Dancer Cards and Colophon

A Prototype of Julia's Book

Looks like a toy dunnit? But it's a prototype of Julia's book. My account of her life on one side, artifacts and other people's thoughts on the other. My favorite part is the acknowledgements page. (It takes a village!)

The Metaphysics of Fascination

Hey Amigos!

Thanks for your cards and letters, your well wishes and your kind remarks. Many of you asked how Julia and I survived this week's workshop. Here's my short answer, "It was OK. I got some good feedback and only made a partial fool of myself." If that satisfies, you can stop reading now.

My classmates - (the workshoppERS, in this case, me being the workshoppEE ) stumped me with a  question, "What is it about Julia that you find so fascinating?" I stuttered out some forgettable nonsense about incongruity. But their voices echoed this morning in the shower. What is it about anything that fascinates us? Is it about the thing? or about us?   Lance has me thinking metaphysically, hence the title.

What is it about Julia? The juxtaposition of inner beauty and outer . . . difference?  A fetish for the exotic?  The impossible overlap between other and self? Her uniqueness? Her universality? Her star qualities? I know I'm not alone in this, but words escape me.

I hink of this as a post-colonial project. I see Julia as a subaltern who appropriated the dominant narrative to define herself on her own terms. She left her indigenous family and was raised in the Sanchez household, a bastion of Spanish culture. Her move to the United States -- however it was accomplished -- gave her the opportunity to establish a new identity as entrepreneur. What could be more American? Turning down Barnum's offer of employment gestured towards her hard-won  independence. The move to London took her into the belly of the imperial beast and she managed very well thank you, charming the Brits to the point where several wanted to marry (own) her. These offers were likewise declined. Julia married Lent, who had just begun teaching her to read and write when she died in childbirth.

Julia: Her Troubling Legend

The "ugliest woman in the world" was buried in 2012. Born in Mexico in 1834, Julia Pastrana had the fur of our ancestors all over her body. Thick, black hair.  Her ears were large “The better to hear you with.” Her nose as well. Some thought she had two rows of teeth. She did have a large jaw – jutting, pugnacious.

Darwin dismissed claims that Julia was the missing link between ape and man, describing her as “a remarkably fine woman. . . with a masculine beard,” though there is no evidence that he ever met her.


Julia was born to an indigenous women in the Sierra Madre. At the age of  two she was "taken in" by the household of Pedro Sanchez (former governor of Sinaloa). Something happened. Her pamphlets say she "was ill-used", so Julia left for the United States. Some say she was sold to a corrupt official, Sepulvida, who planned to make a profit by exhibiting her. But once she arrived in New York Sepulvida seems to disappear from her narrative. Perhaps the 4'6" woman overwhelmed him? At any rate, Julia attended a military ball in Baltimore and  met Theodore Lent, an American impresario. Though she also met P.T. Barnum Julia never joined his circus. Instead, she chose Lent as her manager and left New York for London.

Julia was hugely popular in Europe. She sang and danced and charmed her audiences. After a highly successful German tour she received several proposals of marriage, but chose to wed Lent. The two traveled to Russia, where Julia gave birth to a son who died within days followed by his mother. 1860. She was twenty-six. Her dying words are said to have been, "I die knowing I was loved for my true self."

Lent had mother and son mummified and continued to display their bodies. He later married a woman of similar features and exhibited her until he was admitted to a mental institution in 1884. He died in the asylum, but Julia and her son remained on display in Norway and vicinity until the 1970s, when someone decided it was time for a U.S. tour. Disgusted by the prospect (maybe) someone stole the bodies and abandoned them in a dumpster. The baby was eaten and the mother gnawed by rodents until she was retrieved and, eventually, buried (to much fanfare) in Sinaloa.

Laura Barbata arranged for the burial. Preening in the media shine, Barbata confidently asserted that Lent embodied male exploitation of women. Something to do with colonization. Jan Bondeson, Julia's "authoritative biographer," agreed that Lent could not have married Julia for love.

It couldn’t have been love. She was so ugly. It must have been the money.

Julia's story is almost a legend. Two plays and a rock opera have been made since her burial. Each offers a version of the victim narrative spearheaded by Bondeson and Barbata.  I hope to trouble that narrative by exploring what we know about her life and imagining  the rest. 

September Rose

We were her little chicks: Me, Erica and Becky - April, May and June. It sounded nice in the lineup. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Gentlemen and Ladies the Carriage Room and September Rose are proud to present the fairest springtime you ever had: April May and June! Give 'em a hand now." Rose was married to a policeman and she had the biggest flounciest head of hair I'd ever seen.

Don't call us "go go" dancers. The ad in the classifieds announced auditions for "exotic dancers." No experience required. One quiet afternoon Rose gave you your first pair of pasties and showed how to stick them on with eyelash glue. Must cover the whole thing or you'll get in trouble with vice. And no little pubes poking out from the g-string. Shave if you must, but we're after skin here, not fuzz. Heels a minimum of three-inches high. Patrick will help with your make up.

I sometimes stripped out of a tuxedo and top hat. "Black Tie." The guys loved it. But one night  I couldn't seem to get anything right. Rose hated my makeup she hated my costume she even hated my Janis Joplin tape. I asked why she hired me if she hated me so much. "Oh honey," she stroked my arm,  "You're a klutz, but you have a cute figure and lots of personality."  Cute figure. Erica had a great figure. Red hair and statuesque like that actress. Great. She used to lick her finger, flick it on her ass, and say, "TSSSSSSSS." The guys loved it. We all loved it. And the way she tossed that red hair when she strode out to open her show. Pzazzz. Erica had Pzazz. She wanted to be a vet. Becky didn't want to be anything but high. Practically albino, she had the longest fingernails you ever saw. They curved down towards her wrist. She's stretch those things out towards a dollar bill and snap it up like I don't know what, something not quite human.

Lots of the time was boring. We'd hang in the dressing room playing with each other's hair, putting on makeup, trying out nail polish. We'd chat about stuff. There was this little angry woman, platinum blond, Ashley. She didn't stay long, said she could make more money at Mustang Ranch.  She said she'd make as much in one day as we made in a month, but it creeped us out. Besides, we liked the dancing, the music, the disco ball, the regulars, the free cokes.We liked each other.

Who's the monster?

Thanks to Ethan we now have a full translation of the 1857 article in Die Gartenlaube. Turns out "ein menschenungeheuer" means a human monster. Ouch. The author (who is not named) sees in Julia evidence that "nature in her wonderful moods and opinions occasionally gives way to misconceptions and caricatures . . .  monsters so horrid we could never imagine them. "

He (I assume) goes on: "For several years the different parts of the world have sent us their peculiar racial phenomena. Negros and mulattos, Kafirs and Khoikhoi, and as a curiosity strange deformed beings with their grotesque ugliness from the Aztecs."

"From this perspective comes the appearance of a female creature, called Julia Pastrana . . . such a repulsive misbirth . . . I would have wished that the police forces would have foreseen the problems earlier and would have allowed for a farther viewing of the monster." (Here, I think he refers to a play that appeared briefly on the German stage. In it, Julia plays a fiance. She wears a veil over her face until the very end. It was evidently quite bawdy, and the vice squad shut it down. Bondeson claims there was concern that her appearance might cause women to miscarry.)

When the author paid Julia a visit, she greeted him "with friendly handshakes." She agreed to pose for a picture. They spoke in English of her successful tours of America and England. "she carried herself with confidence and understanding when it concerned upcoming topics." She told him about the proposals of marriage she received in England, which he declared humbug. He observed that Lent "did not want to be discinclined to a marriage partnership which assured him of a retirement fun in the monstrosity of his spouse."  Of course, the author attributes "such monstrosities" as " 'Miss Julia' " (in a snide little gesture he puts her name in quotes) to  "the thick racial mixing" that takes place in distant parts of the world.

But there is something to be gained from this cruel piece. He explained that Julia was unable to read and write. Or, rather, "she is still in the initial stages of the area of this cultural blessing."

This puts the advertisements for her appearances in a new light. I had assumed she and Lent  wrote them together.Perhaps Lent is the sole author? His language is so - so cherishing.  I imagine him chewing on his pencil and wondering how to describe her, "Altogether Miss Julia is the most singular, curious, and pleasing specimen of humanity in the world."  This from a man who couldn't possibly love her?

Julia's Broadsheet

Dancing with the Letterpress

 Lead and wood type waiting to go on

Proof (take 12)

On the press (a black run)

on the press (a red run)

Last one

There she goes

And there she is