The Hottest, Sexiest, Most Beautiful and Most Desirable Women in the World With Tattoos

Seriously, you don't have to take my word for it. The hottest, sexiest, most beautiful and most desirable women in the world with tattoos are carefully compiled in lengthy lists published every year by men's magazines like Maxim, multiple international editions, we might add, Stuff, Playboy and websites like AskMen.com. Many of the magazine lists are compiled by the editorial staff, but others like FHM, allow their readership to chime in with votes for their favorite female celebrity, be she model, actor or musician. So popular is this interactive feature, that one list claims that over ten million visitors to their website voted for their favorites.

The Celebrity Tattoos section of the VanishingTattoo.com website has long been a favorite with our visitors, and with over a thousand tattooed stars and starlets, is large enough to keep just about anyone gazing in admiration and wonderment for as long as their mouse finger holds out. No doubt these lists are as good for newsstand sales as the vaunted Swimsuit Edition is good for the bottom-line at Sports Illustrated. Readers love lists. Men love sexy, beautiful and desirable women. Combine the two and you've got a sure winner on your hands.

As a website that tracks the impact of tattoos and body art within popular culture, the staff here at VT has both a responsibility and an obligation to check out these lists and verify just how many of the lovely ladies held up as the paradigms of feminine beauty sport their own ink. A task, a chore, a huge undertaking to be sure, but we're willing to make those kinds of sacrifices in the service of our faithful and loyal visitors. It's an honor to serve you in such a fashion.

We first started tracking these lists in 2002, thanks to FHM and a long overseas flight by our fearless leader, Vince Hemingson. Hemingson, who tracks the popularity of tattoos among the general population through Polls by companies like Harris and Pew, was reading FHM on a flight to Europe and was struck by the fact that a list that was compiled to feature the 100 Sexiest Women in the World, also happened to be a list filled with tattooed celebrities. Or at least so it seemed. In 2002, 36 out of the 100 women listed had tattoos that we could verify through photographs. In the intervening years a number of the women listed who did not have tattoos subsequently went under the needles of a tattoo machine. Today, of the 2002 FHM list of the 100 Sexiest Women in the World, an astonishing 54 have tattoos. The statistics of celebrities with tattoos were greater than the general population in both 2002 and 2009. An indication perhaps, that celebrities have a powerful influence on the general populations fascination and embrace of tattoos and body art.

When more than half of the women considered to be the sexiest women in the world have at least one tattoo, that is an extraordinary statistic in and of itself and it is worth pondering what that indicates about the general public's perceptions about tattoos and body art, and how women with tattoos are viewed. Any remaining social stigma that tattooing once had is clearly in full retreat. Furthermore, it has to be assumed that the women featured on the list will have a powerful influence on the fashion, styles and taste of mainstream popular culture. One last thought about the 2002 FHM list before looking at the latest lists - a staggering 20 out of the top 25 sexiest women in the world now have a tattoo. That's eighty percent.

The Tenth Anniversary of the Vanishing Tattoo website just happens to happily coincide with Maxim magazine's Tenth Anniversary List of the Hot 100, 2009.

Let us begin:

Thirty-nine of the Maxim 2009 Hot 100 have tattoos (39%), quite a bit higher than the general population according to the latest polling research as carried out by the Pew Research Center in 2008. Also, we were never given an opportunity to see all the women listed in the buff, but had to satisfy our scholarly intellectual curiosity with hundreds and hundreds of hours of internet searches. Damn all those fashion photographers and editors who Photoshop out body art! There are probably two or three that have secret tattoos that we don't know about! One additional statistical prediction - a large number of the women on this list who are currently in their late teens and early twenties will undoubtedly acquire a substantial number of tattoos in the next decade. And, if anything, this list would skew younger than a sampling of the general female population aged 18-34. So once again, it would appear that celebrities exhibit tattoos and body art to a significantly greater degree than the general population. Not a particularly surprising revelation when you consider the personality characteristics necessary to both be a celebrity and to make this list; drive, ambition, talent, extroversion, and not averse to risk-taking behaviors.

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