Most Tattooed Woman – Julia Gnuse

Julia Gnuse was born in 1959, and lived a pretty ordinary life until she was thirty five. She started getting very uncomfortable points on her skin, which started to scar in a very ugly way. After trips after trips to the doctors, it was eventually discovered that Julia had developed porphyria. This is an incredibly uncommon skin condition that can be inherited from a parent, or just spontaneously develop. One of the most uncomfortable symptoms of her condition was that Julia’s skin had become ridiculously sensitive – to the point that she could not go outside without her skin from blistering right in front of her eyes.

The history of porphyia is a dramatic one, and cases have been recorded through the ages from all areas of the world. Strangely, the condition is much more common in places such as India and Scandinavia – two places that would not immediately seem to have much in common! But there have also been people with it from Africa and South America, so there does not seem to be any particular way that we can map it to a certain area. Many researchers have stated their beliefs that the folklore of vampires may have started when people became afraid of porphyria, before modern science could understand it. The blistering in the sun, specifically, does follow many of the vampire tales throughout the world, as does some of the werewolf tales. Many of these, however, have been disregarded as dehumanising the sufferer of porphyia.

Julia was in good company. Famous people that have had porphyria include many members of royal houses: because they were all inter-related, it was passed genetically from generation to generation. King George III certainly had it, and it had been suggested that Mary, Queen of Scots also had it. Vincent van Gogh may have had it as well – although sadly the treatment for porphyria has not really improved much since his time. Julia began to become desperate to find a way to be able to go outside without being in pain. There was actually very little that her doctors could do, as the only medicine that was currently on the market had the slightly unwelcome side effect of making her lose her sight. Faced with the choice of complete body scarring or blindness, she turned to her next major problem: trying to cover up the scarring that she was getting more and more embarrassed about. Julia turned to her friends, and one of them – a plastic surgeon – suggested that she tried tattooing as a way to cover up the parts of her skin that she did not like. One tattoo on her leg was enough to get her hooked. Julia covered her entire legs with tattoos, and then moved up to her arms, stomach, and back. Now over 95% of her body is covered in tattoos – including her face – and she is known as The Illustrated Lady.Her tattoos have taken more than five years to create, were all created by the same artist, and has cost Julia more than $80,000. Incredibly, the tattoos do not actually protect her from the sun’s hurtful rays, and so blistering still occurs – but now the scarring is covered up by tattoos. Some of the blisters have been measured as being equivalent to third degree burns, which are incredibly painful, but now Julia still has something to smile about every time she goes out of the door. Julia has now entered the Guinness World Records for being the most tattooed woman in the