Human beings have been marking their skin with inks for millennia. The earliest preserved sample of tattooed human skin comes from the body of Ötzi the Iceman, who lived around 3,000 BCE. But it isn't only men who get tattoos: from Ancient Egyptian priestesses, to Inuit mothers; women have a long history of expressing themselves with this uniquely portable form of art.

However, in more recent times the British have attached a certain social stigma to inking the body; particularly when it is done by women. Despite numerous aristocratic and royal Victorians indulging in the practice, women of the 20th and 21st centuries have sometimes found themselves frowned upon for how they choose to wear their own skin.

The title of the film is a reference to a 1939 song by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, sung by Groucho Marx in the film At The Circus. The song is an ode to Lydia the tattooed lady, whose body is an encyclopaedia of tattooed historical scenes.