The Magician Is a Woman! 🎩🐇

stage magic, sexism and the patriarchy of POCKETS

Dec 08, 2023

All hail the pelvic floor.

Life would be muuuuch messier without the pelvic floor. These are the undercarriage muscles every body has that lend all sorts of helping hands—holding up organs, gatekeeping pee n poop, stabilizing the ol’ core and facilitating sexual pleasure. At the same time, pelvic floor disorders are extremely common and often wreak physical and mental havoc. AND, NO. Kegels are not a cure-all, as pelvic floor physical therapist Dr. Kara Strauss explains this week on the pod.

“I realized that I was missing a lot of what I could do with my patients because I didn't have background in pelvic floor.”

I talked to Kara earlier this year in the Unladies’ Room and immediately knew the anatomy lesson she offered belonged on the main feed for all to hear. Get to know “the keystone” (!!) of your body, what the pelvic floor does and how it applies to painful intercourse, elusive orgasms, laugh-peeing and gender-affirming healthcare.

Unladies’ Room: Magic Hour 🪄

Magician Dorothy Dietrich sawing a MAN in half for once. (Dotty has also escaped a straitjacket and caught a bullet in her mouth, so he was in safe hands fwiw.)

This week in the Unladies’ Room, we’re disappearing to the stubbornly male-dominated world of professional magic. Fewer than 10 percent of stage magicians are women and not for lack of interest, albeit niche. In fact, the sexism, gender stereotyping and absence of POCKETS that historically relegated women to magician’s “lovely (unnamed) assistant” are very much relatable.

We also meet a gaggle of trailblazing tricksters, including the first Black female magician, Ellen E. Armstrong and her Modern, Marvelous, Matchless Merrymaking March Through Mysteryland, which she toured around for 30 years!

Ellen E. Armstrong, the first profesh Black female MAGICIAN!

ICYMI:

CW: rape. (The Guardian) The United Nations heard testimony this week detailing gender-based and sexual violence in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. What is known is gruesome and indefensible, and it’s also unclear how the UN investigation will unfold since “Israel has not cooperated with the commission, which it accuses of having an anti-Israel bias.”
Rita Hester’s murder case reopened. (19th, WGBH) Twenty-five years after Rita’s killing galvanized the Trans Day of Remembrance, and local law enforcement effectively shrugged it off, the Boston Police Department announced a new detective has been assigned to reinvestigate. Rita’s sister is understandably unimpressed.
Indigenous sisters doing it for themselves. (NBC News, AP) In Aruká Juma’s 2021 obituary, the New York Times dubbed him “the last man of his tribe,” but his three surviving daughters are breaking from patrilineal tradition and taking their Amazonian people’s survival into their own hands.
‘Beauty queen coup’ plot?? (El País) If you listened to the recent episode Beauty (Pageant) Diplomacy, then you already know that global beauty pageant crowns are more political than meets the eye. Case in point: the newly crowned Miss Universe, Nicaragua’s Sheynnis Palacios, is now accused by the country’s dictatorial regime of being part of a pageant-related conspiracy to incite a governmental coup.

unladies are saying:

Can you please do an episode on Taylor Swift? I like her music but am shocked by the lengths my Swiftie friends are going to in order to attend her $$ concerts, the extent to which they go down rabbit holes on what I can only describe as Taylor conspiracy theories (regarding Easter eggs etc), etc. Is she a feminist icon? Now that she’s a billionaire, isn’t she worthy of critique given her complicity in capitalism? Let’s explore this!!!

unlady Kayla, tempting me with a good TIME..