Earlier today, our friends over at Coudal Partners tipped us off to an amazing batch of vintage photos from the Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs on Flickr, and we’ve been poring over the images ever since. Housed at Ohio State’s Lawrence & Lee Theatre Research Institute, McCaghy’s expansive collection contains a wide variety of materials related to striptease research and memorabilia, spanning from the mid-19th century to the present day — quite the treasure trove, if you’re a fan of burlesque. Whether you’re looking for some over-the-top sartorial inspiration, a little early afternoon titillation, or proof of how standards of beauty are always evolving, we’re pretty sure that you’ll find it thanks to the lovely ladies after the jump.
Vernona Jabeau, 1890. From the Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs. Courtesy of Ohio State University, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute
Comments (15)
Love their “stage” names. Haven’t heard names like that since the turn of the century– the one before the last.
their waists….creepy
If only their mothers could see them now…
@ew. women are supposed to have hour glass figures, not be shaped like rulers.
Those waists are really creeping me out. They look more like 38-18-40. This does prove one thing-women’s body issues go back much farther than Kate Moss.
@emm: And where is THAT written? It is one thing to have curves, but it looks as if these women were at some point BOUND at the waist to achieve those looks. And we wonder why our daughters are confused now.
At emm….it’s not natural to be “hour-glassed” if you’re using tight lacing and whale bone to achieve it. These women have full bodied figures…their waistline should not be as small as what you’re seeing.
@emm – it’s just that their waists are far too small for the rest of their body. This is done using corset “training” and is a pretty unhealthy thing to do. Not only that, but it says quite a few gross things about many cultural and societal standards. And if we’re really going to get into the way many societies’ visual/sexual preferences, “ruler” type bodies aren’t all that hot shit either.
In fact, I personally (as a woman) do not like surfboard style bodies. But that is my preference and not what women are “supposed to have” or not supposed to have.
wow pony play back then!
some of them had their lower ribs removed to look like this, and in victoran times this was DANgerouS!
Most of the comments so far are continuing to reinforce preconceived notions. We have a great deal of trouble looking at images without using our modern preferences. Any woman, even now, wearing the proper corset can comfortably achieve an hourglass figure, and many women are just normally built that way. There’s noting unhealthy or unnatural about it. And there is no scientific evidence that anyone ever had ribs removed.
corsets? makeup? pushup bras? what’s the diff?
Think of the subset of humanity you are looking at. If you did not have an hourglass figure, pretty hair, and even teeth, you did not become an actress or performer. No one would hire you and no one would come to see you. Not everyone looked like these women. I am put in mind of those who look at a small dress and immediately jump to the conclusion that everyone back then was diminutive. It actually does not follow. Why hasn’t anyone but me noticed that these women do not look starved? The ideal of beauty was different then. Whether it came naturally or from a corset is beside the point.
Here is what I see. At the time there were only a few places you could see “skin” legitimately; the theater, brothels, saloon dancers, and the circus or carnivals. This is hard to imagine when we can see sexually explicit material almost everywhere now. The images can be put in categories. Women needed an excuse to put on tights and not long skirts. The biggest excuse was to play a man’s part. That is why most of these women are dressed as men. Number 4 is a Can can dancer, 5 and 7 are fantasy (know as fancy dress), and 6, 8, and 12 look like circus performers.
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