Chocolate Kiss Nipples Surrounded By Peanut Butter Cookie Breast

I could just be hungry, but that's what I see when I look at this 1950 nude by Clement Haupers -- a peanut butter kiss cookie.



Hey, that comment can't be anywhere near as racist as the work's title, High Brown.

The work is part of the American and European Paintings Auction, March 12, 2009 at Cowan's Auctions.

Sex Of Negro Population

A chart from The Negro American family; Report of a social study made by the College classes of 1909 and 1910 of Atlanta University, by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, under the patronage of the trustees of the John F. Slater Fund; together with the Proceedings of the 13th annual Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, on Tuesday, May the 26th, 1908. (published 1908)


In Negotiation of African American Identities in Rural America: A Cultural Contracts Approach, Ronald L. Jackson II and James B. Stewart, both of Pennsylvania State University, discuss W. E. B. Du Bois' philosophies:

Du Bois did not view the wholesale assimilation of the culture of the larger society as the ideal developmental path for Black families. In discussing sexual mores, he (1908, 42) argued: “The Negro attitude in these matters is in many respects healthier and more reasonable. Their sexual passions are strong and frank . . .The Negro motherlove and family instinct is strong, and it regards the family as a means, not an end, and although the end in the present Negro mind is usually personal happiness rather than social order, yet even here radical reformers of divorce courts have something to learn.”

Image, via NYPL digital collection.

See also: Papers of Caroline Bond Day who published A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States (1932).

Sex For The Good Of The Race

When I first began collecting smut, I began with texts & materials about sexuality. They were purchased as part of my "feminist" collection; documentation not only of the myths of female sexuality, but how such things perpetuated myths of gender and forced everyone into inaccurate boxes.

Some of the most prolific works in vintage human sexuality were those published by -- and promoting -- Eugenics. Eugenics is all about having sex -- "For the Good of the Race." This, of course, is a controversial subject in and of itself. I shall have to dig about and select some titles and "gems" from my own collection. But meanwhile, check out this 1937 ephemera on The Sexual Side of Marriage.

Cartoongate

Dude, there's a cartoongate a-goin' on; Un-Cool takes ya to school, with all the links to the circus regarding this image:

Of White Squaws, Murders & Memoirs

From The Mail and Empire, Toronto, dated March 23, 1935, comes this clipping of the story for a renewed search for Maud Gillespie -- 40+ years after she was "kidnapped by Indians".


Leaving definitions & connotations of the word "squaw" to those far more suited to such endeavors (and I highly recommend you read it; regardless of your initial interest), I'm fascinated by such a story...

So many details are missing... Like the age of Maud when she was "kidnapped" or otherwise disappeared... Why her family members aren't listed by names, rather than crediting John Findlay... And, of course, did they find her?

Then again, is this even true?

If we can believe John Wilson Murray, Ontario's first salaried "Provincial Constable" appointed to act as "Detective for the Government of Ontario", it is true -- and they did find her.

From chapter 47 of Memoirs of a Great Detective: Incidents in the Life of John Wilson Murray:

"A few weeks after my return from St. Paul and Aeneas, there was another disappearance. It occurred hundreds of miles from the old home of Aeneas. About five miles from Thessalon, on the shore of Georgian Bay in the district of Manitoulin, lived a family of farmers named Gillespie. There was a pretty thirteen-year-old daughter, Maud Gillespie. Early in August 1888 she went out to pick berries and did not return. She was seen last near a trout stream, and a bully good trout stream it is, as I happen to know. Searching parties went out and hunted for days, but could find no trace of the child. On August 11th I went up to Thessalon and began another search. I organised parties and apportioned the territory, and sent some on foot and others in boats, and for days and nights we scoured the islands and the shores of Georgian Bay. We visited scores of Indian camps, and pushed on into the wilds, but could not find her. I knew she had no life insurance, and was not a county treasurer, and that her disappearance therefore was not suspicious, so far as she was concerned. Her parents were well-nigh distracted, and I determined to make a final effort to find her. With a small party I went far up to remote Indian camps, and in one of them I found an old squaw, who nodded and grunted to me, and I went outside with her.

"'White girl?' she asked.

"I nodded. The old squaw held out her hand.

"'Give,' she grunted. 'Give.'

"I drew out some money. She sniffed. I felt in my pockets. I had a couple of trout flies in some tinfoil; I took them out. The old squaw seized the glittering tinfoil eagerly, taking my last trout flies with it. She tucked it in her jet black hair, coarse as a horse's tail.

"'Me — see — white girl,' she muttered slowly. 'She go — so — so — so ——,' and she waved far north with her long arm.

"'Alone?' I asked. 'She go alone? Indian take white girl?'

"But the old squaw only grunted and played with the tinfoil and trout flies in her hair. We searched farther north, and twice we heard from Indians of a white girl who had passed that way. When further trailing was hopeless we turned back and made our way to Thessalon. It was a long, hard tramp. On the fourth day I came to the trout stream, where the little girl last was seen. I was tired, and I stretched full length on the ground and idly gazed at the blue sky through the trees, and then rolled over and stared at the water. It was a lovely stream. It glided beneath the over- growth into a broad, deep pool, on whose placid surface the reflection of the waving trees rose and fell amid patches of mirrored blue. Farther down the stream narrowed and rippled over rocks, splashing and gurgling as it went. But there must be no drifting aside into a fish story. I lolled by the stream until my men came up, and we moved on. No further trace of little Maud Gillespie was found, and I returned to Toronto. Fifteen years passed. In May 1903 a surveying party was exploring in New Ontario north of Lake Superior, over four hundred miles from the Gillespie home. They came upon a white woman living with the Indians in the wilderness. She was the wife of a big chief. She possessed a rare beauty of the wilds, yet was not wholly like her associates. She lived as an Indian, and exposure had tanned her a deep, dark brown. At first she was unable to talk with the white men, then gradually her power of speech in English returned until she could talk brokenly and remember a few English words. She finally recalled her name, Maud Gillespie, and her mother. They asked her if she wished to go back to her mother. She said she did, and they communicated with her people and she went back to them, a woman almost thirty years old. She had gone away a little girl of thirteen, fond of her mother, and constantly talking or singing in her childish way. She returned a silent, reserved woman, with the habits and manner and speech of an Indian. She had lost her language, she had become an Indian. Gradually her people are winning her back. It is like taming a wild creature, but eventually the inborn instincts will assert themselves, and much of the Indian life will fall away. They have been teaching her to speak her own language again, and she readily learned anew the songs she sang as a little child.

"This loss of language is a singular thing. I met an Englishman in South America who had lost his language, and he was distressed almost to distraction because of it. I have seen other cases, too, passing strange."

While there is a huge difference between the "more than forty years" the newspaper clipping claims and the fifteen years stated in Murry's memoir (memoirs themselves are imperfect recollections, and there is even some confusion regarding the memoir itself *), and this clipping was apparently published some 30 years after Murray's memoir (did she return to her Native American life and they went looking for her again?), there at least seems to be some proof to the story of Maud Gillespie... Or it's a continuing spoof story.

In my research I also discovered that there is another Findlay connection: Ralph Findlay, who did have a brother named John, was murdered and Murray was on the case.

From the University of Toronto's biography of John Wilson Murray:

Murray’s effectiveness is demonstrated by the first case in which he was involved after taking up his full-time appointment, an inquiry into the murder of Ralph Findlay, a Lambton County farmer. While local constables scurried about seeking clues to the perpetrator, suspecting that it was a stranger surprised while stealing horses, the county attorney, Julius Poussett Bucke, demanded the assistance of the government detective. It was Murray, it appears, who wrung a confession from the dead man’s wife that she had assisted her lover in the deed.

You can read Murry's recollection of the events in chapter XV of his memoir, in which he dates the murder to September of 1875, and describes a rather noble John Findlay.

* According to the University of Toronto, the first published edition of Memoirs of a Great Detective: Incidents in the Life of John Wilson Murray was published in London in 1904, without a mention of Victor Speer; however Speer is identified (as compiler and editor respectively) in the Toronto and New York editions of the book the following year.

Vintage Paint By Number Is A Bust

I don't see too many of these "exotic" (aka "non-white") nude paint by numbers.



Too bad she's a statuary bust and not a real person.

From Flickr.

The Black & White Of Silhouettes

From this 1953 dry cleaning booklet, the origins of the word silhouette:

Time was that silhouette was a naughty word -- which only goes to prove that we live in a changing world. France, in 1759, had a comptroller general whose name was "Monsieur Silhouette." He introduced a number of taxes so odious that the mere mention of his name in polite society could mean pistols at dawn. Just how this epithet gradually shed its shady meaning and came to connote the outline of an object is lost in the pages of history. We chose the name SILHOUETTE for our magazine as a compliment to you... your clothes, your personality, and the home that is a gracious setting for the special beauty that is yours alone.

Curious myself, I did a little research.

From Silhouette-Man:

The art of silhouette cutting originated in Europe in the early 1700's. Prior to the French revolution, silhouettists were hired as an amusement for the royal class. The featured artist would attend the many extravagant balls and cut out the distinguished profiles of the Lords and Ladies capturing the latest fashions and elaborate wigs.

While the aristocrats were having their silhouettes cut out and eating like kings much of Europe was starving, especially in France. In the 1760's the Finance Minister of France, Etienne de Silhouette, had crippled the French people with his merciless tax polices. Oblivious to his people's plight, Etienne was much more interested in his hobby of cutting out paper profiles, the latest fad. Etienne de Silhouette was so despised by the people of France that in protest the peasant s wore only black mimicking his black paper cutouts. The saying went all over France,"We are dressing a la Silhouette. We are shadows, too poor to wear color. We are Silhouettes!" To this very day the black profile cutouts are called silhouettes. Thankfully, the negative connotation no longer remains.

However, artists like Kara Walker are resurrecting the art, using it to explore negative issues such as racism and feminism.

In this PBS interview, Walker said:

“I was looking at racist paraphernalia, iconography, and then at these accurate versions of middle-class Americans. I began to associate the silhouette itself, the cutting, with a form of blackface minstrelsy. Here we have these mainly white sitters or a few slaves who were documented in silhouette—but for the most part white sitters whom I identify as middle class because upper class would require a full-fledged oil portrait and that’s what I had already ruled out for myself…’No oil painting here, not going to ape the master that way.’”

“I always think about this work, this history, in terms of the body. And in terms of this act of excavating that’s been such a current and recurring theme, particularly in the histories of feminist artists, feminist writers, African-American people of color, investigating and eviscerating this body of collective experience…sometimes to the point of leaving nothing intact. I entered into this project, this idea of being a black woman artist, from the perspective of a person who has been presented with a pre-dissected body to work from. A pre-dissected body of information.”

Kara Walker's Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994) from The New York Times.

Other image credits: Kara Walker silhouette via The Whitney.

More on Etienne de Silhouette at Wikipedia.

Black Beauty

From African bodies of evidence: Dartmouth's gutsy 'Black Womanhood' probes old wounds:

In 1810, an English ship's surgeon brought Saartjie Baartman, a young South African woman, to London. She was displayed on stage and made to squat to show her genitals. After she died in 1816, her brain, skeleton, and genitals went on exhibition in Paris, where they remained until 1974.

Baartman, dubbed the "Hottentot Venus," was a victim of colonialism at its most vulgar. She plays a generative role in "Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body," a sweeping, gutsy, and provocative exhibition organized by curator Barbara Thompson at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

I'd never heard of Baartman. But now I'm fascinated -- in that ashamed awareness of those who rubberneck in ignorance which is combined with anger and sorrow for the woman herself.



It wasn't until 2002 that she returned home -- nearly two centuries later. (See also: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman "The Hottentot Venus", a film by Zola Maseko.)

The exhibition looks right up my alley -- to bad the museum isn't in my alley.

However, the catalog itself is apparently worth seeing. (You can purchase it from the museum.)

From a collector's standpoint, the following reminds me how many nude African female postcards I see:

Partial nudity was common in 19th-century Africa, but imagine the reaction of Victorian-era Europeans landing there, greeted by bare-skinned natives. They deemed Africans primitive and erotic, applied anthropometry - the measuring of body parts - to attempt to understand them, and sent postcards home, many with photos and captions intended to titillate and reinforce presumptions of white racial superiority.

"I wanted to see a prostitute drawn by my grandmother"

So says Project Prostitute, which then presents all the drawn images. Some of the artistic representations are of the usual variety, fishnets and smoking for example; but others are so absurd they are cute, such as the green 'lot lizard' with handcuffs.



I think what I love about this collection the most is the wide range of ideas shown; certainly the artworks expose as much about the creators as they do values and ideas regarding prostitution.




You'll also find more images from Project Prostitute at Flickr. (I discovered this by clicking 'see larger, and I find that more enjoyable than the flash galleries at Project Prostitute; there is more than one Flickr user involved, as I also found this gallery set too. So poke about and see what you find.)



And I can't help but compare these depictions of sex workers to some of the conclusions jumped to about sex collectors...



Come to think of it, that would be a really excellent project.

If you'd like to send in images of collectors of adult collectibles, sex history, risque items etc., either based on what you've had people say to you, or even what you think about me, then please do so. I'll gladly post them.

Via Fleshbot.

Dorothy Dandridge

This glam photo was found at klbndc's photos at Flickr -- a worthy stop for those interested in African-American history, loaded with not just grand old (and rare) daguerreotypes, but a wealth of information from news clippings etc. A must see link. (Hence the 'racism' tag.)

Fanny Brice, Al Jolson & The Seven Lively Arts

As promised in part one, more on Fanny Brice (with a generous dollop of Al Jolson).





This from the The Seven Lively Arts, by Gilbert Seldes, this is The Daemonic in the American Theatre (pages 191-200).

ONE man on the American stage, and one woman, are possessed--Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought to be grateful for it. For in addition to being more or less a Christian country, America is a Protestant community and a business organization-and none of these units is peculiarly prolific in the creation of daemonic individuals. We can bring forth Roosevelts--dynamic creatures, to be sure; but the fury and the exultation of Jolson is a hundred times higher in voltage than that of Roosevelt; we can produce courageous and adventurous women who shoot lions or manage construction gangs and remain pale beside the extraordinary "cutting loose" of Fanny Brice.

To say that each of these two is possessed by a daemon is a mediaeval and perfectly sound way of expressing their intensity of action. It does not prove anything-not even that they are geniuses of a fairly high rank, which in my opinion they are. I use the word possessed because it connotes a quality lacking elsewhere on the stage, and to be found only at moments in other aspects of American life-in religious mania, in good jazz bands, in a rare outbreak of mob violence. The particular intensity I mean is exactly what you do not see at a baseball game, but may at a prize fight, nor in the productions of David Belasco, nor at a political convention; you may see it on the Stock Exchange and you can see it, canalized and disciplined, but still intense, in our skyscraper architecture. It was visible at moments in the old Russian Ballet.

In Jolson there is always one thing you can be sure of: that whatever he does he does at the highest possible pressure. I do not mean that one gets the sense of his effort, for his work is at times the easiest seeming, the most effortless in the world. Only he never saves up-for the next scene, or the next week, or the next show. His generosity is extravagant; he flings into a comic song or three-minute impersonation so much- energy, violence, so much of the totality of one human being, that you feel it would suffice for a hundred others. In the days when the runway was planked down the centre of every good theatre in America, this galvanic little figure, leaping and shouting--yet always essentially dancing and singing--upon it was the concentration of our national health and gaiety. In Row, Row, Row he would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars over the heads of the audience, draw equally imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny. The very phonograph record of his famous Toreador song is full of vitality. Even in later days when the programme announces simply "Al Jolson" (about 10.15 P.M. in each of his reviews) he appears and sings and talks to the audience and dances off-and when he has done more than any other ten men, he returns and, blandly announcing that "You ain't heard nothing yet," proceeds to do twice as much again. He is the great master of the one-man show because he gives so much while he is on that the audience remains content while he is off-and his electrical energy almost always develops activity in those about him.

If it were necessary, a plea could be made for violence per se in the American theatre, because everything tends to prettify and restrain, and the energy of the theatre is dying out. But Jolson, who lacks discipline almost entirely, has other qualities besides violence. He has an excellent baritone voice, a good ear for dialect, a nimble presence, and a distinct sense of character. Of course it would be impossible not to recognize him the moment he appears on the stage; of course he is always Jolson-but he is also always Gus and always Inbad the Porter, and always Bombo. He has created a way of being for the characters he takes on; they live specifically in the mad world of the Jolson show; their wit and their bathos are singularly creditable characteristics of themselves-not of Jolson. You may recall a scene I think the show was called Dancing Around - in which a lady knocks at the door of a house. From within comes the voice of Jolson singing, "You made me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it"--the voice approaches, dwindles away, resumes -- it is a swift characterization of the lazy servant coming to open the door and ready to insult callers, since the master is out. Suddenly the black face leaps through the doorway and cries out, "We don' want no ice," and is gone. Or Jolson as the black slave of Columbus, reproached by his master for a long absence. His lips begin to quiver, his chin to tremble; the tears are approaching, when his human independence softly asserts itself and he wails, "We all have our moments." It is quite true, for Jolson's technique is the exploitation of these moments; he has himself said that he is the greatest master of hokum in the business, and in the theatre the art of hokum is to make each second count for itself, to save any moment from dulness by the happy intervention of a slap on the back, or by jumping out of character and back again, or any other trick. For there is no question of legitimacy here-everything is right if it makes 'em laugh.

He does more than make 'em laugh; he gives them what I am convinced is a genuine emotional effect ranging from the thrill to the shock. I remember coming home after eighteen months in Europe, during the war, and stepping from the boat to one of the first nights of Sinbad. The spectacle of Jolson's vitality had the same quality as the impression I got from the New York sky line-one had forgotten that there still existed in the world a force so boundless, an exaltation so high, and that anyone could still storm Heaven with laughter and cheers. He sang on that occasion 'N Everything and Swanee. I have suggested elsewhere that hearing him sing Swanee is what book reviewers and young girls loosely call an experience. I know what Jolson does with false sentiment; here he was dealing with something which by the grace of George Gershwin came true, and there was no necessity for putting anything over. In the absurd black-face which is so little negroid that it goes well with diversions in Yiddish accents, Jolson created image after image of longing, and his existence through the song was wholly in its rhythm.

Five years later I heard Jolson in a second-rate show, before an audience listless or hostile, sing this out dated and forgotten song, and create again, for each of us seated before him, the same image-and saw also the tremendous leap in vitality and happiness which took possession of the audience as he sang it. It was marvelous. In the first weeks of Sinbad he sang the words of 'N Everything as they are printed. Gradually (I saw the show in many phases) he interpolated, improvised, always with his absolute sense of rhythmic effect; until at the end it was a series of amorous cries and shouts of triumph to Eros. I have heard him sing also the absurd song about "It isn't raining rain, It's raining violets" and remarked him modulating that from sentimentality into a conscious bathos, with his gloved fingers flittering together and his voice rising to absurd fortissimi and the general air of kidding the piece.

He does not generally kid his Mammy songs-as why should he who sings them better than anyone else? He cannot underplay anything, he lacks restraint, and he leans on the second-rate sentiment of these songs until they are forced to render up the little that is real in them. I dislike them and dislike his doing them-as I dislike Belle Baker singing Elie, Elie! But it is quite possible that my discomfort at these exhibitions is proof of their quality. They and a few very cheap jokes and a few sly remarks about sexual perversions are Jolson's only faults. They are few. For a man who has, year after year, established an intimate relation with no less than a million people, every twelvemonth, he is singularly uncorrupted. That relation is the thing which sets him so far above all the other one-manshow stars. Eddie Cantor gives at times the effect of being as energetic; Wynn is always and Tinney sometimes funnier. But no one else, except Miss Brice, so holds an audience in the hollow of the hand. The hand is steady; the audience never moves. And on the great nights when everything is right, Jolson is driven by a power beyond himself. One sees that he knows what he is doing, but one sees that he doesn't half realize the power and intensity with which he is doing it. In those moments I cannot help thinking of him as a genius.

Quite to that point Fanny Brice hasn't reached. She hasn't, to begin with, the physical vitality of Jolson. But she has a more delicate mind and a richer humour--qualities which generally destroy vitality altogether, and which only enrich hers. She is first a great farceur; and in her songs she is exactly in the tradition of Yvette Guilbert, without the range, so far as we know, which enabled Mme Guilbert to create the whole of mediaeval France for us in ten lines of a song. The quality, however, is the same, and Fanny's evocations are as vivid and as poignant as Yvette's-they require from us exactly the same tribute of admiration. She has grown in power since she sang and made immortal, I Should Worry. Hear her now creating the tragedy of SecondHand Rose or of the one Florodora baby who-- "five little dumbells got married for money, And I got married for love . . .." These things are done with two-thirds of Yvette Guilbert's material missing, for there are no accessories and, although the words (some of the best are by Blanche Merrill) are good, the music isn't always distinguished. And the effects are irreproachable. Give Fanny a song she can get her teeth into, Mon Homme, and the result is less certain, but not less interesting. This was one of a series of realistic songs for Mistinguett, who sang it very much as Yvonne George did when she appeared in America. Miss Brice took it lento affetuoso; since the precise character of the song had changed a bit from its rather more outspoken French original. Miss Brice suppressed Fanny altogether in this song-she was being, I fear, "a serious artist"; but she is of such an extraordinary talent that she can do even this. Yvonne . George sang it better simply because the figure she evoked as Mon Homme was exactly the fake apache about whom it was written, and not the "my feller" who lurked behind Miss Brice. It was amusing to learn that without a Yiddish accent and without those immense rushes of drollery, without the enormous gawkishness of her other impersonations, Miss Brice could put a song over. But I am for Fanny against Miss Brice and to Fanny I return.

Fanny is one of the few people who "Make fun." She creates that peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing can be said; one either sees it or doesn't, savours it or not. Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at once -the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn't so much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity, there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are examples-there isn't an arriere-pensee in them.

"The Chiff is after me . . . he says I appil to him . . . he likes my type - - " It is the complete give away of herself and she doesn't care.

And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, "I can't get over it"--after which point everything is flung into another plane-the hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the magnificent line, "I may be a bad woman, but I'm awful good company." In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody, imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another, truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny's special quality that with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite, her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor Hebert's Kiss Me Again, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.

Fanny's refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson's; her effects are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong-and her spirits mount and intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the daemon attends she is superb.

It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America which America lacks and lovesthey are, I suppose, two of our most popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in which they will meet.

You can read The Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes online here; or, if you should, like I, prefer paper to cozy up with, here's the paperback at Amazon -- which, you can get a deal on if you purchase it with The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States by Michael Kammen.

I mention the latter as the blurbs about that book have some of the best, clearest, most concise information on Gilbert Seldes himself.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes (1893-1970) made the then-controversial claim that popular entertainment and culture should be treated just as seriously, and as rigorously, as the so-called high arts. Krazy Kat and Irving Berlin were worthy of critical attention, he said; and arts criticism in America hasn't been the same since. Kammen, a historian, stresses the "hands-on" aspect of Seldes's long and versatile career. He was a historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, scriptwriter, journalism school dean, newspaper and magazine columnist and CBS's first director of television. Although at times Kammen seems curiously defensive, his balanced and insightful account of Seldes's professional life?from the early '20s at the Dial magazine (and the beginning of long-running feuds with both Hemingway and the Algonquin Round Table set) to the 1950s debates on the role of "mass culture"?is a story of a life as well as a history of pop culture on the rise. Seldes, Kammen says, thought of himself as "a highbrow populist" and was a "compulsively candid critic." Kammen weights Seldes's contributions fairly but can be equally candid.

Mary Carroll of Booklist:

Cornell University's Kammen is an astute student of U.S. cultural history; People of Paradox (1972), A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1986), and Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) suggest his scope. It's hardly surprising that he would find Seldes a fascinating biographical subject. Seldes was a major contributor to arts criticism and magazine journalism from the 1920s to the 1960s: edited The Dial when it published T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland; wrote a classic defense of popular art, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), hundreds of magazine articles, a successful Broadway treatment of Lysistrata, and programs for radio and TV; and was founding dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Seldes fought with Hemingway, George Jean Nathan, and Edward R. Murrow and wrestled with issues of current relevance, including "dumbing down" vs. "leveling up" in the mass media and government's role in supporting (or restraining) artistic expression. Seldes shed light rather than heat on significant artistic issues American society has faced.

Also, related, is this piece on The Seven Lively Arts and The Freemasons.

For more on Jolson, the International Al Jolson Society.

Of Storks & Babies

My friend collects vintage storks, as do I, so when I spotted this card, I had to post it here:

A bonnie Scotch laddie wi' kilties to his knees kin nay do wi'out ye, an' yearns to bae your cheese cake. He kenn hoo to play the bagpipe un hae muckle siller, un your only trouble will be the keeping o' his knees warm, in fact most o' your troubles will be little ones. Dinna pass him up.

May the collector with the bigger budget win. lol

Storks are fertility symbols and I've long wondered why. They aren't particularly cuddly looking... Too pointy to have near delicate babes. Which is why I collect them. Maybe if I see enough of them I'll figure something out. But so far, no luck.

I asked my German grandma because I remember her talking about actual "stork children".

She said storks were lucky; so, therefore, were folks who had babies. But I pushed about the old fable.

She said that the souls of the unborn lived in watery areas such as marshes and ponds and in the caves and rocky areas around them -- the "Adeborsteine" or "storkstones" -- and that storks, who frequented both such watery places and the steep rock crevasses, were the creatures who fetched the souls as babies & delivered them to their parents.

This, of course, from a woman who thought that she was dying when she got her period and she had no knowledge of such things. So it could be complete BS, yah?

But I did some searching for 'storks' and 'Adeborsteine' and found this. So she isn't nutty -- or at least she's no more nutty than the rest of our German ancestors. *wink*

She had no info to offer on this old post... Do you yet?

The Black Champion & The White Avenger

Saved from a lynching via a female sado-masochist from the future who, it turns out, started the racist hunt, is the story of Terror Blu 113: Il Campione Nero (The Black Champion).

Interracial Sex

When Secondhand Rose posted this retro Oreo porno photo she roused racial reactions.



Rose sees the matter of race as "just another set of physical attributes which may be part of attraction and arousal -- and as such, they can be details used to arrive at sexual satisfaction."

She also said:

The subject of interracial sex as a turn-on carries with it many deep-rooted responses, concerns and even accusations, which is really a shame. If one is granted permission to fancy blondes, isn't denying the attraction to skin color rather wrong? If we accept a white male brunette's desire for a blonde woman, why not black man's desire for a natural redheaded female?

Or vica-versa, right?

Related to the topic of racial sex taboos is Angela's article, Cuckold Fantasies and the "N" Word.

What We Do & Don't Remember

I don't usually play these gizmos, quizzes & such, let alone post the results, but this one was not only fun, but a coincidence...

Here's looking at Silent Porn Star, kid.

Which movie was this quote from?

Get your own quotes:

When you click you get the movie answer, which is quite obviously this blog's name plugged in for the word 'you' in the famous line from the movie Casablanca. (Which, by the way, would actually look good on a tee, as shown here -- it's one case of well-done advertising for the custom T-Shirts @ Spreadshirt.)

What's coincidental about this?

Well, Gracie and I were just chatting about my reaction to the Nazi comic and the subject of a recent NPR show came up. We'd both heard the episode of Fresh Air, an interview with author and historian Robert Satloff discussing his book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, and we both were struck by the reference to the film:

One of those lessons is that the Holocaust experience of Jews and others persecuted in Arab lands are not "untold stories" but rather "lost stories." Recall, for example, this scene from the movie Casablanca, in which a Gestapo officer urges the devoted wife of the Czech underground leader to convince her husband to return to Paris under German protection.

Major Strasser: There are only two other alternatives for him.

Ilse: What are they?

Major Strasser: It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here.

Ilse: And the other alternative?

Major Strasser: My dear Mademoiselle, perhaps you have observed that in Casablanca, human life is cheap. Good night, Mademoiselle.

When Warner Bros. released the movie, in December 1942, filmgoers did not scratch their heads at this passing reference to French "concentration camps" in Morocco. The existence of these camps — much like the terrible fate of Jews more generally — was known, certainly among those who were interested in knowing. Somehow, over the last sixty years, those stories have been lost.

The fact that such a reference in the film went unnoticed by both Gracie and myself (and when prompted to think about it, it would have seemed odd -- like the movie was inaccurate) was proof of the author's words -- and a reminder that we do indeed romanticize the past, as I had posted.

Here's a movie dedicated to the message that love doesn't conquer all -- especially in times of war. Its bitter-sweet message has been so romanticized that the reality of war and Nazis is lost in the swoon factor of a man and a woman giving up personal happiness for the greater good.

So while I may be in error interpreting the old Nazi comic the other 'ugly' facts about the racist humor in that magazine still exist and so my main point stands quite well.

What We Learn From Porn & Men's Magazines

We like to imagine that the stars of our erotic dreams, as they pose with such poise and promise, are, if not blissfully happy, then some sort of underground rebels, pushing past the limits and norms to just do what comes naturally.


This phenomenon, wherein we view the act of creating porn as escapist as our viewing it, is a normal part of porn purveyance. And it's one that often finds us under attack.

Such frivolous behavior is bad enough, but when involving erotic images and ideas it is even far more dangerous. It's as if, somehow, that imagining her photographed gaze is just for us, and that envisioning she is as equally pleased 'seeing us' as she is delighted knowing why we gaze back at her, that all of this is somehow at once both dissimilar and more dangerously out of touch with reality than it is with any interaction with mainstream media.

(If I were to begin to undertake the pro-porn argument today, I would surely remind women of soap operas, both daytime and prime time version; girls of boy bands, boys of comic book & anime characters; and men -- those heterosexual men who deny use of female imagery -- of their lopsided obsession with sports figures -- any of which is equally as warped in its idolisation and fantasy... Yet somehow still deemed less offensive and risky than porn. But I won't get into all of that argument today.)

While porn in general presents these potential problems, at least in theory, porn from the past has additional pitfalls. For example, we have a tendency to romanticize the past.

We like to remember the past as those less complicated times "when a man was a man, and a woman was a woman," and no place is this more true than with our vintage erotica. But I'm here to tell ya, porn, even vintage porn, is not always pretty.


Sure, there is porn that's less-than attractive (down-right weird, even); and yup, like in any business, organization or group of people, there are always a few bad apples which make things scary. But I'm talking more about what the adult industry reveals about the rest of our culture...

Flip through the pages of any "man's publication" and you'll find not just nude photos, but there, in those printed pages, a stripped down picture of the culture & the times in which it was produced.

Like a portable men's room, the 'talk' that occurs in men's magazines is as au natural as the status of the models. It's not that these publications are necessarily less than literate; it's not that their minds are simply in the gutter. But most of these magazines shoot from the hip. They are direct, frank, and don't pussy-foot about. It makes sense, for how can you expect pages of naked broads not to be surrounded by equally revealing stories?

The term 'explicit' is normally reserved for erotic stories (and directions, we hope), but this matter of leaving nothing to be implied or hinted at is a common tone in sex magazines. Sure, there's playful innuendo, dirty puns, and other word play for nimble tongues, but the mere fact that all this sex talk can go on means the publication is censor-free. Every day matters, like the politics of the times, cannot be forbidden in a place (publication) which wishes to convey to its members (subscribers) that there are no holds barred here. How can they invite -- nay, propel -- readers to undress the models and caress themselves if there are indeed taboos? If free liquor cannot be sent along with the publication to loosen inhibitions, then the articles and other content must convey, "Speak freely, brother; it's OK here. Anything goes!"

Case in point, this copy of Hollywood Follies (Greenwich Feature Syndicate, NY, Wayne Sabbath, Managing Editor), scans of which have been placed throughout this post.



From 1943, this issue clearly embraces the wartime mentality with the images of sailors and females with sailor caps, sending a military message. But it's the cover tag lines, "Follies for Victory" and "Jokes to Jerk the Japs," which really announces it supports our American troops.

I don't post the racist, sexist and dehumanising bits here to proclaim them 'good' or to condone them; nor to embarrass or dirty the image of our troops today. But the (supposed) humor in this old publication provides much insight into our American culture at that time. The jokes and tone may be are in bad taste, but this was 1943 and we were at war. Something more than mom, apple pie and the flag were needed to rally and replenish the troops, so gash and trash-talk it was.



Perhaps the most shocking thing I found flipping through the pages of this rather small bi-monthly vintage magazine was this cartoon of what appears to be officers at a cocktail party talking about a woman. She is wearing a near backless black dress which reveals number on her back and the caption reads, "Darn subtle, these Nazis."



How shocking and horrific to see the Nazi practice of ID numbers tattooed on Jews and forced prostitution made into a sex joke. It's enough to make bile rise in my throat, make me want to rip the publication to shreds.

But as a collector, an amateur historian, this dreadful comic is one link to the past. And while I too would much rather prefer to think of days gone by as more simple and pure, this copy of Hollywood Follies makes it clear that the good old days were neither simple nor pure.

There were good times, good days, but there were also bad things and bad ways. Just like today. So perhaps it's better to think of them just as the old days. Or at least force a reality check on ourselves now and then by reading the trash-talking articles as well as looking at the gash photos.

The Only Way To Keep A Gal, Is To Keep Her In A Cage

Deanna was working on this piece on collecting vintage sheet music, and showed me this baby:


Since neither Deanna nor I have the sheet music, she's contacting the seller, Joel, of www.sheetmusiccenter.com, for a follow-up article on "coon" music. I'll post the follow-up when she's published it, but I couldn't wait to show off this old cover with a man with a key standing outside his caged girlfriend.

This is what I could find out.

It's by "The Originator of Ragtime" or "The Father of Ragtime" Ben Harney. The Rag-Time Ephemerist has an article on Harney, Ben Harney in Context, which doesn't illuminate the cover art or the song itself much, but the online article does quote from The New York Clipper (September 26, 1896) which covers Harney's time with the Boston Athenaeum Star Specialty Company (touring under the aegis of Andrew J. Hughes, proprietor of Boston's Howard Athenaeum Theater):

His coon songs gained enthusiastic response. He was assisted in the gallery and on the stage by 'Strap' Hill, a colored dancer and singer.

In the article (again, only part of which is available online) there's a tantalizing bit more on "the negro" in question:

Based on the recollections of Harney's wife Jessie, the authors of They All Played Ragtime identified his "stage assistant," "Strap" Hill as a "young Negro ragtime player and entertainer ... from Memphis" whom Harney first met either in or on his way to Chicago in 1893.3 Clipper citations make it clear that Harney and Hill worked together, on and off at least, from the fall of 1896 until the fall of 1898

Harney wasn't favored by commercial recording, but there's an MP3 of him singing The Wagon here.

Stay tuned, as they say...

The British Have A Ball With Propaganda

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim’lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

Now that I have your attention, let me send you to Eros for more on British propaganda: Here Comes Hitler With His Pecker In His Hand.

Billie Holiday

I never knew that Billie Holiday left the stage midway through the song and allegedly slashed the heckler with a knife -- then resumed singing. The song? Strange Fruit, a song about the lynching of a black man in the American South.

You can find more here, at PCL. (The link they direct us to, the Walter Gordon Collection, is not working now... I keep my fingers crossed for its return. Meanwhile, use the Google cache.)

You can also find a press release on the collection here.

Also via Google cache, I found this image:

The text reads: John Levy (left) and Walter Gordon stand in the court hallway before Billie Holiday’s criminal assault trial. Levy was Holiday's manager and boyfriend for much of her turbulent career.

Jem Of A Find

More from the old Parmount folder of nude art and men's magazine clippings, this time, three pages from Jem magazine.

While only four pages of this issue, there's much to cover because in my research I found many interesting things. Lets start at the beginning.

One of the pages I have is the table of contents, but no cover. Here's what the cover of the first Jem, Vol. 1, No. 1, November, 1956, looked like.


The cover features a clearly recognizable Candy Barr, which is important because while the contents page has a pink-colorized photo of the same model with a rose, I didn't recognize her, nor was she credited.

This is why it's so hard for a collector to see magazines cut up like this -- you can't verify models. Even if the publication didn't credit the models, a good collector can research to find verification of what models were in what issues, but when pages are found loose, you can't even tell what publication they were from. (The contents page only lists Candy Barr on page 15 -- but if I have that page, so far I have not discovered it.)

Back to what I do have and what I discovered...

In November of 1956, Body Beautiful Publications birthed a new baby, Jem magazine. I say "birthed" because publisher Danny Ross compared the starting of the new magazine to having a baby in this, the first issue, under the heading "Diamond Dust" which seems to be the publisher notes section. Here's an excerpt:

Like a baby, a new magazine must be named. And friends and relatives of the Mother-Publisher will come forth with beauts. Among those suggested for this publication were Suave, Debonair, Jewel, Gala, Fiesta, Carnival, Circus and a number of equally eye- and ear-catching titles. The Publisher, however, liked Gem and since it is a time-honored custom to defer to the wishes of those who have just presented the world with a new offsrping it was decided Mother Knows Best, and Gem it was. Until the matter came to the attention of a female member of the staff. She came up with that little touch that would occur only to a woman.

"Why not spell it JEM?" she suggested.

And so JEM it is. Which proves you should never underestimate the power of a woman, or the devastating effect of her touch.

***

At first it was planned to JEM a slogan by which it could readily be identified. Something like "LS/MFT," "It Floats," "Even Your Best Friends Won't Tell You," or "They Satsify." But the best thing we could think of was "All The Nudes That's Fit To Print," so that phase of the project was dropped.

***

Anyway, the new baby is home from the hospital and safely in the hands of you -- its foster parents. We hope you like it. As for the staff, their attitude toward the new baby can best be summed up by what the hen told the square egg: "You were an awful pain, but I finally laid you."

Things to note are:

Of the seven suggested titles, nearly all of them went on to become actual magazine titles with one publisher or another.

By the time this issue hit the stands, Jem had a slogan: Jem, A Treaser Chest Of Rare Spice.

One of the suggested slogans was "LS/MFT," which I had to look up, but didn't explain completely why this would be a good slogan. Perhaps another euphimism lost to time... It's sure been played with, even today.

Also in the "Diamond Dust" section was a "Daffy Dictionary" entry, which I mentioned to Gracie and she quickly made a post about -- beating me to this article myself.

In my excerpt there's clearly a condescending attitute toward women, but it is also delicately clothed in words of worship. However it's important to note Gracie's post because Jem, while a vintage men's mag, definitely pushed the boundaries of condesention into blatent sexist behavior.

In fact, Jem was rather well known for such a sexist editorial policy. This cover of the 1958 March issue is an example of that. Here a topless French maid scrubs the floor while a dapper gent lords above her.


(Image from a private collector who allowed me to share the scan -- thanks DB!)

This editorial slant remained with the magazine (some claiming it even increased over time). Most collectors do agree, however, that the very best issues of Jem were the first few years. During these years Jem had high production standards with wonderful photography and an imaginative, playful design.

One of the reasons Jem was/is a favorite is that it has lots of photos -- and color photos.



Lovely photos of Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg, each "A Jewel From The Jem Box."



In the first issue, the poster babe (two pages, but not in the center like a true 'centerfold') Betty Brosmer is featured as the official welcome to Jem.


Posing in a lovely sheet peignoir, Betty profers a come-hither gaze and champaign for two. The text reads, "WELCOME to JEM with a toast To Gaiety, Beauty, Entertainment from Betty Brosmer."

I must show that this pictorial is clearly different from this image (copied from Java's Bachelor Pad Betty Brosmer featurette).

Note how Betty's face has transformed. The photo used in the magazine seems to have been airbrushed as the copy I have shows less lines on her face and more defined cheekbones. (I'm not saying Brosmer needed such things -- on the contrary, I find it interesting how even the slightest things in such a beautiful woman are 'imperfections' to be corrected.)

In keeping with the birthing metaphore, let's look at bit at the Jem family.

Jem was one of the Body Beautiful Publications, part of the Joe Weider family of magazines and the body building empire.

Betty Brosmer herself married Joe and became Betty Weider in the 60's.





From that point on, Betty, who had been the highest paid pin-up model in the 50's, became a real Weider and virtually stopped modeling and became an active participant in Joe's health and fitness empire.





When most folks think of Joe Weider they think of all his male muscle magazines.


These vintage muscle mags were controversial and even were tested by US censorship laws. From the New York Times dated April 29, 1957:

Magazines Indicted for Indeceny

The Union County grand jury today returned indictments against the publishers and distributors of seven national magazines on charges of conspiracy to sell indecent literature. The true bills are the first of their kind in New Jersey, according to Prosecutor H. Russell Morss, Jr.

Consiracy is a misdemeanor punishable by up to three years in state prison and a $1,000 fine. Among the publishers indicted was Body Beautiful Publications, Inc. (Wonderful Weedy)

(I wonder what Betty thought of this? She herself had refused to pose for Playboy because she of her self-imposed rule to only do chaste cheesecake shots.)

(Photo credits: Tin In Vermont.)

Wonderful Weedy, a not-so-affectionate nick name for Joe Weider, and his publications upset the suposed 'real keepers of the sport of body building,' including Harry B. Paschall, managing editor of Stength and Health. Here's how Harry responded to the news of Body Beautiful Publications indictments:

We are not in favor of censorship as a rule, and we believe in the fundamental freedom of the press, but there are certain cheap publishers who will stoop to anything to make money, even the perversion of children. It is about time some action is taken to stop this sort of indecency.

It is an odd twist of fate that at practically the same time the York Chamber of Commerce was honoring the York Barbell Club and Bob Hoffman with a testimonial plaque, the Union County Grand Jury (where the Weedy enterprises are located) was indicting Mr. Wonderful for consiracy to sell indecent literature. Perhaps the Mills of the Gods grind slowly but they grind exceeding small.

Weedy and his group of unscrupulous hirelings have been spouting for a long time about their idealism and how they were martyrs to the cause of pure, unsullied bodybuilding. They write letters to credulous columnists like Dan Parker (who should know better), of the N.Y. Mirror, telling how Bob Hoffman is the big, bad wolf who runs A.A.U. weightlifting to suit himself. They fail to bring into the open the fact that they themselves are mainly engaged in the business of selling dirty pictures and dirty magazines.

Anyone who takes one look at their current publications, such as Jem, and their small, dirty homo books Body Beautiful, and Adonis, cannot fail to see the category into which such literature falls. Indecency is a mild word for it. Pornography is better.

The Weedy books cannot be sold in their own home city. They have been banned by the League of Decency. Yet thousands of credulous lads, not yet dry behind the ears, take for truth the wild mouthings of these imitation experts, when they read the sensational articles in their trashy magazines.

Perhaps their long career of fooling some of the people some of the time is drawing to a close. Perhaps the Great Imitator (he has recently copied the labels of Hoffman's Hi-Proteen products so closely they can almost be sold as the real McCoy) may be forced by public opinion and the law to go back to his original slum hideway, where he and his pals can still make a living peddling French postcards. Apparently you can take a kike out of the slums, but you can never take the slums out of the kike.

Well, well, wel... If Weider's muscle men mags were dirty and obscene, what should we make of the racism of Paschall?

Sexim is OK; but sexy is bad.

Racism is at least tolerable when one is defending the honor of weightlifting -- something Paschall and Hoffman were quite passionate about.

Gotta love the 50's. No wonder cheesecake and beefcake were so popular; one had to find beauty where they could.

XXX Record Albums

Somethings to delight, and somethings to offend... LP Cover Lover has Triple-X covers for you to see...




Link found via Red Blooded Thing.

Mondo Exploitation Advertising

Another print block, measuring 8.25 x 3.5 inches; this one is for exploitation film features called MondoRama.


I had 'the tech guy' (the husband) once again monkey with Photoshop to create what the paper print would look like.


It's pretty clear that this is an ad, likely from a newspaper, promoting the Mondo Rama film triple-feature.

The text reads:

203 Minutes Of The Most Incredible Scenes Ever Recorded On Film

Mondorama

All In Raw Color!

SEE

Bloody German Duels

Black Magic In London

Human Pin Cushion

ECCO

In Technicolor

Erotica of the East

Exposes Odd Customs

TABOOS Of The World

Color

Tattooed Virgins

Male Geisha Girls

MACABRO

African Love School

Technicolor

SEE THE WORLD in the RAW
Overpowering, fascinating -- often shocking!

What little I know about the films themselves is the following:

ECCO is Italian for Look! And a review of the film, along with more information on Mondo films, is available at DVD Drive-In.

Here's the film's trailer:



Marv Miller, television's The Millionaire, went on to narrate Macabro in 1966 (and then began cranking out porno movies). Via Something Weird Video.

Also at Something Weird, Taboos of the World is part of the Twisted Sex Volume 13 DVD.

More Racist Sex 'Humor'

This time I don't have the paper but the print block -- since there were obviously less print blocks than the paper the imprints ran on, it's rather rare, but I still wish I had a print copy of this to go with it.



Here's a digital rendering of what the print looks like:



The text reads, "Just and Old Hindu Custom!" ...as the snake charmer charms his own genitalia.

Wow, racist Black Americana and a sex joke.

Hubby and I went to an auction, and won a box full of old postcards and photos. He pulls out this first one and says, "Wow, racist Black Americana and a sex joke."

I look at the card and am puzzled... "Sex joke? He's just feeling like the black sheep..."

"Look at the sheep's mouth!" he insists (his tone a mix of impatience and disbelief at my stupidity).


Oh

My

Gawd.

The black sheep is in the same blackface as the man.



"He's been screwing the sheep and this is proof," he exclaims triumphantly. (Not pleased at the imagery, is he, but rather he's glad my light-bulb finally went on.)

So much for me being the 'sex collector' with sex on my mind all the time, huh.

Well, it is my virgin experience with such an item.

Sure, I've seen variations on the old sex with sheep joke, but it's always been the Greeks who sheepishly become the butt of the joke. Not that I'm saying it's better to make jokes about the Greeks than it is the black people, but then blackface takes things to a whole other level. Just talking about this makes me uncomfortable...

Not sure I should even own it. Not sure who should. But for now, I do.

This card, published by Central Minnesota Novelty Co. (St. Cloud, Minn), number 190, also shocks me because is it postmarked 1954. The freakin' 50s?! If this had been from say the 30's, I wouldn't have been quite so shocked. Repulsed, yeah; but less shocked.

But wait, there's more!

We also found another vintage racist postcard in the box. This one depicts a little black boy behind a fence with a goose pecking at his, err, pecker. The text reads, "Early bird catches the worm."



A bit less shocking to me -- maybe because it's after seeing the other one?

...Then again, when's the last time you heard a black man's genitalia referred to as a small worm?

Published by Noble (how ironic is that?), of Colorado Springs, "A Genuine KromeKolor Comic Card" (I'm surprised they didn't make one more "c" a "k" to get the three K's), this one is postmarked 1951. It bears a copyright symbol and is card number 217.

Panty Propaganda

This old novelty pin features bloomers or panties promoting WWII anti-Japanese sentiments. Small, 3 by 3.5 inches, but with a large emotional wallop, the pin is made of paper and cardboard and a red ribbon attached to a pin. Slogan reads, "Shoot the pants of the Japs."



For more modern panty propaganda, Slip of a Girl has the following goods:

Intimate apparel from Down Under.

Political Panty Power.

Using lingerie parties to preach & convert.

Also see:

Axis of Eve where they even have a Minister of Panty Propaganda who organizes panty protests.

Politically Incorrect Swizzle Sticks

The auction for these stir sticks ends in just a few hours (so if you want 'em, bid now!), so I figured I'd best borrow the photo and comment as quickly as I can.

I've never seen these before, and I am completely charmed -- in an utterly perverted sense of the word 'charmed', I am sure, but nevertheless, I love these! As a collector, these non-PC items thrill me. As a woman, I am both horrified and amused by the depictions of the aging process... I'd like to add that while these are about black folks, I'd be equally enthralled if these women were white. But they are not. Undoubtedly, as Black Americana, they will get 3 times the final bid of white chicks too. But on to my horror & delight...

If you look closely, inside each woman's abdomen (or uterus) is a number, her age. Note at 15 how firm her breasts are, but at 30, they begin to droop... let's not even talk about 40. And apparently, women look so bad after 40, there's no sense in making a swizzle stick.

I think I need a drink after this ;)

PS I found these by watching the ebay feed on the sidebar -- that thing will be the death of my bank account yet.