← Who Did What Now
Who Did What Now
169. The Mystery of Little Egypt
00:55:29
The girl who brought the belly dance to the USA
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Katy Charlwood
Hello delicious friends, and welcome to who did what Now? The History podcast. That's not your history class with me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. So I got a really funny comment on like, it was my Instagram or Facebook or one of those, right? And this person was like, ugh, I really wish you'd get straight into the history instead of talking about yourself for five minutes. Anyway, I'm gonna talk about myself for five minutes. So it was my birthday last week and as per usual, I keep forgetting how old I am and keep thinking I'm a year older. But I'm not. I'm actually a year younger than I think I am every single year. And it was, it was a good day. I was very busy. I was very busy because I'd booked it off, thank goodness. But I had two parent teacher meetings that day, followed by an open, open evening at a secondary school. And I know, like, quite a lot of my listeners are from the US and you might be thinking, geez, Kerry, I didn't think any of your children were old enough to go to a secondary school. Well, they're not anyway. But in the US you'll have like Your elementary, your middle, and then your secondary. So your high school. In the uk it's like primary and secondary. And then in Ireland we have national school and secondary school. So national school has eight years. So you have junior infants, senior infants, first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth. Those are your classes. And once you complete those eight years, you go into secondary level education, which consists of five to six years, depending on what you do. So in the secondary level, you have first year, second year, third year, which are. And then you do a junior cert exam followed by a transition year in which you do a bunch of stuff, right? You do work experience, you do, like, trade things. You do coding and STEM and all this arty, cool, fun, awesome stuff. Because what it used to be is you would basically go from three exam years into two exam years, and it would just be very difficult. And then people would also be quite young going on to third level education, to uni and college and stuff now. So you would have a transition year, which is your fourth year. Some people still don't do transition year and they just go straight to fifth and sixth year. But yes, you have fifth and sixth year, which then after which you have your leaving cert, which is the exam or the series of exams that get you into third level education. So the secondary school, it was like having an open night with, like, workshops and stuff. And it brought in, like, not only people who are in sixth class who are in their final year to enrol, but also children from fifth class as well, to get them an idea of how the place runs. You know, what's it like being there, what the classes are like, the teachers are like. And we went through, I think, several classrooms where we were in, like, Spanish class, history, English, science. My son held a pig heart in his hand after being quite tentative and like, physically gripping onto me on the way in. Like, he's only 11 and he was kind of really nervous and freaking out. And then when he was in that environment, I have never seen him so mature and so thriving. Like, it was a practical application of education. And I think that's really going to be the kind of place for him. So I'm really, really excited and I'm gonna be like, ready, ready to go for next year. I'm gonna be like, next year. I'll be enrolling him for the following year. So it's. It's exciting times, exciting times. So, yeah, I was out of the house most of the day and I was super duper busy. And then the following day I came home to a bouquet of flowers waiting for me. My lovely friend Shauna, she's the owner of sex shop atoriety. So if you're looking for your ethical sex toys, that's the place to go. So she sent me a bouquet of flowers and heart shaped chocolates and a little card and everything. I love her so much and I can't wait to go see her again. She's like one of my absolute besties. She's just so lovely. And my mum actually got me a laptop bag, but it's like a fancy one because she's like, well, you know, you're dressing in this sort of vintage attire, you're leaning this way, so it doesn't really make sense for you to have this other thing also. In addition, furthermore, I. I ordered equipment for stuff because there's a few things I've been planning to do for a long time and I just haven't been able to do it. But I had some help getting the house a little bit more ready. And so I'm working on a few bits at the minute and I'm really excited for his stuff to be coming soon. But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, katie, it's been five minutes, quit your jibber jabber and fact me. In fact you. I will, but first we've got to get our source on our sources are Fantasies of Exposure, Belly Dancing, the Veil and the Drag of History by Joanna Mansbridge Little Egypt, Huchi, Coochie and Burlesque by A. Keys When Cairo Met Main Street, Little Egypt, Salome Dancers and the World's Fairs of 1893 and 1904 by Charles A. Kennedy Looking for Little Egypt by Donna Carlton Egyptian Dance A Contested Tradition by Janet Johnson and Gigi Tassi. Horrible Prettiness, Burlesque and American Culture by Robert Clyde Allen Stripping in A History of Erotic Dancing by Lucinda Jarrett Flaubert in Egypt A Sensibility on Tour by Gustave Flaubert Dance of the Seven, the Revision of Revelation in the Oriental Dance Community by Andrea Deegan the History of the Chemo Podcast with Bela Sen Egyptian Belly Dance and Transition the RAK Sharkey Revolution, 1890-1930 by Heather D. Ward Performing Little A Shia Wabe and the American Harlem Scenario by M. Kogler Abdi. Are you eating comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. Well, delicious friends, it is the final week of my birthday month and so of course, naturally we are going to be discussing burlesque. Now, before we do get into all of that, I do want to say that I do have this goal and the Goal is to talk about burlesque. To have at least one burlesque episode per month. Like on the history of burlesque, people have involved in it, small parts, big parts, like the movement itself. And this, this might mean, this might mean a return of the bitisodes. Because burlesque is an art form, one predominantly performed by women and as such isn't as well documented as we would like. And as a direct result of the patriarchal viewpoint, it can easily be dismissed or misrepresented. Are we surprised? No, we are not. So that being said, if any burlesque educators or enthusiasts want to chat, I would love to talk about it and help promote burlesque. Always. Like anyone who wants to come on and talk about burlesque or their favorite burlesque performers, like who they were inspired by, who they think we should know about. And I want to talk about this. Everything from, you know, the burlesque museum, which we really need to get funding for. And I know that I have some people who are like ready to chat, but we just need to organize time zones and schedules. So that is all in the works. But I do want to keep promoting and talking about burlesque. I just, I do. And also I am determined to perform a burlesque routine before I'm 40. Okay? This is happening. I don't know how, I don't know why I am going to be hitting the gym because I might walk between like 6 and 10 kilometers a day, but I'm not sure, like, my cardio is where it needs to be. I think I need to up this conditioning because I. I get tired doing like a boy band dance routine in my kitchen. So we need to like, get this back. Anyway, burlesque, like many art forms, was no stranger to appropriation. Sorry, I mean, oops. Silly me. Inspiration. One such inspiration cough was the belly dance. Now here's the thing, right? The belly dance wasn't new. It wasn't a new invention. It just didn't appear out of nowhere. Absolutely not. It goes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Now, you've probably heard of ancient Mesopotamia in sort of probably old movies and things that reference archaeology and all that jazz. But if you don't know Mesopotamia because, you know, old timey geography is tough, okay? It's basically an area in Iraq between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. I really hope that pronunciation is correct because I looked it up and that was all I could find. So I hope it's good because I have a feeling it was named by the Greeks, you know what I mean? It just feels like it was named by the Greeks, you know? So it's in this area, you've got Baghdad right in the middle. Ish. And it goes all the way down to like. Like it's touching Kuwait. So it's just down the middle of Iraq. And so if you look it up, it'll say something like, West Asia, it's Iraq, okay? Mesopotamia had belly dancing. Like, so did the Iberian Peninsula. Algeria, the Romani, they also had a form of belly dancing. So, like, culturally, it's been around a long time. So why did it blow up in the Western world and become such a prominent part of the early burlesque scene? Because, my good friends of the Chicago World's Fair, which some of you may know only because it's allegedly the place where H.H. holmes used a murder castle to kill visitors to said fare, which, for the record, is absolute bollocks. HH Holmes was a con man who killed for convenience or money or sometimes both. Right? If you want to know more about HH Holmes and the whole story behind the Devil in the White City, go listen to that episode because, like, it's all there. It's all there. All the stuff he did. So the World's Fair, we don't really. Do we have those anymore? Eh, kinda. Kinda. She says. So the World's Fair started effectively because of, okay, Western colonialization, which rich white nations would invade and occupy another nation, typically non white, typically not Western. Take it over and take the stuff they liked. This led to a rise in Orientalism, which is like Victorian China. Houses were printing out replica Ming vases and willow pattern crockery. You've got tea, rhubarb, coffee, curry, silk. You know, all the stuff that, you know, other people had been producing for years, things that were culturally relevant or significant, and then taking them, diluting them down and turning them into something palatable for Western tastes so much toughen. Sidebar. Okay, yes. There was a period in the 90s where Indian culture was very popular. Like, it was a thing, right? So, like, Brimful of Asha was topping the charts. It is still one of my favorite songs, by the way. You had. Indian movies were being made and everyone was wearing a bindi for some reason. Like the TV show Goodness Gracious Me, like, even had a sketch about it. So Goodness Gracious Me was a comedy show by British Indians, and they, they were just. They would do these amazing sketches, and one of them I loved was Shmita Schmidtin, Showbiz Kitten. I love. I love them so Much. And they did this whole sketch about like this white guy dating an Indian girl. And you ended up breaking up with her because, like she was no longer trendy because she wasn't a denim clad Irish girl, which also became a trend. Like it was like when Boech came out, like it was such a trend to be like Irish. Like it was such a thing. Right? So you had appropriation galore. And with the boom, we're back to talking about the World's Fair, guys. With that boom from the Industrial Revolution and the speed at which the Western world was progressing, especially in like science, literature, art, etc. The World's Fair was established. This was to showcase the future of the world. And like there had been, you know, exhibitions, you know, in like Prague and Paris and Turin and New York City, Genoa, Birmingham and all that, like. But these expositions, they had occurred. But it was in London that the first World's Fairs occurred. World Fairs, World Fair. There's just one. So this was organized by Prince Albert, who by all accounts was a very generous lover and had a penis piercing named after him. You're welcome. So Prince Albert was the husband to Queen Victoria who reigned for 63 years, you know, so this, what was ended up being called as the first World's Fair was called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. And it was held in the Crystal palace, which was a temporary structure and Fun Fact has a football team named after it. And this was in Hyde park in London. It was in 1851 and it ran from May to October of that year. And it was basically a, a big exhibition of industry and culture showcasing everything from music to flushing toilets. Right. And. And you may have heard of William Morris, the man with the wallpaper. Like he refused to go because he didn't believe in it. So it's wild to see like William Morris wallpaper be mass produced because he was so against that. He was pro artisan, he didn't believe in mass production. And you had like so many people would were there at this. You had like the Bronte sisters visited this. Like everyone was here, you know. So since then, since that World Fair, there had been several. You had London, Paris, Vienna, Philadelphia, Melbourne, Barcelona, and in 1893, Chicago, also known as the World Columbian Exposition. And this is where the belly dance was noticed and made headlines with a performance by a dancer known as Little Egypt. There are whispers of this being earlier, of this being noticed earlier on, but this is the earliest like we've managed to nail down, like document and see. So at The Chicago World's Fair, there were a selection of oriental exhibitions, which is basically anything east of Germany and south of France, to be honest, Right? So I say south of France, south of Italy. Yeah, maybe. Kinda. Yeah. I'm gonna go. Yeah. So this collection of exhibitions was organized by Saul Bloom, who was an American songwriter, politician and showbiz guy. And he put on this show the Algerian Dancers of Morocco, right? So the women, they would be like, it's funny, we kind of assume that when we hear belly dance that they're gonna see stomachs, right? But the women were fully dressed, their clothes were loose fitting and their skirts sat below their hips. So they might have had like flesh colored tops, but they didn't show skin. But they didn't wear a corset, which was like kind of scandalous at the time because it's the 1800s, everybody is wearing a corset, right? So Solbloom, he actually, he vehemently denies that there was ever a Little Egypt dancer there. And it was actually the name of one of the camels in the streets in Cairo procession. See this belly dance or the dance du vertre, which honestly sounds much fancier because it's in French. This chalked up quite a lot of publicity, right? So the dance was witnessed by some very offended ladies, the Karen du jour, if you will, and being shocked and appalled, the board of lady managers protested the performances and demanded that the fair, or at least the streets of Cairo exhibit be shut down for indecency. Now this, I know you're going to be surprised, backfired because the public condemnation, all it did was pique the interest of the newspapers who then published the shocking event which then brought even more visitors to the fair, right, to come and see the scandalous performance, right? So like the dancers, the dancers who performed in the sort of allegedly the Little Egypt moniker. And there were several dancers, right? And they would dance like in, in rotation. So there wasn't just one sort of belly dancer, there were several. And a few of them had similar names. It's kind of complicated. But these dancers who performed under the Little Egypt moniker, they were typically billed as, you know, doing the hoochie Kuche or were just called Kuch dancers. But why? Well, I'm glad you asked because I'll tell you. So there's a few theories, right? One being that it's from the Kuch Bihar region of India, right? And that's where it's from. The other is that it's from the French word Roger, meaning to shake the tail like this allegedly originated in the French territory of Louisiana, which was then a thriving slave trade hub. And the dances of enslaved African people was reminiscent of the wagtail bird, which basically, this is. How do I put this? Shaked its tail feathers. And so over the years, it became a sort of generic term for any kind of dance that involved shaking the hips. So, yeah, basically non white women shaking their hips. And also the inspiration for, I'm going to assume the shake your tail feather song, which was, if I'm not mistaken, was by Ray Charles, but I learned about it from the Blues Brothers movie.
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Katy Charlwood
Okay. They were on a mission from God. Between the late 19th and early 20th century, there were three women who were known as Little Egypt. Ashiya Wabi, Thrida Mazar Spiropoulos, and Fatima Jamel. Now, Ashih Wabi, she was actually born Catherine Devine in 1871 in Montreal, Canada. And she claimed to be the original Little Egypt. So she was of Algerian descent. And she would have been 21, 22 by the time the World's Fair was on. And so she allegedly was one of the dancers in the procession. And she claimed to be, you know, that Little Egypt. And so she's in this 1893, and three years later, she would be catapulted into stardom by even more scandal. There was an event sometimes called the awful silly dinner, other times referred to as the dreadful silly dinner. So this was a bachelor party at a restaurant called Sherry's in New York City. I will never stop. And it caused an absolute ruckus in Gilded Age New York, right So the bachelor in question was Clinton Barnum Seeley. And the party was hosted by his best man and brother, Herbert Barnum Seeley. If you're thinking, wow, what an interestingly convenient middle name you have there. Yeah, these boys are the grandsons of the PT Barnum, who will eventually have his own episode. We'll get back to him at some point. So this bachelor party, or the bachelor party as a general rule, was sort of like a secretive affair with hush hush debauchery going on. And like there was, there were so many things, right? These bachelor parties were known. Well, they were not known, they were secretive and they were well hidden, unless you were in that sort of circle in society. So they would have mad parties and live sex shows and they would have animals. They would watch animals have sex. It was, listen, listen, rich white men will do weird things, right? We all know that. And so Herbert, he had hired a shea to jump out of a cake completely nude, which, I'll be honest with you, seems fairly tame. So like, here's the thing. I love that there was like a raid on this place because somebody held that something was going up. And my favourite part of this story is that she wasn't actually discovered straight away. Like she wasn't discovered getting undressed, right? Because like as she was like performing, right, she was hidden in a cupboard for like a bit of it because the police took a wrong turn and they ended up in the dressing room of the dancers. So like, because these kind of places you would have like shows on and like this would have been a private room in the place, right? So. So because they go in there, it causes such a commotion and gives her a chance to hide. And it's only like after the event, right, that she goes and testifies to like the whole situation. And so she goes and she tells like the story and how she was expected to, quote, perform in the All Together, which basically means dance in the nude, right? That's what she was hired to do. And this, this scandal shook gilded age New York. Like it was such a big deal. And this scandal skyrockets her to fame to the point that Oscar Hammerstein, yes, him, he hired her to appear as herself in a parody of the Sealy Dinner, right? And she earned, I shit you not, a thousand dollars a week for this performance. Like that's, that's then money. I didn't look that up now, right? So over the next 12 years, she like owns a dance troupe. Like she is so savvy when it comes to finance. Like she invests in Real estate. And, like, she had homes in the US and in Canada, including, like, a summer house up in Nova Scotia. Like, and at one point over the next 12 years, she gets married, right? But, like, he never publicly acknowledges their marriage because, I don't know, propriety or some. Like, she married a banker. Like, sir, that is not the most honest profession. Like, so she's just loving her life. You know, she's got a decent portfolio and she's just existing being her, right? But she ends up passing away on the 5th of January, 1908 at her apartment on West 37th street in New York as a result of gas asphyxiation. She's only like 36, 37 years old. And, like, she's discovered by her sister, right? And it was just one of those things where just the gas. There was a gas leak in her apartment. Like, this is why, you know, we need to make sure that we check our carbon monoxide alarms. Okay, everybody, let's just keep on top of that, shall we? So when she passed away, she had $30,000 in her bank account and. And $200,000 in real estate holdings, right? And so when she died, her Yale educated, wanker, sorry, banker husband, he swoops in and claims her estates because he can, even though he couldn't publicly acknowledge their marriage. Like, for all we know, they could have been estranged or separated, but we won't know and we, we will never know. And he may have just been an arsehole who just stole her stuff from her when she died. So that is our first Little Egypt. Our second Little Egypt is Farida Mazar Spiropoulos, who was a performer at the World's Fair in Chicago. But she also wasn't Egyptian, she was Syrian. So, like, she was born in Damascus as Farida Mazar, like, also in 1871. And so when she got to the US she started performing at the Birdcage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona. Yes, that one. Right. And so at the time, she was billed as Fatima. Right? That was her, like, stage name. And so because that was her stage name, it's quite often that she's mixed up with other performers. But it's a lot of work. But you find out which one she is, right? So. Right. Because she's so small and petite, right. When she's performing in this in the streets of Cairo procession, like, she ends up getting the nickname backstage as Little Egypt. And the nickname sticks, right? So she ends up dancing to this song which became known as the Snake Charmer Song. You know, the one you do, you know What? I'm gonna do it. And you're gonna be like, I do know that song. Oh, my God. It sounds like I did it through a kazoo, doesn't it? I was like, I'll play it to my hand. That'll sound less weird than going, Yes, I did make that sound with my mouth. You're welcome. I can't help myself. I'm just. I'm the worst. Okay, so. So, yes, that's. That's the song. So she was seen as the originator, like, Frieda Mazar. She was seen as the originator of the Shimmy and Sheikh. And so, like, she ends up touring around the US A little bit and then over to Europe under the stage name of Little Egypt. Now, as she's touring, right. She absolutely abhors being compared to Aisha Wobby. Like, she cannot stand being compared to her. She's like, absolutely not. Right. Especially. Right. Especially after, like, the whole silly dinner scandal. Because she's like, I'm not her. We're nothing alike. I'm a dancer, but I'm, you know, respectful. I'm not courting scandal. I'm just doing my thing. Right? And so she's living her life. She's dancing away. And as she's dancing, she catches the eye of the Greek restaurateur, Alexander Spiropoulos. Like, he had a Chicago restaurant, right? A Chicago restaurant, Mechanic restaurant, a Chicago one. Like, he had a restaurant in Chicago called the American. That's. That is almost as bad as the Chicago restaurant. So it's called the American. What dishes did it serve? I don't know, but I can guess. So, like, he is a native of Greece, by the way. He is a Greek man who has emigrated to the US and she's Syrian, and she's like, that's the man I want to marry. Also. I will always be fed, which is nice. So, like, they get married in 1906. Right? And so she's. She's living her life. She's married now. They don't have any kids out of this relationship, but, you know, they're happy. They're together and. Right. Like, she. She does dance still a little bit. Like, so she's doing a few of the fairs and stuff. And in 1915, right. She performed at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and she did the Little Egypt dance. Right? And so, again, she's just living her life. She's married. She settled down. And in 1933. Right, right. I. I love this woman. Right. At the age of 62, she performs the Little Egypt dance at the Century of Progression in Chicago, right? I love her, right? Like, do it, lady. I love her so much. Right? And then, and then, then a movie comes out three years later, like 1936, this movie comes out called the Great Ziegfeld, which is like a movied up, sort of sanitized version of the life of Florence Ziegfeld Jr. Of Ziegfeld Follies. Right? And her name had been used in the movie. And she was like, I'm sorry, what? And so she says this for a game of soldiers, right? And she sued Metro Golden Mayor. That's the, the one with the lion as the logo. Yeah, that's the one. So she sues them, claiming that the producers did so, like, they used, you know, the idea of her without her consent. But she ends up, like, dying before, like, anything gets resolved because she dies on the 5th of April, 1937. So just the following year. And that is the last of Farida Mazar Spiropoulos.
- [38:11]
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Katy Charlwood
Can I make my sight softer? Can I make my sight firmer? Can we sleep cooler?
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Katy Charlwood
Another of the Coney island dancers was Fatima Jamila. Like, she was born in Bulgaria around 1870, right? So they're all these women are roughly the same age. So they're all in that sort of early 20s, 21, 22. They're all kind of around about that age at the time, right? So when she emigrated to the U.S. like, she began working the vaudeville circuit and she was doing this from like the mid-1880s, so from when she was a teenager. And, like, by the 18, like, 90s, she's performing in Coney island, and she gets recruited as one of the dancers and the rotation of exotic dancing under the guise of ethnography, right? They're like, oh, we're totally appreciating this culture. Are you? Are you really? Or are you just using it as an excuse is to entertain and goggle up women? Perhaps. Perhaps. Okay, so, like, that's the thing you see quite a lot in all of these exhibitions, expositions, so on and so forth, is that it's very much a colonial perspective on all of these different cultures and societies and how it views them as something sort of exotic and yet primitive. And, like, where do you think her numbers come from? Right. Oh, my God. I. I think this is so wild. Like, so many, like, discoveries and inventions. We have sidebar. Like, a lot of it happened in, like, Turkey, Syria, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, you know, all over there. And it's like. And we. We rename things to make it sound, like, cuter. You know what I mean? We'll use older names for nations to make it seem different somehow. Like, if you say Iraq, like, there's an idea that the Western world has put in your head about it, as opposed to something like Mesopotamia. Or if you say Iran, but then you say Persia, like, there's a different vibe to that and there's a reason. Like, it's almost like, exoticized and fetishized. You know what I mean? Like, there's a whole series, right? And a lot of the inventions from these places, like, they were discovered, like, forever before. Like, people were using mold. Like, what we now know as penicillin is, like, that was being used for centuries. We just didn't use it in the Western world. Like, Caesarean births were happening in the continent of Africa, and people were surviving. Like, both the. Both the birth giver and the infant, they were both surviving. But in sort of the Western world, that wasn't happening because people didn't know how to wash their hands. Right? Like, washing hands even was such a thing that people didn't take into consideration, which is why so many, like, white Western people freak out at the idea of people eating rice with their hands. It's like, buddy, you thought forks were the work of the devil for years. Like, chill out. So, anyway, right. Anyway, I say this as if I'm not going to go into a sidebar, which I am, right? So I spend a lot of time, like, a lot of time researching Fatima Right. Like, which I'm fairly certain is not actually her real name also. But like, I was looking into, into this for a while and it's why Little Egypt was one I've always wanted to talk about, but it's taken me this long to do. Like this was supposed to be in the original month back in, back in September, but trying to dig this information out was tough. So, like, there were three things I discovered while trying to research Fatima, right. One, she was often mixed up with Farida Mazar Spiropoulos. Like some people sort of conflate their stories. Two, there is a fairly prominent theory that Fatima Jameel was actually a female impersonator. Right? And three, there was a whole selection of performers called Fatima, one of which was a dancing bear, not the female impersonator, Right. I do have to tell you, like, what, what like one person said specifically about Fatima because it's just so wild. I love this so much. So they're like, Fatima, the girl in blue, doesn't prance up and down on the stage, go into mad gyrations or try to kick a hole in the ceiling. She keeps time in timid little steps and occasionally sidles about the stage in slow gliding circles. It seems to be her pet ambition to disjoint herself at the hips, her anatomy below the waist and the knees. Performs a series of violent tremors, spasms and contortions. A heavy footed and heavy featured girl who takes a few short labored steps, snaps her fingers and accomplishes a muscular contortion not unlike that of the Newfoundland when after a swim he shakes his shaggy coat as to our eyes an absurd and ugly spectacle, right? Like, there are all these like, stories of this person being like, because they're taller and broader than a lot of the other dancers, like, it's assumed that it's a male, a female impersonator. And like, there's stories of like 20, 30 years later, like, of an old man. This is again, such an allegedly such hearsay, this part of like going on Coney island and saying, like, I was Little Egypt, which, I mean, you probably have someone like on the other side of the street walking down, going, I am the Lindbergh baby. You know, it's, yeah, you know, pinch of salt. But like, the thing about, like the performers at Coney island, right, is like, they have this carnival, they're called a barker, right? And so they'd shout out things and there's, there's a thing by Edo McCullough of a good old Coney island, which I'm Also going to read to you in an accent because I think it's fun. Right, so this way for the streets of Cairo. 150 oriental beauties, right? It's interesting to me because, like, when I was much younger, when I heard the word Oriental, I very much, like, made the connection to sort of, like, Eastern Asian. Like, I assumed that it was a specific descriptor for sort of more Eastern Asian people. So Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, so on and so forth, as opposed to, like, Western Asian or Southern Asian, sort of India, Pakistan or all of those kind of spaces. Like, that was the connection that I'd made. And I think that's to do with just a lot of, like, TV shows and stuff. But here, like, Oriental will actually covered anything, basically. Not in Europe or Africa, right? Like us, Europe, Africa. It's like anything vaguely Asian came under sort of the Oriental banner, right? So this way for the streets of Cairo. 150 oriental beauties. The warmest spectacle on earth, presenting Little Egypt. See her prance, see her wriggle See her dance the hoochie coochie. Anywhere else but in the ocean breezes of Coney island, she would be consumed by her own fire. Don't rush, don't crowd. Plenty of seats for all. When she dances, every fiber and every tissue of her entire anatomy shakes like a jar of jelly from your grandmother's Thanksgiving dinner. Now, gentlemen, I don't say that she's hot, but I do say that she is as hot as red hot stove on the fourth day of July in the hottest county in the state. State. I would assume that is fairly hot. One would assume. Right? So Fatima, she ends up catching the attention of historical thief and shitbag Thomas Edison, right? So he likes her move so much that he puts her in a film, right? So he. He's. It's really funny because it's such an interesting. Like, it's a censored film, but it's. It's almost satirical in the manner in which it's censored. So she's performing the, like, a coochie, hoochie, coochie dance, right, with, like, shoulder chemois and these horizontal blocks covering her chest and hips. Because it's, oh, so risque. It's almost as if, right, that they, like, covered her with a picket fence, like. Or a ladder. Like, that's the kind of blocking, like, lines across and down, but, like, you can still see, like, her body. So it's weird that it's, like, censored. Like, she's clothed, which is even funnier. Right. So it's very possible, right, that these were made for the Kinetoscope peep show machine and like, and it's released in 1897. Right. And she appears in like more films. I think it's by multiscope or something like that. And she's in more of these. And then I have another alleged lace for you. I have another allegedly. I know, I, you know me, I love an alleged lace. Right? So like, is someone who like spend so much time digging for like, like the correct history and historical misinformation and propaganda. I like a good story that cannot be corroborated. Because listen, we can all accept that it's an interesting piece of information even if we all agree that it's not. Right? Right. We can go, haha, what a funny myth. We can all agree to that. And that's fun, right? Because no one's being hurt by this information. So let me tell you this. Allegedly, okay? So I, I'm so happy. Mark Twain was known to enjoy a good belly dance. And so he goes to see Fatima perform and her gyrating hips, her movement so sent him into such a tizzy that he had a heart attack, allegedly. And that's like, like my favorite story about this. So she passes away, Fatima Jamel, she passes away in 1921 after suffering a heart attack at just 51 years old. The thing about a lot of these performers is a lot of the time they'll just appear and then fade into obscurity. And it's a lot of digging and fighting to find information of them because a lot of them either, you know, they didn't have a lot of family connections, especially those who would keep this information like alive. You know, a lot of, a lot of these performers, their lives were seen as somewhat shameful. And so a lot of this information is just like buried over the years. And like it's, it's so upsetting to me that lives, the information about these people's lives were just lost. That's the thing about life, right? All you can do is love it. All you can do is love it. We're all skin suits and we're all gonna die. I had a whole like existential quantry the other night again, which then propelled me into actually being productive because I, I need that in my life. So life is just, is just for living. And to assume that people aren't relevant or important, like, especially with regards to history. Cuz like people are like oh, met a met. And I see complain about social history, like oh, we're so Busy talking about social history that we're not talking about, like, war. Like, mate, we don't need to know about guns. We don't need to know about tanks. We don't need to know about all of that information, right? We don't need to know specifically because their relevance only exists with regards to people, right? That's, that's why things exist, because of people. If people, people didn't exist, neither would your fucking tank, right? Get over it. Anyway, sorry. Now. Okay, I'm. I'm such, such a bitch for history now. Over the years, right, the stage name of Little Egypt would be used by a whole host of performers, many of which were using orientalism and appropriation as provocation. Like many burlesque shows, they would have one such act at least. It became a staple of the burlesque circuit, right? But by white or ethnically ambiguous dancers, right? So even Mae west at one point had a variation of Little Egypt routine and a hoochie coochie dance. And this almost lost her, her manager because, like, they wanted to like, get rid of her for being too risque and burlesque and like, like, she does end up, like, having this Little Egypt moment because it's referenced in her movie My Little Chickadee, right? So she does get it back, right? Now, burlesque, as discussed before, right, it evolves over time. It went from parody to shimmy and striptease. And the hoochie coochie dance of Little Egypt was a big part of it. Like, and as the first wave of British and French colonialism came to an end, right? Like that sort of Middle Eastern cultural appropriation, like, faded away from like the sideshow, for example, but shadows of it remain on the burlesque stage in the movement in costumes from coined belt to beaded tops, providing the allure of exotic mystique of the east, like appropriation and fetishizing, right? They're fetish. I was going to say fetishization, but that feels like the wrong word, right? So these still exist, right? They still exist. Like we see it all the time. Like, especially, my God, modern men and their mail order brides. Like, we still see it in culture today. And then, like, there were so many parts of other cultures that like, sort of western society gets mad at, which is wild because, like, like you cannot be from a colonial nation and then get mad that, you know, parts of the culture of the very place that you stripped bear are on your doorstep, right? Like, you cannot have that. You can't be like, oh, I'm really mad. This is happening. And it's like, yeah, you invaded the country and stole all their sht. Like, what did you think was gonna happen? And on top of that as well, right? Because people who come from a place of, like, white privilege, from those colonial nations, they're so used to just being able to take what they want and doing with it what they will. And they've been doing this for, like, centuries at least. Like, because they've been doing this for so long that they're shocked when, you know they're finally told, you're not allowed to do that. Like, this is not a significant part of your culture. This is a part of our culture, and you don't get to steal it just because you feel like you don't have anything there. Like, traditions exist. You just have to make them happen. I mean, if nothing else, right, if you think traditions take a long time to occur, Elf on the fucking shelf, right? This. This is a new invention, right? This. This is less than 20 years old, and it is already a tradition. You can just make traditions. Like, you can create traditions in your culture without stealing them from other fucking people, okay? Other nations, other things that have nothing to do with you. You don't need to burn sage. There are 500 other smelly plants that you can set fire to in your kitchen if you want to, right? You don't have to take the one that is specifically related to an indigenous peoples. But, yes, back to Little Egypt and the belly dance. It existed in many nations beforehand. It was taken. It was fetishized, appropriated, used to sell tickets because they could. But it's really good to see, like, these come back and people claim these dances and for us to learn about it, actually. But with that, I shall bid you good evening. And so, that being said, no, I won't, actually, because it's recommendation time. So for listening, clearly, it is Shake youe Tail Feather by Ray Charles, who for a second, I was like, is that Cab Calloway? And I was like, no, that's Minnie the Moocher, which I listened to the other day, because sometimes I just want to listen to Cab Calloway, right? I like it. I like. I also love. I need to get myself a record player. Like, a cute little record player, because I love the sound of that. Just that little LP scratch. I like old things. None of you should be surprised. So watch it. Y' all should watch. East is east, right? It's a very particular point in Indian British culture. Like, it's. It's an interesting one. And for reading, completely not related to anything at all. But smoke gets in your eyes by Caitlin Doughty Right? Just because I'm reading it right now. And I think you should too. And with that, I will bid you good night. Adios. Au revoir. Au revoir my friends. Bye bye.
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