HALF SHADOW, NO-ONES LAND

“Like a great number of lost souls, I inhabited that half-shadow no-man’s land which exists between the boundaries of the two sexes.” - Bentley, Gladys “I Am A Woman Again” (1952). Ebony Magazine

A powerhouse in top and tails, freely frequenting the “sex underworld” in which she made her name, Gladys Bentley releases a questionable article in Ebony Magazine in 1952, on how she has reformed her life from that of a non-conforming burlesque star to a domestic housewife via “the miracle of modern medicine” and marriage.

Another desperate invert, Stephen Gordon was left swinging by Victorian society, buried (most likely) next to her father in her three-piece suit and riding boots.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou mentions Stephen and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, citing “It stimulated my libido and I told myself that it was educational because it informed me on the difficulties in the secret world of the pervert”. Her imagination captured yet strained by the “true freaks”, the “woman lovers”: The fear of the queer strikes again.

A suit is not a uniform. A suit is self-preservation.

Black Dandy loudly, Black Dandy boldly. Laughing.
Belonging.