Who was the woman behind the ink, the other woman who threw the wrench into Bullock’s immensely popular works? Heavily tattooed stripper and fetish model Michelle “Bombshell” McGee‘s origins are murky, though one thing is clear: She had an 11-month affair with James. The bodacious, outrageous McGee couldn’t be further from Bullock in terms of image: Both are brunettes and James’s intimates — and all comparisons stop there.
McGee’s image is that of the voluptuous bad girl you wouldn’t bring home to mother. No surprise that the man who touts his tough-dude cred, and who claims to be a descendent of the outlaw Jesse James, might find McGee seductive. (Go back one wife, and there’s a much closer affinity between McGee and James’s ex, adult actress Janine Lindemulder.) Picture the Suicide Girl aesthetic — a scandalous punk rock vixen with an exhibitionist streak and a taste for sex work — taking a turn for the seedy.
But the Bombshell did not begin that way. The mother of two told CBS that she grew up Amish, although she claimed on cybersex site SoCalGlamourGirls that she was raised in Montreal, lived in the south of France, and was working on a graduate degree in biochemistry. Whichever back story you believe, McGee’s Nazi-inspired tats and poses in SS gear haven’t endeared her to the public. She explained to TMZ that the shots were the photographer’s idea, and pictures of her licking a dagger while clad in a Nazi armband were simply an attempt to be “provocative.” Of the getups, she opined to the Hollywood Gossip, “I don’t believe it’s racism at all. Anti-Semitism? Yes.” Later, though, she told RadarOnline.com that if she could change anything, it would be her fascist-flavored body art.
As for James, McGee told In Touch (the unlikely magazine that scooped all the gossip tabloids), “I would never have hooked up if I thought he was a married man.” Sexting and regular sexual encounters, including hookups in James’s garage in California, were conducted while Bullock was filming “The Blind Side” in Louisiana. McGee also slapped one of the more memorable nicknames ever on her lover, “Vanilla Gorilla,” because he was so “well-endowed.”
Post-scandal, the Bombshell continued to blow up where she could, promoting, in the buff, Ashley Madison, a website dedicated to cheaters. She claimed at Sydney’s SexPo show that she had zero regrets, once again tagging James as “the one who broke a vow.” In any case, the entanglement appears to be kaput. By autumn James was stepping out regularly with “LA Ink” tattoo artist Kat Von D, who gives McGee a run for the money in the body art department.
–Kimberly Chun