A Career in Feathers

The biography of Faith Bacon (1910-1956) reads like a well-known nightmare of female ambitions turned foul with that enemy of women who rely on looks, namely old age. As a young woman, Faith was hailed as "The most beautiful American dancer" and "The most beautiful woman of the world", but she ended up a shabby "bag-lady".

Early on her ambitious mother lined her daughter up for a career based on her looks. When Faith was 13 she took her to New York as yet another part of her plans of finding rich "sugar-daddies" for her - or for both of them. As it is Faith was suspected of being a lesbian, but this rumor may have been aired by her mother in order to keep non-millionaires - and this happened before the rise of our days' billionaires - away from Faith: No hanky-panky without money or the ability to further the career of the young dancer. Faith's marriage to the lyricist Sanford Hunt Dickinson has been seen as a cover-up by some, as they never lived together. That may be as it is, as her entire life was full of lies, e.g. about her Mom, whom she had to call her "sister".

For several years, a very young Faith toiled as a chorus dancer, living on a diet of "nothing" in order to keep the body that gave her, and her mother, an outcome. However, 17 years old Faith moved to Paris, but she didn't have her breakthrough until she went back to New York three years later: She invented the "fan dance" and made a career as a nude dancer, in a performance that was seen as extremely "advanced", so to speak.

At that time, it was OK to be nude on the scene as long as one didn't move, and somehow she succeeded in performing within those legal and moral limits. None the less, she was indicted for "immorality", but that didn't make her lose her spirits as something like that was good for the career of a nude dancer, and she ended up being very famous. 

 

 

At some point, other - and younger - dancers learnt from her and, so to speak, "stole" her dance design. She took one of them - namely Sally Rand - to court, but didn't gain anything by that, as her special feather dance wasn't copy righted. At around that time, it had become known that she had become a little too keen on alcohol. 

She may have had talent for e.g. acting, but didn't do much to start a new career in the movies. To me, it looks like she simply lost faith in the future, and destitute at 46 years old, she lept to her death from a window.

 

https://theburlyq.com/

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/faith-bacon-the-rise-and-tragic-fall-of-nude-dancer-in-chicago/

 

https://www.party.dk/kostumer-tilbehoer/temaer-mottoer/burlesque/9978/sort-fjerboa-i-premium-kvalitet-180cm

 

https://travsd.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/how-faith-bacon-inventor-of-the-fan-dance-leaped-to-her-death/ 

 

Wikipedia

Gain Power Through Love

 

The female and the male worlds consist of overlapping as well as separate sections. As most of these sections are entwined they in many ways mirror each other: What's considered a good and, more or less, acceptable behavior for men in the "male section" is most often seen as the opposite for women in the "same male section": "Men are men, and women are women" which means each to his/her socially defined gender role. For instance, we still harbor loads of ideas that we have inherited from former generations, especially about sex and e.g. social status which in its turn leads to the recognition of the double standard by both sexes. They may not live by it, but they know what it is.

That’s a fact I came to think of when I heard that the next trend in pulp ficion is supposed to be some kind of a revival of the old ”romances”-genre. I wonder whether that means that someone like e.g. the pink-loving as well as best-selling Barbara Cartland will be having a renaissance. Well, that I doubt, but there are traits in her writings that I suspect may be revived and then presented as a new trend, as I’ve seen modern writers on several subs discussing writing something like it themselves. 

Wikipedia: "Barbara Cartland (1901 – 21 May 2000) was an English writer who published both contemporary and historical romance novels, the latter set primarily during the Victorian or Edwardian period. Cartland is one of the best-selling authors worldwide of the 20th century.

Her numerous novels are not what I call "literature", but it's interesting as a social "marker": A Cartland plot was like a fixed entity of all her books: A woman, young and innocent, without any previous sexual experiences is being noticed by a RICH, noble, but most often, demure and disillusioned man who has given up on love, e.g. ”true love” as opposed to something sexual. When it comes to ideology these romances of young, virginal women gaining status in The Patriarchy by making noble and rich men fall in love with and marry them represent the opposite of what one finds in the porn-pulp that so many men love. In those there are lots of accessible women, ready to becoming a new, free notch in the belt of some man who is described as a sexual super-hero. What happens in porn - and some Western romances - would figure as a tragedy in the old romances of, e.g., Barbara Cartland. 

That means that not so long ago, each of the sexes has – or had – some easy to read pulp fiction that confirmed the general belief in the sex roles of their society: Both the male and the female pulp genres gave their readers the feeling of success for their individual gender-stereotypes. As it is, I doubt that the genuine Cartland-romance is the genre that some authors believe will have a renaissance, but who knows, it may be what the woman of today want when she is in need of a dream-fix to make her go on in a misogynistic world ....

 

https://www.sagaegmont.com/guinness-world-record-barbara-cartland/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

The Epstein-Files

Many non-tRumpians are desperate for the so-called "Epstein-files" to be released. The fact that that hasn't happened yet, and that America has ended up in an unfortunate Shutdown which puts a severe strain on the American people will make even more of them want to see that release as soon as possible: The obvious need to keep the files secret may be the real reason for the Shutdown. In the imagination of the, by now, quite exhausted American people the Epstein-files have been turned into the magic key to how to get rid of The Conman, tRump. They already know a lot about the allegations against him by the girls and women he presumably abused with Epstein, and they expect the files to give some information about even more pedophile or "just" sexual crimes which may get him indicted. However, we know from e.g. Ghislaine Maxwell that there also were videos, and some of these seem to have ended up in Russia. In my opinion videos must be much better evidence than lists in writing, but I may be wrong, as it's obvious that the tRump administration really, really doesn't want the files released for public scrutiny, so after all, they may be DYNAMITE!

I, for one, suspect that The Orange Menace was more than a friend and customer of Epstein. If the allegations of one of the victims, Maria Farmer, is right then his then wife, Ivana, may have been into trafficking herself for a while which also makes her husband a suspect. In my opinion there are details in the tRump-Epstein-relationship that hasn't been seen - or seen for what they are - as Maria Farmer has told of how she, Ivana and her friend, Ghislaine went out scouting for under age girls to the Epstein-trafficking-business. If that's true then it opens up to many new questions about the real nature of the friendship of tRump and Epstein.

As we know tRump definitely was a close friend of Epstein, but why did they (presumably) fall out over one of the Epstein-girls, Virginia Giuffre, when there were so many more to chose from? The way tRump has described the end of the long friendship with Epstein over her indicates that both of these men saw her as some kind of sales object, merchandise, or at least "property". To me that looks like the grandson of a German pimp, namely tRump - and his then wife, Ivana - were into sex trafficking themselves, at least for some time, and maybe just for the "fun" of committing such a crime. 

The files may tell about even more grave crimes, and I for one wonder at the fate of one girl who seems to have "disappeared". What happened to her, and is she even alive today? The only way to find out may be the release of the files - or of some of the videos. However, even as I claim this release I feel that those of us who do that may be duped into focusing on something that is neither magic nor a key to much of what went on in the world of tRump and Epstein. While we focus on that a lot of events tell of an ongoing political coup that should have been stopped long ago, but which wasn't recognized as what it is .... 

https://trumpfile.org/ghislaine-maxwell-says-jeffrey-epstein-recorded-trump-with-his-victims/

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/trump-human-trafficking-programs-cut 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9270769/Ghislaine-Maxwell-admitted-Jeffrey-Epstein-DID-tapes-Donald-Trump-Clintons-2016.html?ci=79269&si=25716443 

 

https://pagesix.com/2021/02/16/ira-rosens-60-minutes-book-has-stories-galore/ 

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-60-minutes-producer-ira-rosen-airs-dirty-laundry-about-mike-wallace-diane-sawyer-katie-couric/ 

Thinking About the Intricate Pattern of Suppression

 

What nonsense! As if women only need medical attention when they are in the child-bearing age. Nothing could be more wrong - except one thing: The very idea that women always should do with medical attention. As we know that's what the infamous "Project 2025" is implying, at the same time uttering the assumption that women are some kind of "breeding machines" who willingly will give birth without any kind of medical and economic help. 

Up through history women have been "paid off" in ideas, that seemingly eliminate the, more or less, elicit the stigma of being a woman in a Patriarchy. Religion, common superstitions and doctored historical accounts of "how it has always been" have claimed that women are the "inferior sex". Women, wanting to find an acceptable position in such a poisonous social situation, will be easy prey for whatever makes them feel less worthless than they have been portrayed by their suppressors. That's the point of special interest to me as I know that what makes suppression work is what seemingly turns it into something "good" to the one who is suppressed.

Joseph Goebbels should not be someone to admire, but he sure did have an eye for propaganda, and he knew how to use his knowledge. He is not the one who invented the "Kinder-Kuche-Kirche"-ideology which was set to assign women their special role in society as it goes much further back in history. However, he - as well the Nazified German society as such - used this ideology, to suppress women. 

 

The seeming "glorification" of women and their maternal role in society gave the suppressed gender a loophole into a kind of acceptance that in reality was more of a "noose" because they didn't have any other useful options.

These days many women have their tubes tied, not to get pregnant, because they know that in the tRumpian Hellhole of today they shall have to fend for themselves, even with little or no medical and economic attention. Those who fell for the "Kinder-Kuche-Kirche"-scam in former times may have become CEOs, etc. these days. They may still want to have children, but also they may turn their wishes for progeny into a deep love of their "furbabies". Such a family doesn't even take a husband or father ....
 

https://boobytrapec.blogspot.com/2025/02/women-chosing-to-have-no-babies-after.html 

 

https://chariotjournal.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/kinder-kuche-kirche-the-role-of-women-in-nazi-germany/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

Porn as Liberator of Women?

As sex in a patriarchy is most often defined as a power struggle it's difficult to agree to Ovidie's suggestion that porn is a form of female emancipation. After all, words may have been given the power to define sexual interactions, even though the most common definitions don't hold water for a more close scrutiny: For instance, for a long time sex very often was described as "he got his way with her", as if it was all his doing. It's definitely not a definition made in Nature, but in Patriarchal societies: There are many "Mrs. Robinsons" out there, seducing whomever catches their eyes. However, somehow the idea of men as the "aggressor" is still (more or less) valid: Men are the seducers, proving their masculine superiority by getting women to sleep with them - something which they may even brag about.

Ovidie is of another opinion than the general one about the sexual roles, and, by the way, she is a French actress, movie director, writer, journalist as well as a former porn star. When entering the porn industry she was a very active feminist, and before trying out porn for herself she was sure that the female stars were subjected to all manners of suppression and degrading situations. However, she came to see that they themselves felt that they were gaining power from their work - and, after all, it is a job!!! - so she decided to try it out for herself.

 

She saw her porn experience as extremely interesting as a way of understanding something about the female sexuality, femininity as well as bodily expressions. Surprisingly enough in her opinion the female porn stars didn't come out as "victims", which was how they were commonly described, but as strong women made stronger through the performance of sexual acts. 

To me that looks as a very limited "freedom", but I admit that sexual rights are an important part of the picture as such. As it is, I hold that freedom should be the right to do whatever one wants within the legal limits of one's society and the personal limits of each of us. That also pinpoints what's very important in any society: The ability to earn a living, to have a meaningful career and to say "NO!!!" if that's what one wants to do when one is being targeted by that maybe not all that seductive guy.

What Use Are Fans?

 

I bet that the football legends being admired by ardent fans love it at the moment, but will they go on loving - and expecting - it after their career has ended? After all, they have their private lives with partners, kids and whatever they do that has noting to do with ball games. Or put another way, what weighs the most, the fans or the privacy?

I would say that in reality the privacy weighs the most, but that many, who achieve a special popularity or even fame, don't allow it to do just that. They live their career goals, their fame, and the adoration that they have received from their fans. Maybe they even live it that much that they don't have time for anything else, not even the knowledge, talent or ability that brought them all those fans ....

However, like it or not, but fans and fame may not be a forever-thing. You may be famous for e.g. 5 years, 5 months, five weeks or fine minutes, and the rest of your life you're forgotten by those who adored you some time in your past. Or you may end up being a prisoner of your own fame, never being allowed the blessing of being forgotten to live your own, private life ....

 

The Slave Girl Who Became An Author

 

Harriet Jacobs (1813/1815-1897) was born a slave, but luckily enough she was taught to read and write by her female owner when she was a child. However, at 12 years of age she had an abusive male owner who beat and raped her. In 1842 she escaped and hid at her grandmother's. Actually, she stayed in her attic for seven years, until she got the chance to run off to New York. After her escape to New York she lived and worked as a nanny at Idlewild, the home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis. In 1861 she published her memoir, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself" in which she exposed the abuse enslaved women had to endure. One of the worst cruelties is that their children might be sold away even thought they themselves did all they could to protect them. This book, which was written under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is recognized as one of the most noticeable voices against slavery. Even so she had difficulties getting it published. 

 

Harriet Jacobs (1894) 

The brother of Harriet, John S. Jacobs, who also had escaped from slavery was involved with the abolitionists and, for instance, went on anti-slavery lecturing tours. Harriet helped him run "The Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room" in New York. She learnt about feminist and anti-slavery ideologies, and in her book she describes how she came to a new understanding of the situation of black people: "The more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself an article of property." Well said and totally understandable!

https://hammondharwoodhouse.org/womens-history-month-harriet-jacobs-the-woman-in-the-attic/

 

https://skinnerfamilypapers.com/?p=3731

 

https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Jacobs_Incidents_1861.pdf 

 

https://nbhistoricalsociety.org/portfolio-item/harriet-jacobs-writer/ 

 

Wikipedia