de bene esse: Historical Sass

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Glamour in the face of war 1940s, found here.

Amateur Hour, The Apollo Theater, Harlem 1981, photograph by Steve Saphiro foundhere

Seattle, Washington. 1953. Members of the Seattle Tubing Society, photograph by Burt Glinn

Although Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914) is little-known today, she was a premiere vaudevillian performer in her own day. Some historians even credit her with popularizing the cakewalk. When she could no longer perform for health reasons, she became an integral force for raising funding for the ‘Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls’. Circa 1900s, found on Of Another Fashion

Beauty Beach, date unknown, found on Retrogasm

Cléopatra Diane (“Cléo”) de Mérode (27 September 1875 – 17 October 1966 (aged 91) was a French dancer of the Belle Époque. Found here.

Memphis, 1942, found here.

A young woman driving a sports car, photograph by André Kertész, 1928.

An impromptu photo taken after a flight was grounded due to a snowstorm showing a Nisei stewardess (as they were called then) posing in a jet engine (ca. 1968). “Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses [as they were called in the 1950s] gave Pan Am the ‘look’ of exotic cosmopolitanism” while at the same time gave Asian American women “tremendous exposure to a larger world far beyond their local upbringing. Working for Pan Am as a flight attendant became an education for these women in cosmopolitanism and gendered service.” Photograph from Christine Yano’s book Airborne Dreams (Duke University Press, 2011).

Tennis girls, circa 1930s, found here.

Image from the Harlem series (1970) by Anthony Barboza

Spider Girls, date unknown, found here

Bathing beauties found on Yesteryear Thoughts

Dancers backstage at Charlie Low’s Forbidden City nightclub on 363 Sutter Street in San Francisco, California (1948). The Chinese-themed nightclub and cabaret (operating between 1938-1958) catered to a mostly white clientele that included Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan. Found on Of Another Fashion

Deauville 1937, photographer by Boris Lipnitzki

“My grandmother, Monica Pepito, 1912, at a photo studio”, submitted by reader Nadine Mendoza

Paris, 1930s, photographed by Meurisse

“my great-great aunt Josie Dalton circa 1915, showing a bit of leg”, submitted by reader Tricia Chesnes

Pre-1950, print for sale on House of Mirth

The Photo Booth Series, 1940s-1960s, found on Stereo Culture Society

“My Grandmother who lived 1 month shy of her 100th birthday”, submitted by reader Katie-Malone Smith.

Three young Nova Scotian women in their summer dresses (ca. 1955). The negative was developed and printed at Georgia Cunningham’s studio in Bridgetown, credited to Georgia Cunningham NSARM, found here.