Gladys Bentley: blues singer, tuxedo wearer and lady lover. In the words of Saidiya Hartman in her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, “Bentley was abundant flesh, art in motion.”1 In the words of Bentley herself, from 1952 when she had left the stage and all that came with it, “a big, successful star – andContinue reading “The Miraculous Masculinity of Gladys Bentley”
Tag Archives: drag kings
Lesbians on Stage: Costumes and Cross-Dressing
Lesbians and other women-loving-women have for a long time had the ability to hide in plain sight by taking to the public stage. When women were expected to only dress in skirts, a trousered role was a break – if one oriented in fantasy and performance – from the norm of heterosexual femininity. Playing aContinue reading “Lesbians on Stage: Costumes and Cross-Dressing”
Black Butch Wonder: The Clothing of Stormé Delarverie
There are many stories, opinions and think-pieces about Stormé Delarverie floating around the internet, many of them arguing what her role was in the Stonewall uprisings of 1969 or, more recently, her pronouns/gender identity. As a precursor to this post, I want to state that I have thought about these discourses and, as Delarverie wasContinue reading “Black Butch Wonder: The Clothing of Stormé Delarverie”
Dressing Dykes 