Soto Gang: The Girl Power Guardian Angel of the Tattoo Industry

*This article was originally published in Beautystack Magazine Issue 1*

Imagine Sporty Spice, Sailor Mars and Cardi B had a love child, and you’ve got Manuela Soto. The 27 year old Swiss native has met me on a rooftop in Downtown LA, a block away from her new apartment and a short walk from the brand new tattoo studio she’s opening with Sang Bleu.

This is the first time she’s had a permanent residency in more than three years, after touring the world tattooing girls across the globe, helping them to reclaim their bodies from trauma, abuse and loss of confidence.

For many of her clients and supporters, Soto is the big sister they never had, a girl power guardian angel, empowering them with an inner strength and a community ready to offer support and sisterhood. Her work is both body and sex positive - custom portraits of women with uneven boobs, hip dips, belly rolls and anime eyes have become an internationally recognised signature. Combining kawaii cute with 90s hip hop and chola culture, she creates artwork that’s both fresh and nostalgic. It’s no wonder her wait list is longer than her nails. 

We spoke to Soto about her story so far, hyper-sexualisation and her cartoon girl crew, Tender Force.

How did you get started as a tattoo artist? 

A friend taught me how to do stick and poke on a drunk holiday in Berlin, that’s where I got my first tattoo. I came back to Switzerland and starting giving stick and pokes to all my friends. Little by little, people were asking me to tattoo them, but stick and poke took too much time, so I got myself a tattoo gun. A year later, my friend Jessica from Ghetto Nails in Spain, had a pop-up at Art Basel Miami, and she invited me to tattoo at the pop-up. It was crazy. Afterwards, people would pop up in my DMs asking me to go to their city and tattoo them. I only had 3,000 followers, but two people would message me saying ‘come to New York!’ and I’d go to their houses. That’s how I started doing tattoo tours.

So, you had no formal training or apprenticeships?

No, I started my myself. I asked a lot of people, but no one wanted to teach me. I have a BA in Fine Art, so I’ve been trained to study different mediums and techniques; it was just a different technique to me, a new thing to try.

When I was starting to tour more, Maxime from Sang Bleu reviewed the basics with me and I learnt so much, my tattoos have improved a lot since then. 

You are so vocal on social media about your work and it’s message for women - can you tell us more about what your mission is?

I think all my work has been based on healing yourself. My signature pieces are self portraits - girls will come in and say ‘this is who I want to be’. You can pick your clothes, your hair, your style and make it like you. We all did it as kids. It makes you feel better about yourself and allows you to reclaim your body; it’s like you’ve got superpowers and you can be whatever you want to be.

Discrimination is what really breaks us as women, as I was coming up in the industry, everyone would tell me I knew nothing about music or fashion, and it’s part of a whole lot of trauma that brings women down. Then there’s the sexual abuse and feeling endangered everywhere we go, all those things really weigh on us. That’s something I’m still trying to grow and heal from, I’ve been through a lot of that shit, and my first work was for myself. All the girls I started to draw were me, I wanted to be that bitch. I want to be out there in a bikini saying fuck you. I’m in my late 20s now and I feel like I’m finally becoming the woman I want to be.

A lot of people label your work as ‘overtly sexual’ or ‘pornographic’ - how do you feel about that?

I don’t see my work as sexual or provocative, it’s empowering. It’s a really powerful version of a woman owning her sexuality, but there’s nothing overtly graphic or sexual. My work is for women, not for heterosexual men. It’s a lot about body image, and I think that’s why people take it as a sexual thing. I want girls with my body type to feel like they’re beautiful – they’ve got rolls, and wide hips and they’re uneven, but to me, that is my normal body and I want it to be seen as normal. But people see big hips and bib boobs and they’re like ‘oh it’s porn’, but it’s just what I see when I wake up, it’s not sexual. 

How does tattooing make you feel?

It feels good, the best thing is seeing excitement on my clients’ faces. I just feel proud and I’m proud of them. They connect with themselves and leave feeling better, they feel excited about their bodies again.

Your tattoos are recognised internationally - how did you find your personal style?

It’s a big mix of all my inspirations. I’m very nostalgic about my childhood – everything 90s and 2000s. I love graphic design, I love fashion, I love anime, but I’m also looking for my roots and who I am in this world. I’ve come to LA and discovered fine line tattooing – I’m just bringing all of that together. I’m always trying to figure out who I am, so I just bring together everything I like to build my style and discover myself.

Tell us about the cartoon girl group you have created, Tender Force!

I started Tender Force because I’m very interested in education and supporting young women. I always want to do stuff with a purpose and I was thinking about what I could do to help younger girls, because I have a lot of younger followers. How can I help them through heartbreak or sex education? I thought I could have a cute girl gang who could teach you about all of that and be your best friends. Sailor Moon, the Powerpuff girls, the Spice Girls, they all really helped me and we grew up with that. I literally am Sporty Spice! They helped form us as individuals.

I thought that recreating these girl gangs that was so powerful for us as kids, would help young girls feel represented. I want to talk about real shit – not just fighting demons or whatever, but talking about real problems. It’s just the beginning and I want to do so much. I think it could go really far.

What are the four characters like?

There’s Jelly, Peach, Chilli and Angel. I wanted everyone to be able to find themselves and which girl they were. It’s not a Benetton ad, I wanted to keep it ambiguous – their names don’t even link to a culture. Angel is really spiritual, but she’s also a sneakerhead; Chilli is addicted to love and drama, but she’s a cry baby; Jelly loves music and talks too much and Peach is a DJ and she’s super driven. Either you physically look like one, or another one will be who you are as a person. I tried to create the best scenarios I could.  

I wasn’t expecting so many girls to send me pictures resonating with the characters, but I had hundreds of girls messaging me. They’d take photos and post them next to the character drawing, showing how similar they looked! It was so cute!

What do you think is the secret to your success?

I say yes to everything, I used to say yes to every project, interview, DM, invite. Get out of your comfort zone every day. I grew up in Switzerland and now we’re on a rooftop in LA doing an interview, I live a block away, my nails are shining, like wtf?! Take every opportunity and never be scared. Of course, I’m scared all the time – I have to do interviews and be on TV next week and I’m opening a new LA studio – I’m freaking out, but I’m gonna do it. 

So, you’re working on opening Sang Bleu LA, which is huge! Do you have any other major goals for the future?

I think I want to move to Tokyo and open shops. I want to have a really big business that grows and I want to do proper fashion collections. I like to do everything, I feel like I can do so much and I don’t like to limit myself. It’s very empowering to be able to switch to whatever I want to do.

Is there any piece of advice you’d give to a young beauty professional who wants to make it in the industry?

I would say, fuck everything! Don’t follow any rules. Don’t believe what other people say you should do, create your own path. Gather all your inspirations and create something new out of it – people say that everything’s been done but I don’t think that’s true. Trust your gut and go for it.