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

Dear Mr. Gerben

Dear Mr. Gerben,

I overreacted. Of course you were merely noting that OTHERS claim the decision to exhibit ourselves is a hostile gesture towards an ignorant public. In your closing comments you acknowledge that what's on our minds could be much more complicated.

I'll tell you what's in our minds: Eye contact, make slow eye contact and ease your way in man I hate working the Wednesday shift that lady bartender gives me the creeps and the guy in the pervert row is smoking my hair is going to reek and I'll have to wash it before we go out tonight I wonder if Noel will come in today maybe we can go see a movie Man I wish I hadn't shaved my pubes this morning all red and itchy Oh God I'm going to have to put foundation on during the break what do you mean look at her ribs you aren't supposed to be looking at my ribs guys check out these mmmmm yeah you like that don't you it isn't the meat it's the motion slow dancin' swayin' to the music mmmm slow dancin' just me an my girl you like it when I sing to you don't you? oh here comes that guy who tips fives JOE! This one's staggering get him out of here and somebody needs to mop this stage I'm getting zits all over my back smile and push your hair up on your head make eye contact YEP! there's the five tucked in nice I want a coca cola and my feet are so sore these plastic shoes are for shit NO NO NO look  but don't touch you'll have vice all over me and Joe all over you just sit close here where I can keep an eye on you and bend over and YEP! there's another five I'm going to buy some new pasties these black ones are shot personality its all about eye contact slow eye contact make 'em think you want 'em  eye contact oh yeah

Other things furry

THANKS TO BECKY THOMAS

(and Meret Oppenheim)

On Exploitation

You know how I've been struggling with the exploitation narratives. So I found an authoritative (read academic) book, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body.  With a chapter about "The Problem of Volition and Valorization," by David Gerber. Thinking it might hit the question right on the nose, I ordered the book from Interlibrary Loan, waited until 2 days before it was due, and opened the chapter.

Gerber asks, "If an individual consents, by virtue of what appear to be acts of free choice, to being degraded, exploited,or oppressed, does the act of consent end the moral problem that his or her situation seems to constitute?" (38).  I guess that's one way of putting it. Things got dicey early on. You remember that one of my many points of connection to Julia is that we both exhibited our extraordinary bodies (hers more than mine -- extraordinary). But I was an exotic dancer once upon a time, eventually promoted to stripper and proud of it by gum! But no, Gerber and people he calls "contemporary feminists" look down on "women who choose to work as go-go dancers," lumping us in with mud wrestlers and prostitutes. "Rituals of debasement" he calls it, "Oppression by unwanted attention." Unwanted?



And yes, Gerber and my own contemporary feminists conclude that what Julia and I did is wrong wrong wrong. Reflecting on Tom Thumb's life, he argues that such exhibition can be seen as a "gesture of defiance" towards a "hostile, insensitive world of ignorant suckers." Somehow I don't think Julia saw it that way. I know I didn't.

Now We're Onto Something!

What a day sports fans, what a day we have had! I spent way too much money to have professionals translate material generously provided by the Circus Museum in St. Petersburg. Most was in Russion (those beautiful cyrillic letters). And there was an article in German. When the company (USTranslations) asked for $150 I cringed, but hey I really wanted the name of the fat man in the pictures. So I hit the button on pay pal thinking, "It's just numbers on a screen..." Two days later, I had the translation. Trembling fingers hit the download key and the whole story spilled out in perfectly comprehensible English.  Oh my.

In this story the fat man is a suitor! A "rather rich" Englishman named Rogerom Barkom (not sure about those "oms"), who had just proposed to Julia. Oh my goodness. And for the first time - well, second if you count her dying words - anyway, we have words attributed to Julia, "Of course, I would not refuse you in your proposal, if you were to reduce yourself at least in half." While the fat man pondered his options another suitor stepped forward, "Make me the happiest man on Earth. I am good and need no reducing. I just do not have any money." Her reply was, "Ho. Oh, money, money! He who has it cannot be unattractive!" I'm not sure she put it quite that way, but the Russians seem to have caught the gist of a situation that clearly brought poor old Theodore Lent to high alert. He proposed to Julia and the couple were married after she finished her German tour.

Best of all, the image has a note at the bottom: "Permitted by the Censorship of Moscow March 10, 1865 . . .

AND Julia's "authoritative biographer." You remember Dr. Jan Bondeson, the one who said her husband married her for her money,  . . thought the photo showed Lent introducing Julia to the fat man. Would it be evil to chortle now?

(Source of Photo: Bondeson, J. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, p. 229).

Freak: What's in a word?

Freak is a little word. It wandered the English language for 300 years before taking up its derogatory baggage.




Consider, how freak's meaning has changed over time:

•  In the 16th century,  "frik" referred to a sudden causeless change or turn of mind, a capricious humour, notion, whim or vaguary. The plot thickens: looking for a nickname that might have been given to Julia in the Perez household I search for Spanish translations of freak. The word "capricho" comes up. But, a linguist explains to me, I capricho doesn't mean freak it means caprice or whim. . .
• By the 19th century, freak meant a capricious prank, trick, or caper
• Mid 19th century - a freak of nature, person regarded as strange or contemptible (especially because of markedly unusual appearance or behavior)
• mid 20th century - one who "freaks out;" a drug addict
• 20th century - someone who shows great enthusiasm for an activity, person, or thing 
• mid 20th century - US Slang (especially African-American) an attractive or promiscuous young woman or (rarely) man

Consider its multiple dimensions.

As a noun:

• Something rare, isolated, unusual
• Something surprising, unforeseeable
• A twist of fate
• Something bizarre, peculiar, odd
• an enthusiast or devotee
• An addict, fiend, or maniac

As a verb:

• Go ape, go crazy, go mad, go to pieces, go postal

Like the little word, each of us navigates this strange world from a unique perspective. Each of us is sui generis -- one of a kind. Each of us is in some respects a freak.

(Big thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary)


Freak's enjoying a surge of popularity. Check out the NGRAM: