La Bella Otero’s Overdetermined Anality: Tales of Sexual Inversion in Early Twentieth-Century Buenos Aires

Abstract

Between 1900 and 1920, experts in the burgeoning Argentine social sciences used case studies of sexual inverts to define abnormal sexual and gender behaviour. One well-known subject, commonly known as La Bella Otero, had her own writing and photographs published in Dr. Francisco de Veyga’s influential medical journal. This article compares her self-representation to Veyga’s case study and other expert and popular publications about her. While a realist play was censored for merely using the term “invert” as its title, Veyga’s case studies were explicitly erotic, and some newspapers used humour to make sexual allusions. In contrast to these tragic, pathologizing, and mocking representations, La Bella Otero’s self-representation encompassed a complex femininity and a confident sexuality.