All credit goes to GoBeyondTheCover.com ABOUT HIS TATTOOS Rico Genest (a.k.a. Zombie Boy) burst on to the scene in 2011 after Lady Gaga's stylist and Thierry Mugler's creative director, "NICOLA FORMICHETTI DISCOVERED THE TATTOOED CANADIAN ON FACEBOOK." Formichetti asked him to come to Paris to walk the runway in both the Mugler men's and women's shows. The Paris fashion crowd was instantly enamored with Rico and he soon after was featured in Lady Gaga’s "Born This Way” video. The 26 year old grew up in Montreal and "ACCORDING TO HIS MOTHER WAITED, OUT OF RESPECT FOR HER AND HIS FATHER, UNTIL THE AGE OF 16 TO GET HIS FIRST TATTOO." He then left home at 17 after graduating from high school and before being plucked from obscurity in January, he was living in modest surroundings with his friends working as a doorman and a freak show performer in Circus Side Shows to pay for his next tattoo. At the age of 21 Rico first went to Montreal tattoo artist Frank Lewis who is responsible for inking the majority the designs on his body, which they create together. And Rico is not done yet. He plans to continue adding to his unique body art to include his lower torso. The soft-spoken model says "when I was a kid I was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I wanted to be a ninja turtle and live in the sewers. But as I got older I fell in love with zombies and wanted to become one. The closest thing I could get to becoming a zombie was to get tattooed like one.’ "MY TATTOOS SYMBOLIZE LIFE THROUGH DEATH, OR DEATH THROUGH LIFE." This has taken over ten years and by now, Rico has easily spent more than $16,000 on his tattoos. Rico’s view on his tattoos: "They’ve been a part of me forever – before I even got them done. They reveal how I feel on the inside. I’m so used to how I look now that I don’t see them anymore. It’s like if you met someone with purple hair – after ten minutes you’d think, "Oh yeah, they have purple hair. So what?”