Behind the Scenes Minis: Serving Lip and Ethics

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about Gladys Bentley this week, Yeah, and her sort of wild ride of a story it is. Yeah, in some ways, it's so exuberant and joyful and wonderful that it makes talking about the parts that are a little bit trickier feel like a letdown. Yeah, but those are also important. Yeah, one of the things that we didn't bring up during the show that is a little more on the lighter side. I didn't know for sure if this was always the case or not. Like we talked about, you know, she was in many ways very masculine presenting. Yeah, she was a large woman who wore these tailored men's suits, so striking. Yeah. She always had makeup on. Oh, like any picture I've seen of her, she always had even when she was in that phase of her life, full lipstick, usually a bit of eyeshadow or eyeliner like. So it was just interesting to me that juxtaposition, and at first I thought, oh, maybe it's just for stage, right, but then I saw a picture of her like out and about in New York and she had makeup on, and I was like, well, maybe she'd liked me. I mean that happens too. Yeah. It just struck me as interesting that she's often talked about as being like super mask presenting, and I'm like, yeah, but she always really had like she was serving lips like she always had like it was lip glossed. It was not just like a color thing, right, And so I was fascinated. Yeah, okay, so the article, yeah, and the things one, I'm surprised because I have not seen anyone really except for one book. And even they did not go into deep. They went into a little bit more detail. Most people do not mention the problem of Massea Sheffield and his claims about J. T. Gibson. Yeah, yeah, he is obviously a questionable source, right, And I A lot of people are like, well, she said that she was married to this this theater critic, but his best friend said that he vehemently denied it, and like often that's just where it's left. And I'm like, was he best friends? I don't know that that's verified. Yeah, can we trust this dude? I don't know that we should. Right, it's super weird, even to the point even in his time, like we've talked about many times on this show, like, oh, in the seventeen hundreds, you could change your identity and no one would ques. It's in the nineteen twenties and thirties, right, and then in the fifties right where he's like, he's become a completely different person. And there are a lot of news articles about him from that time talking about all the accolades he should get for like his work in the black film industry. So it's like, uh huh, he it's a it was a whole life refresh for him after that, Yeah, which is wild. But I did find an interesting article that only briefly mentioned that one of the reasons if Gibson had been genuinely upset, even if maybe they had gotten married or there was an understanding that she could say that because he apparently never divorced his first wife. Oh, this alleged that he was worried there was going to be legal trouble. Yeah. Yeah, but again this is all speculation and gossip. We don't know. Yeah. Her article is so interesting to me because it is very possible for people to understand their gender and their sexuality very differently over different parts of their lives, right, for sure, And the idea of being born that way has been sort of part of the queer rights movement, trying to dispel the idea that it's a choice, and that like the sort of popularity of that idea has come and gone at various points over the decades. So like I, I don't want to suggest it any way that if somebody in their young life describes their gender or their sexual orientation or something in one way, and then later on in their life they describe it in a totally different way, Like I don't in any way want to suggest that that's not valid. Right. They know themselves better than we, right. But this seems so clearly to have been happening in the midst of this with a corresponding rise in the queer community's efforts to get just basic dignity and rights and a backlash to that. Like, that's definitely part of the context there. And this leads into a couple of other things that I wanted to talk about. One was one piece of analysis. I think it was a paper that I read that suggested that really, if you look at this, you could consider it through the lens of how astute Gladys was at using the press to the advantage of her career, because if you read that article, you'll notice she talks a lot about I'm still singing, I just recorded a new album, like working in self promotion of what she's doing with her music career right into the discussion. It's like woven through that article, which is very smart and just a way to look at it. Here is where I got sort of heartbroken about the article, and it's not the article itself. There are two things that happened. One is that in subsequent issues of Ebony, there are a lot of letters to the editor that are maybe not what you're expecting. They are writing by other women who are like, yes, I thought I was gay, but now I'm fixed and I'm right. Oh no, I'm okay. And it's a little like, oh, how much of this was going on where people were just being told who they were was wrong. It's very hard for a lot to read it, even though they often are like and now I'm married and I'm happy, and I'm like, are you again? People can be people can shift their identity there, you know, they can realize different things about themselves. At different stages of life. But it was so many that I was like, here is where I really chagrined. Though there were a lot of other articles that came out in the nineteen fifties that Gladys does not appear to have had anything to do with that sort of use her as an example. Oh no, like c C. Some of them are like very faux scientific, you know what I mean, Like there's actually a third sex and it can be cured with hormone therapy. And it's like this is you're exploiting her story to support some very potentially damaging ideas. Yes, well, and also kind of feeds into the idea of conversion therapy, which, to be clear, is literal torture, Like conversion therapy tortures people. Yeah it is not TSD is like there are a lot of papers about it. Yeah, it's not effective. I mean if you take the idea as good that you could change someone's sexual orientation, which I am not saying that at all, but if you started with that as your baseline, it doesn't do that. Like it does, it doesn't. It's not effective at doing that. No, And then also that whole idea, like I just we don't need to be doing that in the first place. Like, yeah, I mean, I'm very curious what her experiences were when she was a kid, when her mom was taking her to doctors. And I don't know. I mean, clearly she had reconciled with her mom since they were living right there together right in the fifties, but I can't imagine in the late teens and early nineteen twenties what that would have been like very misguided. The other thing that's interesting that she mentions in the article is that, well, I'm one of the lucky ones because I'm wealthy enough to afford this tree. Oh, And it's like, how does that set up a dynamic of like, well, if you're one of these unfortunate people who's not right, you just I guess you got to stay not right if you don't have money, And it just like there are so many problems and layers and like a stack of problems. Yeah, and then especially when it gets flipped and she gets held up as this emblematic example of like, hey, you could fix your life and then to kind of put a button on all of that. One of the books that I looked at, there's a chapter on her And one of the things that that writer mentions that I had not considered before I read it was that he notes that when there is that footage of Gladys on You Bet Your Life in nineteen fifty eight, she looks a lot older than fifty one. Oh yeah, and it's like, Okay, was she lying about her age or did all of this just really age her? Because when you see her, like right up to the point that she kind of leaves New York and goes to la she still looks like that incredibly gorgeous, vibrant, you know, very youthful, And it seems like in a short period of time that shifted really quickly. And I don't know that we'll ever unlock what was going on there. Listen, sometimes people just go through a period where they age very quickly. Right, wellmet my recent years, but yeah, like through nothing other than just like my jeans hit the moment where they're like, by the way, here come all of the things. So I don't know, but it does make me wonder if if all of this was incredibly stressful for her. It seems like it has to have been. Yeah, yeah, I think that her life and what she went through over those decades and the like, the evolution of the lavender scare has a lot of parallels to what we are living through now, where we got the tiniest, tiniest bit of protection and equity for trans people and then that sparked a coordinated backlash that is horrific and inexcusable. Yeah. Yeah, And in her case, there is that extra layer of that's all the stuff that made me famous and wealthy, What's gonna happen to me now? Yeah? Like, where does my career go now when I'm not allowed to be that anymore? Which is just another layer I imagine of stress. So if you can go take a peek at that video of her singing, it sure is worth it though, because even in that phase of her life, once she starts banging away on the piano, it's like the joy comes out of her. It's really cool and she was just amazing. And also you get to see Groucho Marks in this other guy kind of dancing to it, which is pretty fun because Groucho Marks in the so in the program, I mean, I don't know what he got briefed on before it, but it's like he realizes as he's talking to her to her, Oh you're that Gladys Bentley, Like he didn't recognize her. So it's really really fascinating. It's you know, it's a very short little piece that you can find online and worth it if you seek it out. So anyway, that was glad As Bentley. Yeah, cool blues and jazz singer against some of those songs. You can find audio recordings of some of her other songs. That's just the only one that they're footage of, but yeah, there are definitely lots of audio recordings and her voice is so good, so good. We talked about hypnotism and James Braid this week. We did. As I was telling Tracy before we started recording, this almost became a two parter because I really like getting into the minutia of his life in particular. But that would have been very janky for our schedule to have a two parter when we're recording today. Yeah, because I had already written a two parter and it was not going to flow correctly if we had another one. So sorry, I stepped on. No, you didn't at all. You were ahead of me and getting stuff done, so you have every right. Yeah, we try to keep two parters in the same week, and this one is going to have to go on a Monday when we already have a Wednesday a line. So we were like, well that won'll be yep, which is fine, And really it probably made it better because I would have gone down weird paths that I can talk about now. One story that I was fascinated by, and also a little listen if you're squeamish, this may or may not bother you. I actually found it kind of funny, okay, because it's so here's what it's like to be a surgeon in a mining town. Oh kind of story mentioned that one of the things he treated on a few occasions when he was at Leadhill was like severed fingers. And there was one story that he somebody had come to him and said like, hey, I have cut off the tip of my finger and it's bleeding. And he's like, well, did you pick up the tip of the finger And he was like no, and like they literally went out and found it in the dirt and then had to sterilize it and put it on and I'm just like and apparently that went very well and he was successful and the man recovered just fine. But I'm just like, Holy Moses, Holy Moses. There were also a couple of moments in his biography and little minutia type stories that reminded me they kind of accidentally referenced literature, and one of them made me go, did that author read about this or was this common practice? Which is we talked a little bit about how even you know, during his surgeries, his whole thing was like, don't overtax the patient that will actually damage their recovery. Sure, And because he came to be so respected, a lot of other surgeons and even physicians would come to him and get his opinion. And there was one case where somebody came to him to talk to him about a patient. Who was this woman that kind of had a lot of kind of nebulous maladies, right, and they weren't choked up to like, oh, nervous disposition, which is what a lot of legitimate issues often got umbrella under. But it seemed like there was a really earnest desire to, you know, help her through whatever was going on. And as he as Braid kind of heard the details of the case, he kind of took a step back and said, you're giving this poor person an awful lot of medication, like kind of hoping that it's gonna work, but maybe it won't. And so he actually was one of those people that was like, if she thinks she needs medication, what if we give her bread pills, Like we basically mashed down bread to look like pills, and that way she still has the placebo effect of thinking she's doing it. This is something that they do in Eight Cousins by Luisa may Alcott, and I was like, really, did she read about this or was this something that other doctors did sometimes because Uncle Uncle Alec in that book, I wick her Alex does that at one point where he makes little bread pills for somebody, because he similarly is like, you don't need to be hyper medicated, all right, right for everything when doctors are just playing guest work about But so many people at that point, you know, often and even today, I mean, there are so many people who are like, I think I need medication for this, and it's like, well maybe, but I reminded me of that. The other thing that was interesting to me in the I I wanted to make sure I understood like exactly how clubfoot happens and what the actual issue is. And I ended up down a weird Reddit rabbit hole. Okay, because so we recently discussed Gustav Labert and Madame Beauvarie. Yeah book I love. There is in that book an instance where a young man who is like an adult with clubfoot is operated on by Emma Bowie's husband, Charles, and his leg is amputated and it goes horribly and his quality of life suffers. And I happened upon while I was looking for because I had that moment of like, Charles did do a clubfoot thing in Madame Bowerie, and I searched that online and I find this and it was interesting. And if any of these people that participated in this threat hear this, I mean I hope they do, because they may understand the nuance of it, because they're all like Charles is an idiot. Because one of them looked up how clubfoot is treated and they were like, that's not how you treat clubfoot. And I'm like, okay, but at the time, when the bovaries were existing, that was how it was treated. They were just before like these more nuanced surgeries started to come into play. It just made me laugh. I was like, is everything in James Braid's story going to be related to a piece of literature that I love. Maybe, maybe, But I'm going to use Madame Bovarie as a jumping off point because you know, we talked in our Emil Koua episode about like him also being like m kind of of of once removed generationally in terms of exposure to the teachings of mesmerisham like stepping even further away from it, and him being like, no, you actually don't even need hypnotism to to affect change in your life on a subconscious level. But I did think it was funny because there is a long chain of like French people who you know, were into mesmerism, et cetera, because of course it came about in France initially. But there was one thing I read in talking that was talking about James Braid and like particularly La Fontaine coming to England and there being not just a sense that mesmerism was hooey, but also that you couldn't particularly trust French mesmers in particular French Yeah, because it was like, oh, there are so many French mesmerists and they're all just they're all just selling flim flamp, which I just thought was really really funny. I don't know, I just loved it. I also I mentioned in the course of the episode, but I wanted to again because I really I have an odd affinity for James Braid after doing the research on him that that obituary that does mention like, no everybody called him doctor because he took care of his entire community. They went to him for things that normally you would see a physician and not a surgeon for, but like they trusted his judgment so much, and he was so careful to not ever like overstep his own knowledge that they knew. Like if he said, I don't know what to do with this, let's take you to a doctor, they would do it. But if he said, I understand what's going on here, I think I can help, they were happy to do whatever he said. And I just it speaks volumes about him as a person. And again like post Emil Koua, where I also wanted somebody who was like actually fairly noble in their desires to help people and not trying to be a weasel. Yeah, this is my series on non weasels in medicine, and like non grifter complimentary mens, absolutely not. Yeah, he wasn't like trying to make any money off of explaining him to his mother than you know, book sales or whatever. But even so he he would routinely just write into the paper and explain things like in letters to the editor of like, hey, you know the science that you're talking about here, you don't have it quite right. Here's what's really going on, and here are the other writers who have discussed this, like literally just writing essentially like you know, a paper with citations as part of his letters to the editor. Yeah, which is just free knowledge he's given away, which I love. I also just like I like that you've done I think two episodes in a row, I guess about somebody who was trying to help people, trying to help them recover, trying to help make their lives better, but without like undermining and casting doubt on medical science, which I think is like really important because it's true that there are things that medicine doesn't understand, and there are a lot of people who in one way or another are either left behind by or excluded from the world of medicine. Yeah, and there are other things that can help make people's lives better. But like we're living in a time where there's just so much intentional sowing doubt about medicine in a way that is harming people that I like that we got to in a row kind of people that I would put in the umbrella of alternative practitioners who were not doing that. Yeah, although he was also continuing like his surgical practice throughout all of vice. He just saw hypnotism as another tool that you could potentially use, yeah, to help people, Like it's it's a thing in the toolbox, but it's not the only thing, which I just thought was great. I also loved his whole idea of like, you can only do this to someone with their consent, this isn't which I think speaks a lot to who he was as a medical practitioner, you know what I mean, he wasn't You hear so many instances of very kind of pompous doctors or surgeons throughout history, and I know it still happens today who are just like you don't know, I know, or just listen to me, which like they might know, but like, yeah, it goes miles further to explain to somebody what everything that's going on and what's going to happen to them? Rather than just kind of treating them like a problem to be solved, yes, and recognizing their own agency and the healing process. Like to me, I mean that goes back to like his whole thing of like I don't need my knife in someone's eye more than thirty seconds. Like we're in, we're out, We're gonna suit this. I don't want to make their lives arder. Ever, Like, oh, that's such a good ethos. He's not trying to do exploratory anything. He's literally like, let's identify the problem, fix it and get out great, out as fast. How can I make you heal as best you possibly can? Which is great? Which is great? I love it. I like you. James Braid check two non jerks in a row for me, hooray. I feel like I have to find somebody really terrible not too distant future. Yeah, we'll see what happens. I actually do have somebody kind of terrible coming up, I think, but not a not in a medical way. I know. I've already said recently that Unearthed was coming soon. It is coming soon. It's the next thing I'm working on, but that still means it'll be a little bit before it actually comes out Isna on Earthed. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just being weird. If you have weekend coming up that involves time off, which we all need desperately, I hope that you get to do something fun and restorative that prioritizes your desires and what will make you feel the best, and also just that you get time to do whatever it is that delights you. I hope we all find joy in whatever way we can every single day, so long it is not hampering anyone else's joy. If you do have to work, or you have other responsibilities, maybe you're running the family members around and doing stuff, or you got to take cats to the vet, which involves wrangling them into a carrier and a lot of stress and possibly pee. I don't have any experience with that recently. I hope, even if you have a lot of responsibilities that may or may not go smoothly, that you still have as good a few days as possible coming up. We will be right back here on Monday with something brand new tomorrow. You can also check out a classic episode, Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.