
In 1931, tattooed lady Ada Mae Vandermark commented, “When people ask me how come I’m a tattooed lady, I tell ’em it’s because I love Art…And that’s true, too—up to a certain point…I mean, I like to eat regular.” (“Art Means Grub to Tattooed Lady,” New York Post, April 7, 1931)
When most people think about the circus and sideshow, they think about the entertainment side of it, how interesting it is, how fun it must be to perform daring acts… they don’t think about it as a job. The circus was, and is, a job. It’s a very particular type of job, but it’s still a job. And it’s a job that women were employed at for longer than most jobs open to both genders. We have this idea that the majority of women in the past didn’t work. Totally not true. Wealthy women didn’t work, some middle class women didn’t work, but all working class women worked. The women who joined the circus over one hundred years ago were from primarily working class backgrounds- joining the circus or sideshow was simply a less awful kind of work.
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