Nancy Mace Says the Pain of Getting 9 Tattoos Helped Her Reclaim Her Body During Her Worst Stretch in Office

Nine tattoos, a broken engagement, and a political career winding down: how a congresswoman turned pain into a very public reinvention.

Both of Nancy Mace’s arms are covered in tattoos, something she managed to keep almost entirely out of public view while in office. The outgoing South Carolina congresswoman showed them off by ditching her sleeves to promote her new YouTube show, “Get Maced.”

At the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2026, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) moves through a corridor after the House voted on DHS funding and a War Powers resolution on Iran. Photo by Andrew Harnik / Getty Images.

She got the nine tattoos in rapid succession in late 2023 and early 2024, during a stretch that included the end of her engagement to Charleston businessman Patrick Bryant and a wave of staffers leaving her congressional office. She told Politico she felt “totally broken” and that the physical pain was the point: it gave her “the pain that I need to feel” and helped her reclaim her body and identity.

One of the nine is the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”), inked across her torso and usually hidden by clothing. Others seen in recent footage include script lettering, the word “JUSTICE,” and American-traditional pieces like an eagle and roses.

Seated before a podcast microphone with the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, Mace displays the tattoos covering both arms — ink she kept hidden throughout her congressional tenure.

The reveal marks a sharp turn for a politician who in 1999 became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets and who kept the ink covered through her entire time in Congress. It follows a distant fifth-place finish in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary in June and her decision to pass on running for Lindsey Graham’s open Senate seat. Now she’s launching a second act online.

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