Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus
Betsy Golden Kellem. Feminist Press, $20.95 trade paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-55861-344-7
Historian Golden Kellem examines 19th-century circus culture for what it reveals about the “performance” of gender in this illuminating debut study. Becoming a circus star—that is, a performer in high-flying aerial acts or other center-ring performances, like lion taming—“required women to be extraordinary but relatable, alluring but appropriate, thrilling but also unthreatening,” the author writes; such respectability was often reinforced by fictionalized backstories provided for media coverage of performers’ personal lives. At the same time, many popular “human curiosities” were geared toward defining the ideal, or unideal, woman. These included P.T. Barnum’s “Circassian Beauty,” an exoticization of white racial purity (she had allegedly escaped an Ottoman harem), as well as performers of color dehumanized under stage names like the “Bear Woman” or the “Missing Link” and women with disabilities or physical differences who were similarly gawked at. While many such performers reported mistreatment, others found personal freedom otherwise unheard of for women at the time. Mining this wealth of data—including new information about some of the era’s biggest acts—Goldem Kellem paints an intriguing portrait of the circus as a place that, uniquely for its time, “presented a wide spectrum of gendered characters, evoked by the sort of visual shorthand that read well from the cheap seats.” Readers will be wowed. (June)
Details
Reviewed on: 06/20/2025
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 1 pages - 978-1-55861-345-4