Cabbages, Babies, and Bathing Beauties

The Newport, RI Most Beautiful Pageant as depicted on “Another Period.” (Courtesy of Comedy Central.)

As a fan of comedy, I’ve really been enjoying the new Comedy Central show Another Period. The premise is fun and silly – the show centers on the rich, debauched and aristocratic Bellacourt family, who live in an opulent mansion in Newport, Rhode Island during the Gilded Age. It’s a little Downton Abbey and a little Keeping Up With the Kardashians with a touch of Upstairs Downstairs.

One of my favorite things about the show is that in spite of its silliness, many of the crazier plot threads are based on actual events. It inspired me to check out a documentary on the history of the mansions of Newport Rhode Island – many of which were incredibly decadent and built to compete with the mansions of their (also filthy rich) neighbors.

One event on the show really got me curious about its historical inspirations though. In the fourth episode, the Bellacourt family hosts the first Newport’s Most Beautiful Pageant – which pits women against babies and cabbages.

Babies, cabbages, and beautiful women — oh my! (Courtesy of Comedy Central.)

I had to wonder, was there actually a precedent for this sort of thing? Were there truly beauty contests back in the day where bathing beauties would compete alongside vegetables?

Lillian Bellacourt prepares herself for the swimsuit competition. (Courtesy of: onionav.club.)

An advertisement from 1898 depicts the swimsuit fashions of the time. (Courtesy of: loc.gov.)

The short answer is pretty much, and the man responsible is none other than P.T. Barnum. According to this Library of Congress page:

P.T. Barnum staged the first modern American pageant in 1854, but his beauty contest was closed down by public protest. He kept the contest going by substituting daguerreotypes for women, a practice quickly adopted by newspapers. Newspapers held photo beauty contests for many decades: in 1880, the first “Bathing Beauty Pageant” took place as part of a summer festival to promote business in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

The first beauty contest took place at Barnum’s American Museum, which you can learn all about on The Lost Museum website. According to the site, “the Museum was the first institution to combine sensational entertainment and gaudy display with instruction and moral uplift. For a twenty-five cent admission, visitors viewed an ever-revolving series of “attractions,” from the patchwork Fejee Mermaid to the diminutive and articulate Tom Thumb.

Triplets! Twins! Fat Babies! An advertisement from 1863 for the National Baby Show. (Courtesy of The Lost Museum.)

Some of Barnum’s most popular attractions were “national contests” where dogs, chickens, flowers, and even children (and women!) were displayed and judged for paying audiences. The poultry and baby contests were especially popular, although there were some critics who called for others to protest the baby shows, hilariously seeing them as an, “unseemly public display of private maternal virtue.”

A polka composed for Barnum’s National Poultry Show. (Courtesy of The Lost Museum.)

A polka composed for Barnum’s National Baby Show. (Courtesy of The Lost Museum.)

So, while I was not able to find any specific mention of cabbages, it appears that ladies were indeed being judged alongside babies, chickens, and nonsentient objects – but at least they weren’t competing against each other!

Tara

PS – In case you’re still not sure if the show Another Period is for you, I present you with this dog in a wig — enjoy!

Girl Online: Or The Unexpected Enjoyment of Going Outside Your Reading Comfort Zone

Sometimes I’ll read something and see a book or movie mentioned or used in comparison and I’ll think, “Oh, that sounds interesting” and order it and then completely forget why by the time it comes in. That happened recently with Zoe Sugg’s Girl Online, a book I ordered before Christmas.

Don’t let the cover fool you. This book is actually about the Crusades.

I think I ordered it because I saw a blurb about how Sugg—a fashion and beauty vlogger—was the first British female author to outsell J.K. Rowling or something like that. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

Girl Online follows Penny Porter, a teenage blogger from Brighton who ends up traveling with her family and best friend to New York City because her mother is organizing a Downton Abbey-themed wedding for a wealthy American couple. While she’s there, she meets Noah, a dreamy and mysterious boy (is there really any other kind?). The two fall madly in love—as teenagers are wont to do—and the romance causes Penny’s blog to go viral and costs her her online anonymity.

As I read it, I was reminded of those great first loves we feel when we’re teenagers—loves that are often as transient as they are transcendent and are all the more beautiful because of it. And that’s never a bad thing to think back on. It also seems like Sugg is trying to warn her impressionable teenage demographic about the dangers of sharing and oversharing aspects of their lives online.  If the only thing a young adult—or anyone, really—gets out of reading this book is to think before you share, then that’s a pretty good takeaway. Less selfies, more self-restraint!

My fellow coworkers teased me about ordering it, saying that it didn’t seem like a book that I would read and I have to admit that it’s not the kind I would normally seek out; I’m clearly not Sugg’s intended audience. I couldn’t care less about fashion and beauty tips, nor about the ghostwriting “scandal” surrounding the book, which I only learned about while doing some very light research for this post.  Nevertheless, I’m a firm believer in going outside your reading comfort zone (and now I can check off one of the reading challenges from Abbey’s post the other day). I’m also a firm believer that reading a crappy book is better than watching a crappy television show or movie. And I have the science to back it up!

“Back dat asymptote up.”

No matter how awful a book is, reading is still something you actively do. Your brain has to create entire rooms, wardrobes and people. Sometimes it has to create alien worlds and things that literally no one has ever seen.  On the other hand, when you’re watching television, you’re a passive participant. The creation is already done for you.

Girl Online didn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s riddled with clichés and it’s so saccharine that I should probably go to the dentist now that I’ve finished it, but I didn’t hate the time that I spent reading it. If you have a few listless hours, I see nothing wrong with filling them with a simple story.

Were you ever pleasantly surprised after reading a book outside your comfort zone? Sound off in the comments below!

–Ross

Need a Fix Between Downton Abbey Episodes?

Teatime!

So I hear that this Downton Abbey show is getting to be a pretty big deal. People at work are talking about it. People on Facebook are talking about it. (I’ve even seen pictures of people in funny hats who have tea parties during the show.) People on the Internet in general are talking about it. I get it. People like this show. They really, really like it. But hey, there are only so many episodes shown only so often. You’re going to have some down time to fill in between. May I recommend a book for you to read while you wait for the next juicy installment?

I figure those who enjoy Downton Abbey are attracted by the themes—the inner lives of the rich in their grand English country estates, the behind-the-scenes lives of their servants, the subjects of love and war. So with this understanding, I offer these suggestions…

The Tregenza Girls by Rosemary Aitken – WWI changes a blind young woman and her vain sister for both good and bad.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier – A fateful meeting in a cemetery brings together three people from very different backgrounds and changes their lives in unexpected ways.

Kate Hannigan by Catherine Cookson – Classic tale of love between the classes against the backdrop of northern England and the Great War.

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster – This masterpiece of English novels examines the connections made between friends and family and the consequences of those connections.

Love Is Not Enough
Love and War
Forbidden Love by Anne Herries – Saga of the Trentwith family and their personal conflicts and relationships with peers and staff.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton – A novel of secrets kept between servants and the family members they serve.

Fateful Voyage by Pamela Oldfield – Romance on board the Mauretania’s maiden voyage sets into motion a series of nasty events.

No Graves As Yet
Shoulder the Sky
Angels in the Gloom
At Some Disputed Barricade
We Shall Not Sleep by Anne Perry – Brother and sister team of sleuths solve mysteries during World War I in various locations on the European front.

Ask Alice by D.J. Taylor – An American marries up, becomes a famous actress, and is the toast of London society, but a secret from her past threatens to shatter her new life.

I’m thinking you should wear fancy hats and drink tea while reading these books too.

-Melissa M.