During the early 20th century, Western audiences wanted spectacle. They couldn’t get enough of so-called “exotic” performances—female dancers with bare flesh draped in jewels, moving with sensuous rhythms. But it wasn’t just about the dance. It was about the story, the illusion, the fantasy. Audiences craved the escape, the thrill of something different, the titillating…
The following is adapted from the introduction to my book about Salomania, Sex, Art, And Salome: Historical Photographs of a Princess, Dancer, Stripper, and Feminist Inspiration. Check out the book for more detail, including over 130 historical photographs. I spent many years working with historical documents at the Library of Congress and other cultural heritage…
In 1915 a government study on illicit sex left Baltimore “naked and exposed.” The Maryland Vice Commission, in the words of one excitable observer, had spent “three years stripping the clothes off” the city, and the official report presented a mountain of evidence about prostitution and other furtive sexual activities. The immediate public reaction was…