939) and became one of Groucho Marx's signature tunes. The complex lyrics by Harburg – with clever rhymes such as "Lydia/encyclopedia" and "Amazon/pajamas on" – were inspired by W. S. Gilbert. Harburg made many contemporary references to topical personalities such as Grover Whalen, who opened the 1939 New York World's Fair. Among the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia's body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), "The
Tattooed Lady individual, the implication that her father completed them suggests that the imposition came from within Western cultural practices rather than external ones. Irene Woodward's unusually honest statement proves that her motive came from a place far deeper than her ink. She saw a male tattooed performer, the possibility of securing a living by replicating him, and reinvented herself. As women began to experience greater social freedom due to suffrage, the New Woman Movement and the absence of male competition in the workforce during both World Wars, the tattoo evolved into a solidified marker of working-class folk art. Undoubtedly, tattooed women