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Nancy Mace Fires Back After Tattoo Sleeves Break The Internet

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Nancy Mace
Photo Credit: Jm817, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Nancy Mace turned the internet’s obsession with her tattoo-covered arms into a gun-rights joke.

The outgoing South Carolina congresswoman had spent months keeping the ink mostly out of public view, but promotional material for her new YouTube talk show, “Get Maced,” showed the 48-year-old Republican sleeveless with both arms covered.

By Monday, Mace was mocking the reaction on X. “This is the land of the free and you have the right to bear arms,” she wrote.

The South Carolina Republican also posted a photo showing the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” tattooed on her left bicep.

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

Mace treated the armchair commentary as more ridiculous than serious.

“The utter apocalypse over my biceps is funny,” she wrote.

She said checking social media only confirmed how strange the reaction had become.

“Made the mistake of opening my social media this afternoon. Some of yall are OUT OF CONTROL,” Mace wrote.

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Then came the line that summed up her irritation. “My biceps should NOT be a news story,” she wrote. “We have more important things to worry about.”

The first wave of online responses had already turned her arms into a spectacle.

“We’re living in a simulation,” activist Shannon Watts wrote.

“Next up: “‘Rep. Nancy Mace reveals new tattoos as she launches Only Fans…”” another added. 

The tattoo talk also reached Fox News, where contributor Raymond Arroyo criticized Mace’s look on Monday’s edition of “The Ingraham Angle” while appearing with Laura Ingraham.

“Nancy Mace has some new ink, and I don’t mean that she wrote a book,” Arroyo said. “The South Carolina congresswoman debuted a series of tattoos while launching her YouTube show called Get Maced. She looks like she’s getting maced right there.”

Arroyo then moved from the show launch to Mace’s trauma, saying she “apparently has PTSD over whatever she’s been going through.”

Ingraham reminded him that Mace had said she was raped. “She said she had been raped. It’s horrible,” Ingraham said.

Arroyo also objected to a Virgin Mary tattoo on Mace’s arm. “I wish she would pray to the Virgin rather than placing a tattoo of her on her bicep,” he said.

Ingraham said Mace had “been through a lot” and was “working through it,” while also making clear that her own dislike of tattoos did not mean she wanted to condemn someone else’s choice.

“No, Raymond. I don’t like tattoos. I’m not a tattoo person, but I don’t wanna — it’s their personal choice,” Ingraham said.

Arroyo said he felt sympathy for Mace but still believed the tattoos sent the wrong message.

“My heart goes out to her for whatever happened, and it sounds like there were some traumatic things,” Arroyo said. “But tats are not therapy… Self-expression in this way — I worry. When you need help — this is a cry for help. Go get that help, but this is a bad message to young women or anybody.”

Ingraham cut off the segment soon after. “God bless,” she said. “Raymond, we’ve gotta go.”

Mace had explained earlier this year that the tattoos were tied to pain, identity and what she said she had survived.

In February, she said she got nine tattoos in rapid succession after several hard experiences, including the breakup with her fiancé and staffers leaving her office before criticizing her to the press.

She described the tattoos as a way to “reclaim” her identity and body, and said they provided “the pain that I need to feel.”

“So my story is I am totally broken,” Mace told Politico earlier this year.

“I have PTSD over what I’ve been through,” she said.

Mace also discussed alleged rape, sexual molestation throughout her life and a difficult relationship with her father.

The tattoo reveal came after a punishing stretch in politics. Mace ran for the Republican nomination for South Carolina governor earlier this year and finished fifth.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, whom Mace accused of ignoring her sexual assault accusations against her ex-fiancé and others, went on to win a runoff for the nomination.

After Sen. Lindsey Graham died from heart problems last month, Mace briefly considered running for Senate, then dropped the idea and backed Rep. Ralph Norman.

Her break with President Donald Trump added another political blow.

Mace had once been a prominent Trump ally, but split with him over her push to release the Epstein files. She told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo last month that the split “may have ended my political career.”

“Let’s be honest, I didn’t go to Washington to take orders from anybody, which is why you do see me scuffle from time to time, which is why I do call out Democrats and Republicans alike,” Mace said. “I have a history of doing that.”

The tattoo sleeves now mark Mace’s next act outside Congress, and she made clear she was not treating the online pile-on as a crisis.

“Thoughts and prayers to all those affected by my sleeves,” Mace wrote.

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