Obscene, Lewd, and Lascivious: Ida Craddock and the Criminally Obscene Women of Chicago, 1873-1913

Abstract

Perhaps the most famous woman ever denounced as obscene in Chicago was Fahreda Mahzar, who assumed the stage name Egypt when she performed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposi tion. Dressed in a gauze shirt, vest, and skirts reaching nearly to her ankles, Mahzar moved her feet and legs only slightly as she danced, swaying her arms and torso in an undulating motion which critics condemned as indecent, but Little Egypt's performance was one of the most popular attractions of the fair, which also boasted a spectacular electrical lighting display, a scholarly symposium introducing Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, and a new mechanical amusement called the Ferris wheel. Little Egypt's promoters described her performance at A Street in Cairo,1 as the danse du ventre, but Anthony Comstock, the nation's foremost censor, called it the hootchie cootchie and demanded it be shut down.2