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'A book about being gay': Nancy Mace's Mrs. Dalloway tattoo and the queer classic behind it

When Nancy Mace went sleeveless to launch her 'Get Maced' podcast, the tattoo that drew the sharpest reaction was the one she has actually named: the opening line of Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway,' inked on her arm. Menswear writer Derek Guy asked her about it on X: 'I'm curious what inspired you to get the opening line of Mrs. Dalloway tattooed on your arm... it's at the dinner party where she wrestles with her homosexual memories.' GO Magazine and other outlets ran with the irony, one of Congress's most vocal opponents of transgender rights wearing the first line of a novel long read as a landmark queer text. Mace answered the furor over her 'sleeves' but has not addressed the book's meaning.

Maceopedia ·

Close-up of Nancy Mace's left arm: a robed saint figure with a gold halo above the fine-line script 'Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,' beside a rose-covered cross. Cropped from a photo Mace posted to her own account on August 17, 2026.
Photo: Nancy Mace / @NancyMace on X, August 17, 2026. Source

When Nancy Mace went sleeveless in August 2026 to launch her Get Maced podcast, the tattoo that drew the sharpest reaction was not the hawk, the roses, or the "JUSTICE" lettering. It was the one she has actually named: the opening line of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, running in a fine script down her left arm. Within days, a question was ricocheting around the internet, and it was later summed up by GO Magazine under a headline that did not hedge: "Nancy Mace's Lesbian Tattoo Has the Internet Asking the Same Question."

Reporting credit: The framing here follows GO Magazine, Rachel Kiley, "Nancy Mace's Lesbian Tattoo Has the Internet Asking the Same Question" (August 19, 2026), and the viral X thread it and other outlets grew from. The literary observations were pushed into the mainstream by menswear writer Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) and picked up by Raw Story, The Poke, and Queerty. All quotes below are verbatim and sourced.

The line is the first sentence of Woolf's 1925 novel: "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Mace confirmed this tattoo herself, telling Politico's Michael Kruse in a February 2026 profile that the Mrs. Dalloway line was inked on her. It is the only one of her tattoos she has ever named in an interview. Her own August 17, 2026 close-ups (the lead photo above) show it on her left arm, beside a robed saint and a rose-covered cross. (Earlier reporting had placed it on her torso; the photo she posted herself settled it on the arm.) Maceopedia's tattoo record catalogs the piece in full.

The question Derek Guy asked

The person who moved the story from a joke to a literary point was Derek Guy, the widely followed menswear writer known online as @dieworkwear. On the night of August 17, replying directly to Mace's own post about the ink, he wrote:

Derek Guy replying to Nancy Mace on X, August 17, 2026. View the original post.

Guy pressed the contrast plainly. As reproduced by Raw Story, he added: "Although you voted for gay marriage twice, you've made disparaging remarks about gay people. Would that book, written by a bisexual feminist, not be against your moral values?" The thread went viral, and the aggregators followed: The Poke called the exchange the "magnificent spot" of the whole tattoo saga, and Queerty ran it as "Nancy Mace's accidental lesbian tattoo."

Why the internet calls it a "lesbian tattoo"

The irony rests on what Mrs. Dalloway actually is. Woolf's novel is widely taught and discussed as a landmark queer text, in large part because of its heroine's memory of another woman. In the passage the commentary keeps pointing to, Clarissa Dalloway recalls a kiss from her friend Sally Seton:

"Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips."

Clarissa calls it "the most exquisite moment of her whole life," and elsewhere reflects on "this falling in love with women... her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?" (Both lines are verbatim from the 1925 novel, which is in the public domain.)

Woolf's own life is part of the reading. She was married to Leonard Woolf, and she also had a romantic relationship with the writer Vita Sackville-West, an affair that inspired her 1928 novel Orlando, which Sackville-West's son called "the longest and most charming love letter in literature." That is the "book about being gay" the reaction is talking about: one social-media user, quoted by GO Magazine, put the whole irony as "being one of the most anti LGBTQ people on earth and getting a tattoo of a book about being gay."

The record that makes it "ironic"

The reason the tattoo reads as ironic to Guy and the outlets covering it is Mace's own documented record on LGBTQ issues, and specifically on transgender rights, in recent years:

  • November 2024, the bathroom resolution. Days after Sarah McBride was elected the first openly transgender member of Congress, Mace introduced a House resolution to bar members and staff from using Capitol restrooms that do not match their "biological sex." She told NBC News the measure "absolutely" targeted McBride.
  • November 2024, the "biological" sign. Mace posted a photo of a "biological" label she placed above a women's-restroom sign at the Capitol, writing on X, "I never thought we would need a sign for this, but women's restrooms are for BIOLOGICAL women. Not men."
  • 2025 and 2026, "What is a woman?" Mace repeatedly pressed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in House Oversight hearings to define a woman as "an adult human female," telling him "men can't become women." Walz answered that he was "not here to be a prop."
  • Trans-athletics legislation. Mace has co-sponsored and voted for a series of bills restricting transgender participation in women's and girls' sports.

Her record is not a lifelong one, which is part of what Guy needled: as The Advocate and ABC News have reported, Mace once supported the "Fairness for All Act" before her 2024 pivot, and, as Guy noted, she "voted for gay marriage twice." The point the critics are making is the gap between that record and a tattoo drawn from a text about queer desire, not a claim about her private beliefs. Maceopedia states her documented public actions and attributes the "anti-LGBTQ" characterization to the people making it.

"Who's gonna tell her?"

The LGBTQ outlet Queerty put the reaction most sharply, running the story under the headline "Nancy Mace's accidental lesbian tattoo is raising eyebrows across the internet" and a one-line dek: "Who's gonna tell her?" Writer Henry Giardina called Mrs. Dalloway "one of history's gayest books," and pointed out a detail the "queer classic" label understates: Woolf's novel is the direct template for Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel The Hours and the 2002 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore. Giardina's kicker: Virginia Woolf, he wrote, "is managing to troll an anti-gay crusader from beyond the grave... even bigots can't resist tattooing pieces of it on their arms sight unseen." (Queerty's "married lesbian written by a married lesbian" phrasing is its own; biographers more precisely describe Woolf as bisexual, married to a man, with a years-long relationship with Sackville-West.)

The quip that traveled fastest came from journalist Daniel D'Addario, who name-checked the author of The Hours:

Daniel D'Addario on X, August 18, 2026. View the original post.

Others were blunter. "Being one of the most anti LGBTQ people on earth and getting a tattoo of a book about being gay," wrote one user; another turned Mace's own defense back on her: "Damn, it sure sucks when other people are obsessed with what you choose to do with your own body!" The joke writing itself, over and over, was the same one Queerty led with: whether Mace knew what the book was about when she had its first line inked on her arm.

Mace answered the furor, but not the book

Mace did respond to the reaction, though not to the literary question underneath it. Roughly two hours before Guy's reply, she had already posted her blanket answer to the day's discourse:

Nancy Mace on X, August 17, 2026. View the original post.

That is the pattern of the media brand she is building: the tattoos, the podcast, and the daily posts are the product, and the argument over them is the distribution. She has leaned into the ink as plainly real (she corrected a follower who called her shoulder bird an eagle, "Hawk but same difference!") and told viewers on her own show they "don't have to like my ink." What she has not done, as of this writing, is say why she chose the first line of Mrs. Dalloway, or whether the queerness Guy described was the point, a coincidence, or beside it. The one tattoo she has named remains the one she has explained the least.

Related on Maceopedia:

Sources and attribution

Every quotation above is verbatim from the named person's own verified account, from the outlet credited, or from the public-domain text of Woolf's novel. The "lesbian tattoo" and "anti-LGBTQ" characterizations are the framings of GO Magazine, Derek Guy, and the commenters quoted, attributed to them; Maceopedia states Nancy Mace's documented public actions and does not assert anything about her private beliefs. Mace has not publicly addressed the book's queer themes.

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