Back in the day, an easy way to tell if someone was a lesbian was to check the wrists for a star tattoo.
Just like the hanky code was a way for gay men to communicate their sexual preferences, star tattoos were used to identify yourself as a lesbian — think Doc Martins, thumb rings, and carabiners today — in a way that other WLW would understand.
While star tattoos might not belong solely to the lesbian community now, the symbol has a rich history connected to marginalized women within the community.
How did the star tattoo become a lesbian symbol?
You might think the historic lesbian star tattoo is a nautical star, but it didn’t start out that way. Back in the day, lesbians began getting small, regular five-pointed stars tattooed on the tops of their wrists where they could be covered by a watch as a way to build community as self-identify.
According to Amanda Timpson from the YesterQueers TikTok account, while the internet will tell you this trend started in the ’40s, it actually originated with “tough bar lesbians” in Buffalo, New York, in the 1950s. These butches were building a unique community, separate from the part of the lesbian and gay community that was fighting for equal rights through assimilation, and wanted a way to flag that they were lesbians.
Why did it start in Buffalo?
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Buffalo was different than a lot of major cities because there weren’t any homophile organizations (the term for early LGBTQ+ rights groups before the rise of the Gay Liberation movement), but it had a thriving and inclusive lesbian community.
“The homophile movement that gained momentum in the United States in the 1950s was very focused on assimilation,” Timpson explained. “Both the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis wanted to prove that gay people were just like everybody else, that meant that they distanced themselves from anyone they saw as detrimental to the movement. For lesbian activists that meant working class lesbians, black lesbians and lesbian of color, and gender nonconforming lesbians.”
But there was a “new style of butch” in Buffalo: the working class butch who was street wise, wore male clothing, went to the local bar everyday, and were leaders in the lesbian community they helped to create.
“These tough bar lesbians were rabble rousers, sure. But they were also the anchors of the lesbian community in Buffalo,” Timpson said. “Not only were they visibly queer all of the time, severely limiting their options for housing and employment by the way, but they also took it upon themselves to welcome newcomers, explains the communities unspoken rules and etiquette and making sure that women who were new to the scene understood both the rewards and the risks of living their lives as lesbians.”
And it was these rough and tumble butches that were the epicenter of the lesbian star tattoo trend.
The first time lesbians got the star tattoo
A handful of these Buffalo-based butches and their femmes that got the very first star tattoos to symbolize their lesbian identities. “On an night of partying in 1950 piled into Dirty Dick’s tattoo shop on Chippewa Street and had tiny five-pointed stars tattooed on their wrists,” Timpson said.
There was a powerful desire to be identified as a lesbian at the time, and the five-pointed star on top of the wrist was the first symbol of the lesbian identity that wasn’t defined by the contrast of butches and femmes, according to Timpson.
When did it become a nautical star?
The small star tattoo remains popular in some lesbian communities in Buffalo, but in the 1970s, the trend shifted from a small star on the top of the wrist to a nautical star on the inside of the wrist, and lesbians now get them tattooed in other places on the body, too. But the nautical star tattoo isn’t exclusively a signal that someone is a lesbian, as both punk rockers and sailors have adopted the symbol.
Other lesbian tattoos
Tiny five-pointed stars and nautical stars aren’t the only lesbian symbols sapphics get tattooed on their bodies anymore. The double Venus symbol, lavender flowers (or tattoos with lavender accents), scissors, Sappho, a labrys, and triangles are all popular choices.