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Katy Charlwood (24:52)

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.

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Katy Charlwood (39:23)

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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