In Lady Gaga’s music video for “Born This Way,” Gaga and Rick “Rico” Genest dance pelvis to pelvis like a pair of horny zombies. They both look like skeletons, with exposed under-eye sockets and neck veins. The thing is, Gaga’s makeup was washed off after the shoot. Genest’s art is permanent.
He’s spent more than $16,000 getting the tattoos to look this way.
Most people don’t see a homeless 25-year-old whose entire body is tattooed to resemble a decaying corpse and think “fashion model!”
From Montreal squeegee kid to high-fashion runways, magazines and Lady Gaga video shoots, the last six months of Rick (Rico) Genest's life have been a whirlwind.
It's all thanks to Facebook and a lot of ink.
Rico and I hooked up on iChat, and the first image that popped up on my laptop screen was a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Kill Me." Only afterwards did his distinctive, skeleton-tattooed face make an appearance. When I asked him about his jarring look, he replied: "You know appearance doesn't mean anything. Most clean cut people are crooks behind closed doors. You can have really good-hearted people with crazy hairdos. You can't judge a book by its cover."
I’m in a cab with Rico – aka Rick Genest aka Zombie Boy – and he’s wearing a Kill Me t-shirt and talking in animated terms about his beloved Lucy: “I love her. She’s so amazing,” he says, flashing a boyishly charming smile. It transpires that Lucy is actually Lucifer, his pet boa constrictor. This comforts me. Boys with cadaverous ta!oos need to date a Wednesday. Or a Desdemona. Or at the very least a Buffy, right?
RICK GENEST, A K A ZOMBIE BOY, 25: I wanted to leave no doubt. After this particular session, which lasted six hours, I was leaving for Milan to get checked by Guinness World Records, and I was going to make sure that nothing was going to come between me and the records for the most tattooed bones and most tattooed insects. I was awarded two medals, so the trip was successful. So far, I’ve spent 300 hours, give or take, to look like the living dead. I hope to be done by the fall or winter. In the meantime, I’m busy working. The day this photo was taken, I had three interviews set up, and I was preparing for a tattoo show. I perform in Lucifer’s Blasphemous Mad Macabre Torture Carnival all over Canada, and I model for Thierry Mugler, which is where Lady Gaga found me for her ‘‘Born This Way’’ video. Why did I decide to embark on this project? I guess I didn’t really think it over. Kids and tattoos, you know.
