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Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

3 Jan

This is John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” (1884). Although it doesn’t look remotely controversial today, when it was exhibited at 1884 Paris Salon, the public were so shocked & disgusted that Sargent moved out of the country, and his model’s reputation never recovered.

Thread!

The sitter was the socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of the French banker Pierre Gautreau.
Gautreau was an American expatriate, known in Paris as a ‘professional beauty’, meaning she used her looks to advance her social status - which she did exceptionally well

Her husband was much older than she was and very wealthy. Paris was awash with rumours about her multiple infidelities, but the social elite clamoured to be around her, nonetheless.

Read 24 tweets

Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

8 Dec 20

This is a watercolour painting of a condition known as ‘Chimney Sweep's Cancer’, also called soot wart, on a 32yo man. Soot warts are a squamous cell carcinoma of the skin of the scrotum & it was the first reported form of occupational cancer.

(gruesome) Thread!

Sweep’s cancer was a common condition in 18th century Europe, but it was particularly prevalent in Britain where the flues were much narrower. Adults couldn’t fit inside, so very young boys aged between 4 and 7 years were apprenticed to sweeps to do the work.

It was extraordinarily dangerous. These ‘climbing boys’ could get jammed in the flue, suffocate or burn to death if their master lit a fire beneath them to speed things up. Its likely this is where the expression to 'light a fire' under someone comes from

Read 21 tweets

Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

28 Nov 20

Erotic pottery made by the Moche, the society that dominated Peru’s northern coast for 800 years until about A.D. 800. The invading Spanish were deeply shocked at the Moche’s sexual attitudes & set about stomping them out.

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In 1590, Jesuit Jose de Acosta, a famous colonial-era churchmen, wrote that “virginity, which is viewed with esteem and honor by all men, is deprecated by those barbarians as something vile.”

“Except for the virgins consecrated to the Sun or the Inca, all other women are considered of less value when they are virgin, and thus whenever possible they give themselves to the first man they find”

books.google.co.uk/books?id=RS8pD…

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Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

22 Nov 20

The philosopher Diogenes (c.412-323 BCE) was described by Plato as ‘a Socrates gone mad'. He lived in a barrel & believed man must embrace nature & reject shame. He openly masturbated in public, saying “If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly”.

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Diogenes rejected all of the norms of “civilised” behavior. He urinated, defecated, and masturbated in public. Later images of him often showed him carrying a lamp in the day, to symbolise his futile search for an honest man.

He was hugely influential and inspired a school of philosophy called the cynics. The name of comes from the Greek κυνικός (kunikos), meaning “dog-like”.

Read 12 tweets

Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

20 Nov 20

This is an advertisement for the famous “Coraline Corset”, patented by two brothers, Dr Ira & Dr Lucien Warner in 1873. They marketed it as a “health corset”.

! 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚙𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚎𝚜

Corsets were a staple of women’s fashion (and some men’s) since the 16th century & stayed in fashion until the early 20th century. Corsets were generally made from a stout fabric, with bone or metal inserts. Fastening at the front with hooks, the back closed with adjustable laces

*They are lovely things and everyone should have one.*

Read 26 tweets

Whores of Yore

@WhoresofYore

13 Nov 20

This is the bed of the legendary courtesan Émilie-Louise Delabigne (1848-1910). The writer Emile Zola wrote about it in his novel, Nana. ‘A bed such as has never existed, a throne, an altar where Paris came to admire her sovereign nudity’.

Thread!

By the time she died, Louise was a millionaire with a vast estate of grand houses, jewellery, & a substantial art collection. But her beginnings were considerably more humble.

She was the illegitimate daughter of Émilie Delabigne, a laundry maid from Normandy who sold sex to subsidise the pittance washing clothes brought in.

Read 18 tweets

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