When ‘My Body, My Choice’ Becomes Something Much Darker

I know Rep. Nancy Mace. She’s a nice lady, but has always been a rather attention-seeking political personality. 

This goes all the way back to 1999, when she successfully integrated The Citadel – the men’s military academy. Then she ran for Congress, where she has been rather performative while in office. 

She made big headlines over the weekend because she decided to do a body reveal on national TV. According to the New York Post:

Back in February, she said she got nine tattoos in rapid succession to mark the exodus of staffers from her office who badmouthed her to the press and the breakup with her fiancé — among other bad experiences. The 48-year-old also described it as a way to “reclaim” her identity and body. “So my story is I am totally broken,” she bluntly told Politico earlier this year. “I have PTSD over what I’ve been through.”

That’s a lot of tattoos. I admit I am not a tattoo fan, as you might have guessed. The book of Leviticus is not a fan of tattoos. 

I do think there are certain circumstances in which tattoos are more understandable than others: if you are a member of the military, if you’re a member of a police force, or if you are a rock star.

If you are a sitting congressperson and you show up with Hells Angels-looking sleeves, it’s a little weird. It’s a sign of something. 

One of those tattoos is the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s famous novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” which is weird because if I were going to get a tattoo, it’d be the first line of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, which is 119 words and I would wind it all the way around my torso multiple times.

Or maybe something from Faulkner, a 1,300-word opening.

Or maybe the verse from Leviticus where it says “Don’t get tattoos.”

In the profile with Politico, there was this exchange:

Politico’s Michael Kruse: “How’s it going?” I asked her.  

Mace: “That’s a very loaded question.”  

Kruse: “How are you feeling?” 

Mace: “Cautious. It’s a very, I would say, cautious time for me, because I have a lot going on, and I have a lot of folks that are trying to stop me.”

Kruse wrote:

By this point in late January, I had been talking to Mace, and to others around Mace and about Mace, for hours and hours, for months and months. I wanted to know what so many wanted to know and still do. What is happening with this woman? What is happening, or has happened, to her? Why does she say the things she says? Why does she act the way she acts? Is she … OK? Mace is a 48-year-old twice-divorced mother of two. She often walks with a gun. She sometimes shops in a wig. She always sleeps (the little she sleeps) under a 20-pound heavy blanket she thinks isn’t heavy enough. She says she does what she does because of “an engine” that she “can’t control” and that “just f*cking goes” and is “going to go and go and go.” She says she gets the tattoos that she gets because of “the pain that I need to feel.”

And in the wake of her shocking speech last year in which she on the floor of the United States House of Representatives accused her ex-fiancé and three of his business partners and friends of grievous sexual crimes against her and other women — in the spiraling subsequent litigation in which alleged abusers are suing Mace and other alleged victims and vice versa and a judge instituted a gag order for all parties involved and Mace has taken to representing herself — she at times has all but asked to get sent to jail.

She is, according to scores of ex-staffers and ex-friends, operatives and colleagues from both parties and a spectrum of people who know her and have known her for a long time, “unstable” and “unhinged” and “unwell.” “Something snapped in her mentally,” Charleston-based Republican consultant Chris Drummond told me. “I hope that she gets the help that she needs,” Charleston-based Democratic consultant Renee Harvey told me.

This is sad. If you are openly saying that you got tattoos in order to feel pain, there are lots of ways in life to feel pain. 

Over the weekend, my three-year-old decided to climb into a hamper. I don’t know why; he’s three. And then he lost his balance, keeled over, clocked his forehead on the floor, and got a bump. He felt pain. The difference is that those bumps will go away. He’s not going to have gigantic tattoos all over his arms. 

I feel like if you are a person in need of reclaiming your body and feeling pain, probably what you need is some psychiatric care, not the tattoos.

If one of your friends or a person you know did this, the responsible move is not to feature them on national TV. The responsible move is not to do gigantic profiles on them. The responsible move with people who are obviously going through pain is to sympathetically see that they actually get the treatment that they need. 

It’s not a matter of “personal choice.” Obviously, we live in a free country. Nancy has the right to do what she wants to do when it comes to getting her tattoos. 

I will say that she’s obviously going through something, and I really hope Nancy gets the care she needs because this is not healthy behavior.

That may be an unpopular statement. 

But it is not healthy behavior.