The Right to Bare

The Right to Bare: Containing and Encoding American Women in Popular Entertainments of the 1920s Angela J. Latham (bio) Some of the so-called best people in the profession are using the “shimmy shake” in song, dance and pantomime. Barefoot dancing with naked limbs being shown through transparent nets, abbreviated skirts, with flesh colored tights emphasizing the form and contour of the body by effective colored lights, are all a part of the nefarious business which escapes the ban under the guise of “art.” —Anon. Vice Investigator, 1920 1 The decade following World War I was at once the most tempestuous and the most productive in the history of the American theatre. The theatre experienced the same schizophrenia that characterized the social milieu in which it thrived; the serious dramatic efforts of Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill played concurrently with the frolicsome farces of Avery Hopwood and the mesmerizing revues of Florence Ziegfeld. Meanwhile, newly enfranchised women were still routinely dismissed from professions such as teaching when they married, and the speakeasy was the impudent rejoinder to Prohibition. During this period of American history so clearly marked by profound socio-cultural dissonance, mores by which society governed itself were held up under the stage lights and critically examined, disputed, often mocked, and sometimes affirmed. The American theatre was, as usual, extremely vulnerable to the attack of reformers who felt it their solemn duty to regulate public taste and to safeguard morality. John Roach Straton and many other morality crusaders seemed transfixed by what they perceived to be the unprecedented depravity of a generation. They were ardent in their efforts to alert others to the evils of the day, and especially zealous when calling attention to issues they felt reflected badly on the character of women. Although writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker created heroines who were nonchalant about their own virtue, women who conveyed such an attitude in real life were considered by many to be a social threat and inspired virtually endless commentary. 2 [End Page 455] Many public forums were host to debates about the immorality of the American theatre generally and American women especially. Straton, for example, was as apt to conduct his tirades in theatre trade magazines as he was in the pulpit of his own church. The general tenor of diatribes against women who did not conform to the narrow criteria for conduct such moralists preferred is effectively illustrated by a sermon Straton preached to his congregation on 26 June 1921. Having already condemned the shorter skirts women had begun to wear in recent years, Straton then pontificated: “Yes, I believe that there is a good time coming when maidenly modesty, instead of brazen sex assertiveness, will prevail, and we live in hope of the harmony of that better day when the principles of purity and womanly sweetness and grace will be triumphant.” 3 The ideology implicit in Straton’s remarks is clear, its Victorian logic readily discernable. Women establish the moral climate of society. The defining aspect of a woman’s character is her attitude toward sexuality. Her aloofness toward her own or anyone else’s sexuality serves as a hallmark of her own good character. 4 Furthermore, or by extension, this attitude is typified by her aversion to self-display. Reformers like Straton maintained such reasoning staunchly as they worked to rid American society as well as its theatres of the evil influence of the Sexual Woman. On the other hand, those who dubbed Straton and others of his ilk as prudes were equally inclined to announce their expectations of women, and especially those women who earned a living in America’s theatres. Censorship of the theatre in the United States during the 1920s has been noted frequently; certainly, the Wales Padlock Law enacted in 1927 is a commonly recognized milestone in the history of American censorship. 5 Fewer scholars, however, have explored the decade with a view toward understanding the circumscribed nature of performances by women or the precise means by which women’s performances were in fact contained. 6 The outcries of moralists were so strident that it is tempting to presume they effectively commanded the attention if

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Courage · Dance · Morality · Mores · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Taste · Visual arts · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · History · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Theater, Performance, and Music History

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