The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America (with Therese Oneill)

Slut. Shrew. Sinful. Scold. The 19th- and early 20th-century American women profiled in Therese Oneill’s new book Unbecoming A Woman were called all these names and worse when they were alive. And that’s just fine.

Therese joins us to celebrate these women who forever changed what women can become.

Click here to buy a copy of Unbecoming A Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America.

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Transcript

Vulgar History Podcast

The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America (with Therese Oneill) November 27, 2024

Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, the feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and today is a special day because we have a New York Times bestselling author here joining us on the podcast, it’s Therese Oneill. And I was really excited to be approached by, I forget if it was her or her publicist to have her on the show because I love her books. I’ve read her two previous books, which are Ungovernable: The Victorian Parents Guide to Raising Flawless Children, as well as Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners. Her new book is called Unbecoming A Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews that Shaped America and it’s a book that talks about several different women from American history, specifically, like, the late 1800s, early 1900s, who you may or may not have heard of (most of them you probably haven’t heard of), who were complex and interesting and sometimes shitty people, just like we like to talk about on this podcast. Like, we vibe exactly, Therese and I, when we had this conversation. 

So, without further ado, I’m just going to let you hear her and me talking about these, like, messy bitches from American history and why it’s important to learn about them. 

—————

Ann: So, I’m joined today by Therese Oneill, author of… Oh, I’m just looking up the title, the full title. I want to honour it. Unbecoming a Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America

Therese: My copy says “Shrews and Sluts,” Ann. [laughs]

Ann: I’m in Canada, so maybe they switched it. 

Therese: You’re kidding! [Ann laughs] Does yours really say “Sluts and Shrews”? 

Ann: Yes. 

Therese: I’m looking at an arc actually, maybe they changed it. Wow! Wait, I didn’t even know it was separately published in Canada. Anyway, we’ll skip on from that. I was going to babble about something super important. Oh, how the book came to be! 

Ann: How the book came to be is a great starting point, yeah. 

Therese: So, I had a whole different book planned that we were trying to sell, my agent and I, and I still want to write it. It was a choose-your-own-adventure book of how to survive being a woman in the 1800s. But it was in 2020, and everything was in such a violent shift, especially in New York, where everybody was inside their houses and they’re very sensitive to what’s socially acceptable that year and the trends and what’s needed to be done. And Simon & Schuster, their imprint, Simon Element acquired my book. The way that happens is an editor takes a liking to it and buys it, and then because it’s nonfiction, you get to write it after they buy it. For fiction, you have to write it first. But for nonfiction, they’ll work with you. She acquired my book and it’s standard in publishing they say, “Well, we love the jetpack and the tap dancing, but we’re going to need more triple axles and a little bit less footwork. Can you give it to us?” And I say, “Sure.” 

But this acquiring editor said, “Okay, this entire book that you gave me, I like the idea…” And I’m like, “Oh, great,” and she says, “… but we’re going to do a completely different book.” I’m like, “Uh, uh?” And she said, “I’d like a book, a list book.” I call them listicle books because that’s what I used to write when I wrote for blogs and stuff. And I said “listicle” and she said, “You know, like the Badass Bitches of History and those books,” and my heart just sank because that book’s been done and it’s been done well. And I mean, the top ones are still for sale and topping the list. You know, the Clintons, Hillary and Chelsea were coming out with a series of She Persisted. It’s just, it’s a good formula, but it’s been done, and I didn’t want to add to it, there was no space for me there. I could see why she wanted it because our attention span as a society has changed and we, even I, prefer to dip in and out because that’s how we take in most of our information. And I was pretty distraught, though. I didn’t want to write it. 

And I came back and I said, “Okay, I can do this. I can write the book you want, but can I do it my way? Don’t make me put in anyone who’s already…” basically, Joan of Arc, and Marie Curie, and Ada Lovelace, okay, these women aren’t role models and they’re not badass bitches of history. They’re legends. You know, they come along once in every 400 or 500 years as somebody who can do what they did. I don’t want to write them. I said, “Let me find a bunch of really questionable women and let me let me tell you how cool they were without any judgment-giving, pro or con. Let me present them to you as ‘They were flawed but awesome.’” And they kind of liked the idea. No, they liked it a lot at first until I started giving them women who really were questionable, who weren’t saviours, who weren’t sacred. 

When I first presented Victoria Woodhull, I said, “And also of course, she was really into the early eugenics women,” and they put me at a dead stop. They said, “Therese, no one in this book who was interested in eugenics.” And I just dropped my paperwork and just sort of went dead behind the eyes because all my ladies come from the turn of the 20th century where every single educated person… nobody had heard of Hitler! Every single educated person believed in eugenics, that was preventative medicine to them. I mean, I said, “Okay, well, that’s going to take away everybody from,” I mean, I wasn’t going to put Charles Darwin in the book, but “Darwin, Frederick Douglass,” I’m like, Helen Keller! “Helen Keller was an outspoken eugenicist for goodness sake,” so to speak. She actually didn’t talk, but she was still an outspoken eugenicist. I said, “So, that’s everybody. I don’t know what you want from me.” And I kept coming up against walls like that where, yes, they wanted unbecoming women, but they didn’t want them to be unbecoming. 

Ann: I need to jump in because this is so fascinating to me and so interesting because it’s similar to what I do when I’m choosing subjects for my podcast. Every now and then I’ll do somebody who’s quite well known, but I like to look at the lesser-known, like, someone who it’s a bit more challenging to research them because there’s not the biography about them, but also they’re not in those compendiums. All respect to those books that are that are like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, like, whatever. Those were really good baby steps for a lot of people—

Therese: Intros.

Ann: Yes, an intro to just like, “Oh, there’s women in history and they’re interesting.” But if you present every woman in history as being like great, then it’s kind of like that’s not that’s not…

Therese: True.

Ann: … really, a role model attain— It’s not true, but it’s also telling like young girls or women or whoever’s reading them, everybody that just kind of like… 

Therese: You have to be a frickin’ saint to be remembered. You don’t! 

Ann: You can’t be a mess. And I love talking about messy bitches on my show of history because a lot of the women in history are so just, like, even if they do have— Like, Helen Keller, for instance, it’s like people don’t talk about that side of her but that also was there. And if we’re just like, “She was so great and so lovely,” then that’s not genuine and I don’t think that’s helpful. 

Therese: Oh my god, be my best friend. Yes! Thank you. Yes! And the thing is, in New York, in the big publishing houses, they have to recoup a lot of money and they don’t have wiggle room for that. They need to appeal to a mass audience. 

I’ll give you an example. I wrote about three ladies of colour in my book because since the book was set at the turn of the 20th century, they were hard to come by. And one of them, Reindeer Mary, I had to fight to use the word “Eskimo Mary,” because that’s what they called her in the newspapers at the time. They said, “You can’t call her that.” I’m like, “I’m not. I’m quoting a newspaper because that was her name. And they’re not jerks! They just, that was her name because they didn’t know it was a mean thing to say. They loved her. It was a compliment to them.” That was the minor one. Then I came to Aida Walker, Aida Overton Walker, she was the woman who revolutionized the Broadway theatre and women performers and Black performers. And of course, Ida, I don’t— Oh my goodness. I’m blanking. Ida Walker? Sorry, I had her Barbie next to me for like two years and I gave it to my daughter who collects awesome Barbies. 

Ann: Ida Wells?

Therese: Thank you, Ida B. Wells. My brain is… 

Ann: Yeah, you said the Barbie and I’m like, “I know this.” 

Therese: Yes! Inspiring Women edition, she’s a really awesome Barbie. Anyway, I had those two and my agent and my editor came to me, and they and they said, “You need to remove these two women from your book.” And I said, “[nervous laughter] You’re joking. What?” And they said, “Therese, it’s 2021. You’re not Black, you can’t write about them.”  I’m like, “You’re out of your— You want me to make the book less racist by making it only white ladies?” And they kind of had like their hands in the air, like, “We know, but we don’t know what to do. It’s 2021.” And the way we came to a resolution so I could basically write the thriving love letters I wrote these women because they’re amazing. But I got to put them in and they didn’t like that Aida, she leaned into racism to make her to make her place in history. I mean, she played the long con. She did a brilliant job. 

Ann: Can you tell, like, give everybody sort of like a… 

Therese: Yes, let me tell you about Aida. 

Ann: A bullet point, because she was— I loved reading that chapter. 

Therese: Yeah, she was awesome. So, I came up in the vaudeville circuit before the turn of the century, so 1880s. It was a time where really popular was the minstrel show, which is white men in blackface, making fun of how goofy and immoral Black folks are. Ha-ha. But at the time, whatever their sense of humour was terrible. What Aida did is she partnered up with one of the best-selling acts on vaudeville, she teamed up with Williams and Walker, she ended up marrying Walker and they were two of the most successful vaudeville players on the circuit. And their thing was, besides being good comedians and all that, and songsters and singers, they did the best blackface show in the world. And the fun part was they were Black. 

Ann: Right, so blackface shows… Did they put blackface on their own black skin? 

Therese: They did. They put on blackface on black skin, and they did the same jokes, but better because Walker, her husband said, “I see there’s a need for my skin colour on the stage and I figured I could cut out the middle man and use what God gave me.” And that was just the beginning. They packed the house. 

They hired Aida because she could do a dance called the “Cake Walk,” which I always thought was a carnival game, but it’s actually a dance first. And a cake walk was a, you know, in the old days, they did reels where you have the men and the women line up and you dance down this human hallway, you’ve seen it in old movies. The cake walk was kind of a satire of that; you pretended you were super fancy and you did all these little fancy kicks and fancy twirls to show how highfalutin you were and it was fun. But she did it so gracefully it was barely a satire; she was like delicate of wrist and movement was fluid. They hired her because she was so not a blackface vaudeville act, she was class, she was like a Gibson girl, which most Black ladies didn’t go for at the time, but she didn’t do any of the trashy stuff they expected her to do. She was a lady because she was a lady and that mattered back then. 

So, that progressed and they kept packing the house with her as their bit of culture to show that, you know, “Deep down, we’re kind of making fun of you people,” and they kept getting more and more money until they had enough money to write, stage, and produce, and star in the three of them, the first all-Black cast Broadway shows ever. And again, they packed the fricking house. They were amazing. They were so popular they did command performances for the King and Queen in England. King Edward the, oh gosh, pick a number…V? IV? VII?

Ann: I don’t know, but I love, I love this. I love this detail that they did this performance for the King and Queen. And then I believe you say in your book, then like after the performance, they stayed behind so she, like, taught them the dance. 

Therese: Yes, which was the greatest irony of all time, because that dance is making fun— Okay, the dance started as slaves making fun of their masters to their master’s faces and the master’s like, “Oh, this is fun,” whatever. But the masters were imitating nobility of the British houses, and nobility of the British houses were imitating the King and Queen, and the King and Queen were now in their own living room being taught to imitate themselves and make fun of themselves by Aida. And it’s just so satisfying! It’s awesome. 

The thing is, the people that most disagreed with what she was doing were, upper-class Black Americans. They’re like, “You have great gifts. Why are you using them to be so sordid on the stage?” Because it was kind of sordid back then. And she’s like, “I’m not sordid, I’m class. I’m so classy that high society white mothers are now sending their daughters to me to be taught how to dance nicely.” And she said this much more elegantly than I’m paraphrasing, she’s like, “Watch, you’re going to see that the area of entertainment is going to integrate faster than any other job in America,” and she was so right. You know, by the ‘20s, Black performers were in demand all over America in places they weren’t allowed to sit in, but they were commanding the stage and it was, like, the really strong olive branch that started to unite races. 

We’re still working on it today, but the first people to make the difference were the entertainers and she was the first of them. I mean, she just changed everything and she did it by being… She didn’t do it by being in your face, “Look at me. I’m going to make trouble,” and that’s what we tend to like our feminists to be nowadays. She did it by being very demure and very steadfast and talented. That was important! It’s small, but it’s so important. It goes against the narrative of what we like to see in our feminists today, but she was such a feminist if you go down to the core term of what a feminist is. And I wanted people to see that and I’m so glad I got to tell that story. I hope some people liked it. 

Ann: Well, and I really appreciated her, like, everybody in your book, the time period of them, it’s all sort of like late 1800s, early 1900s, mostly. And so, these are… What I really appreciated was, like, there’s sort of the big names that are in those other books and you’re kind of like filling in the gaps of like other people who were just as interesting but less celebrated. 

Therese: They didn’t get memorialized for many. And they were, and I started looking as to why. Like, I have one, she’s got the best name in the book, Winifred Sweet Black Bonfils, which should be like a Louisiana blues singer. She was the same as Nellie Bly and she was, like, one of the first-ever Dear Abbys or agony aunts, and she made this huge— She invented, she didn’t invent— She, yes, I’m going to go for it. She invented the human interest stories. I mean, we got too much now, but she was, like, the first person to say, “Hey, what if papers weren’t boring? What if a news story was entertaining?” And she’d do these fantastic stories about important, you know, lepers and Molokai and, you know, getting the first ambulance in San Francisco by pretending to be a sick woman on the streets to see how they treat her. And Nellie, you know, who we remember is Nellie Bly.

Ann: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Therese: And why do we remember Nellie Bly? Because she’s really pretty. And I mean, there’s more to it than that, but she was photogenic and fun and, okay in fairness, she did it first, but Winifred did it more and longer and more intense! I’ve got a picture of Winifred in there. She’s blousy with frizzy hair and a big cape and she’s awesome, but she’s not appealing. 

Ann: Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, here here! But also that they’re, like, Aida, you know, is a gorgeous woman and there’s other people in your book who are also, you have pictures, so I know what they look like, and there’s also illustrations. But yeah, I was thinking part of, of the women in history who are, who are remembered, they’re often it’s like, “Oh, she was so smart and she’s also so beautiful.” It’s like, well, but what about all the people who did cool stuff and were not so beautiful? Like they just, they don’t get the Barbies. 

Therese: Yes! No Barbies. Think of, I mean, like this is out of my time era, but everyone by now knows that Rosa Parks reenacted something that already happened with a really unappealing Black woman because she was pregnant, she was a teenage mother who was 15 and mouthy and she wasn’t pretty. She was the first one to say, “I’m not getting up,” and she got arrested for it. And the Civil Rights Movement said, well, “We have to reach as many people as possible and we know the best way to do that is to redo this event with Rosa,” because she was dignified, she was light-skinned, she was… You look at her in the newspaper and you wouldn’t really say “What in the world did you arrest this fine woman for?” They had to make it palatable. 

It’s not just that they’re out to get us, it’s human nature likes what’s palatable, that’s our nature. And I just said, “You know what? I think we’re advanced to the point now that we can take a little unpalatability. I think we can take a couple, Hetty Greens who just, you know, who exist, and screw you, that’s why. [laughs] “I want to be a billionaire and I don’t want to share it. What are you going to do?” And I’m not saying she’s good. In fact, I think I say she’s not that good, but she existed and she made a difference and she mattered, and we chose not to remember her because she was kooky and unattractive. I mean, women are supposed to be charitable, and gracious, and giving, and she said, “Screw you, I’m Hetty!” And I love that! I love having a couple of anti-heroes among our women in history. We have so many anti-hero guys, you know? We all love, dress up as Jesse James for Halloween for your kid or a pirate, but you don’t have anti-heroes in the female history community and I think there’s room for them. 

Ann: It reminds me of, I know you’re not a big podcast person, but there’s a podcast that’s called Bad Gays, it’s a fun show too. They published a book as well called Bad Gays and part of what they’re doing is talking about, like, a lot of people in like LGBT history, it’s like, “Let’s look at these trailblazers who are,” like you were talking earlier, “… these iconic mythic figures who were great and we admire them.” And on, in Bad Gays, they’re like, “And what about the like shitty people?” 

Therese: Yes. Because most people are a mixture of both, especially people who do things big enough to be historical, their motivations are not “For the grace of God and country,” hardly ever. Their motivations are “I want attention and power,” and out of that comes good things. And it’s a dichotomy we’re ready to recognize: horrible people often do great things. 

Ann: And your book is, I think it’s sort of like the… If people have read those, like The Rebel Girls and stuff, it’s like, well, here’s the real story. Kind of like, let’s learn about like, what were these people, who else was there and what were they up to? Like not the, the less photogenic. 

Therese: I will tell you, it was a fight. My publishing house wasn’t too pleased. They eventually kind of, [chuckles] I think they kind of gave up and said, “Fine, just write it.” 

Ann: Can I ask you, I’m just going to prompt you: can you talk about Celesta Geyer? 

Therese: Oh! So, Celesta is close to my heart. I’m a fat woman and I come from a long line of fat women. Like, I’m the late child of a late child so my grandmother was in 19— There’s a picture of her in my collection from 1912 or so, and they’re poor and they’re up in the mountains of Oregon, they’re loggers, and my little 9-year-old grandma’s fat. She’s a fat little girl in a family where you had to chase down your food and kill it before you could eat it. So, we’re just made to be fat. And I went looking for a story of a fat lady who was happy to be fat and had a successful fat life, and I couldn’t find one. The only fat lady I found with any history from this era was Celeste. Celeste came to my attention because she held the Guinness Book of World Records for weight loss. And I was like, “No, that’s contrary to what I wanted to find. I’m going to dismiss it.” But that’s not what we should do. When we learn that we’re wrong, we should adjust for the new information. 

So, I read her carefully and she was so fascinating. Again, it wasn’t big. She didn’t invent radium or anything, she just lived this really good life, even though she was 600 pounds. And then she decided, “Oh, I’m going to lose my life and I love my life. I better not be 600 pounds anymore,” and she did that. I don’t know how that happened, god bless her, but she did it. And I just, I loved her. She didn’t do anything huge, but she existed. Again, more women need to know, more people need to know, just existing, well, that’s more than most people manage in their lifetimes. 

Ann: I was reading your book and I’m the sort of person where, like, I read a book and then I’m just like, I go to work and I’m like, “Hey, guess what? I just read this book. I need to tell you about this thing.” And because it was like, each chapter is a different person. I’m like, “Here’s the next person I just learned about.” So, I was just like, “Celeste Geyer! She was like so beautiful and she was fat,” but like the makeup manufacturers were like, “Your face is so big, we can put the makeup on this big face that’s so beautiful and sell makeup.” And I was like, “That’s so smart!” [laughs]

Therese: Apparently. I don’t know if it would work nowadays, but my God, I love the approach. Yeah, so she was who she was. 

She was a happy little girl born to German immigrants and her dad had a yummy German food restaurant, and she spent her childhood bopping around the tables being adorable and they’d say, “You’re so cute here, have some streusel.” And so, you know, we can see where this is going. Love and attention… Now, food plus attention equals love. Also, she must’ve been just genetically programmed to save all that energy she was getting and she began to gain a lot of weight. And this was the early 20th century so it was a little bit more rare to be fat because we all had to do so much more motion just to live. 

Ann: And she was also… You said, like, she was eventually 700 pounds, but she was, like, 4-foot-9 or something. 

Therese: Yeah! She was a little butterball. 

Ann: She was very short and yeah. So, like any weight would show up on her a lot because she was so short. 

Therese: And she still tried to have a good life. It’s really, I’ve been a fat teenager in the nineties where Kate Moss was, like, queen, it was rough, no more rough than the 1920s for goodness sake. But she still tried to have a good, happy life; she still tried to go out and have fun and ride horses and go on car rides and cars had just been invented so that was a big deal. She did it even though they made fun of her so bad in school that she had to leave. She went to work to earn her wage, but like, “You’re too big to sit on these stools, we can’t employ you here,” and it was legit because nobody was her size back then. And she just like said, “Okay,” and would take a deep breath. She had a loving family and she even fell in love with a guy who, she didn’t quite trust his love because who would want somebody her size? So, she made him get a ring and a house and furniture to prove he really wanted her, and he did, and they stayed married forever. He was awesome. 

By the way, there’s a lot of really nice men in this book. I like men. Some of my favorite sons and husbands are men and I wanted that to be clear whenever possible that good men existed and supported these women in all sorts of ways. 

Ann: I appreciate that. I will say in my podcast, I’ve done like, I don’t know, 200 episodes or something, and there’s been like three, okay men the whole time. [Therese laughs] So, when I find one, I’m happy to celebrate them too. 

Therese: And again, sometimes it’s just the absence of being a jackass. Sometimes you just get a pat a guy on the shoulder and say, “Thank you. You could have been a total turd about this, but you weren’t. You were nice.” 

Anyway, so she kept gaining and, you know, 300 pounds is bad now, but it was… You’re ready to be in the circus sideshow back then. And that in the Depression era, that’s just what her…

Ann: Again, when you’re 4-foot-9, 300 pounds. 

Therese: Yeah, she’s a big girl. And so, she and her husband were out during the Depression era in the ‘30s, early ‘30s and they scraped together some money and they went to a circus and she challenged the fat lady tent, the Barker outside. He said, “Come on in!” She said, “Oh yeah, well, whatever you got in there, it’s not as big as me. I’m your real fat lady.” Because when you’re fat and everyone attacks you all the time, you learn to lean into it and grab them first and that’s what she did. He said, “Oh, come on in.” And that’s where she met her mentor, her name was Jolly Pearl and she was about 700 pounds. And she said, “You know what, honey? They’re already laughing at you. Why don’t you make them pay for it?” And I love that. I love that. I can’t find the words for it of all things right now, I really should have them. “They’re already laughing at you, make them pay for their fun.” And she said, “You’re right,” and she did just that. 

She became a circus fat lady. And she was special because she was so pretty and she handmade these silky garments and she sang the songs and she truly enjoyed herself. I mean, we could deeply analyze how much joy she truly felt, but he didn’t do that in the 1930s. You’re like, oh my god. 

Ann: Just being a performer. Like, not every fat lady would do well, even a really pretty fat lady wouldn’t necessarily be gifted as a performer. Like, she had that as well. She clearly had that interest and ability. 

Therese: She really did. And so, she rode out the depression in private cars, private Pullman cars in Hawaii. And it was pretty good. I mean, it’s not like she was sacrificing her dignity because society didn’t afford her any dignity. Her options were stay home alone and hide, which she did at times during her life, or go out there and live, even though nobody wants you to and they don’t really think you have the right to. She’s like, “No, I’m going to do this.” And she did for decades. 

She got up to over 500 pounds, I think. And that’s when all her coworkers and friends started dying because [sighs] I hate to admit this myself, but fat does kill. It killed my parents. It’s going to take me before anything else. And she’s like, “Oh gosh.” So, she started doing these weight loss regimes, but it was the ‘40s and ‘50s. And if you wanted a weight loss drug, oh, they’d give you a weight loss drug. [chuckles]

Ann: Like, what? Meth, basically? 

Therese: Exactly. Methamphetamines. We call it meth now but back then it was prescribed by a doctor and boy, was it effective. But you know, her and her sister-in-law went on a diet together with these fantastic, through-the-mill diet pills, which I assume was industrial-grade or army-grade methamphetamine. And it sure worked. Her sister-in-law was quite svelte when the drugs blew out her heart valves and she died. Celeste thought she had water retention and she did, but it was actually edema demon, which means her organs were shutting down. So, she went off those and she’s like, “Oh, what am I going to do?” And the doctor said, “Diet or die.” And she’s like, “Oh well, if those are my options, I don’t want to die. I love my life. So, I’ll be happy skinny too.” And she did it. You can go on YouTube and find one adorable video of her touting her semi-reasonable weight loss plan in the ‘50s, it’s kind of cute. She was like one of the first people to make the circuits of talk shows and stuff as they existed in the ‘50s and ‘60s advocating a healthy living diet plan, she was quite a celebrity. 

Ann: I found that turn interesting also, just in terms of like, she found a way to just be like living her life and turn that into a money-making enterprise. It’s like, she lost weight and then made that her job. 

Therese: She kept doing it— In between all this. Also, I forgot to mention between the circus lady and the weight loss thing, she was a psychic in the backwoods of Florida, and she knew she wasn’t psychic, but she could, that’s when she became Madame Celesta and her largest clientele were poor African Americans, which matters because it was the forties, and it was deep South. She was so used to not being liked because of how she looked, she wasn’t eager to transfer that onto anyone else. And the folks that came to her, you know, most of them back then had no education and were confused with everything. So, she really was just a psychiatrist and sort of a commonsense person. Like, she restored one of the little girl’s hearing, you know, her parents were distraught, she’d gone deaf. She put her on her lap and melted the wax in her ears because it was so thick and so heavy and the parents didn’t know, but she did. She just did kindness and then she’d read the cards or whatever, but mostly she just listened and guided and helped. And she made money from that, enough to live happily. 

Ann: She’s just such a cool person! 

Therese: Yes! Thank you, Ann. Yes! She didn’t move mountains. She didn’t invent anything huge. She just lived so well, even though everything was against her. She’s like, “No, I’m going to be okay because I choose to be.” And that’s, like, the lesson women should take, everybody should take. You can make so much goodness out of what you’ve been given, no matter how crappy you think your hand is, and there are some crappy hands out there that you’ve been dealt. You don’t have to settle; you get to turn in your cards for new ones if you choose. You have to make the effort and then you have to think hard and take action, but you can make so much goodness out of so little. We all can! And we don’t have to wait for the perfect circumstances. We don’t have to bemoan that we weren’t granted perfect DNA or whatever. We have enough! We have enough. We make good things and that’s what these women did. They made good things with what they had. 

Ann: Well, and that’s what you said at the very beginning. I keep coming back to this but it’s such a good example. You know, it’s like the Joan of Arc or whatever, Harriet Tubman, there’s people who did incredible, amazing things. And the women in your book had, like, a smaller life is what I’ll call it, but that was impactful in its own way. 

Therese: It really was.

Ann: Not like, what, like 0.1% of all people are going to, like, change the world? But if you can just kind of like focus on yourself and your own life, and what can you do? And that’s what these people did in good ways and bad. Like, again, you’ve got some anti-heroes in here. But I just find that that’s the sort of history that I like as well, not the earth-shattering person because there’s so much writing about those people already. I like to do, like, a treasure hunt and be tracking down little articles to learn about somebody who no one knows about and try and make so other people know about them. 

Therese: They wanted to know why I put Hetty in there because she didn’t do anything good. 

Ann: Yeah, talk about Hetty, explain, because we’ve mentioned her a few times. 

Therese: Okay. So, Hetty Green was the world’s first self-made billionaire, well, by 1800s money. She was an investor on Wall Street, she was called the witch of Wall Street. She says it’s because she was a Quaker, but more likely she was, had like a miser/probably a little bit of mental illness, but back then, unless it really incapacitated you, it didn’t count as mental illness, which is for the best. She never spent a dime even when she should have, like, she didn’t properly take care of her kids and stuff like that. 

Ann: Wasn’t it that one of her kids needed to get some sort of surgery and she’s like, “No, I’m not going to pay for that surgery.” 

Therese: Yeah. Poor Ned. Now, granted, there’s only one or two resources about that, and some people argue it, but the story goes that Ned, her son, when he was a teenager, he got hit down by a small cart in the street and his leg got really infected and she didn’t like hospitals and it was, like, 1870, hospitals weren’t stellar. So, she just said, “Quit whining Ned,” and gave him some vegetable oil. But you know, that’s not the greatest preventative for gangrene, which he developed and the leg had to be amputated and she didn’t pay for that either because apparently the free hospital wouldn’t see her because they knew who she was, and they’re like, “No, no. Out, out, out.” But he had his father — they were separated but never officially divorced because it was, again, it was the 1800s — his father who didn’t have a lot of money, took care of Ned. 

But Hetty was very rich, she was not generous. There’s some evidence now that she gave to a couple charities, but she died with billions by today’s standards and she didn’t… She left it all to her kids who didn’t use it wisely either. And so, people are like, “Well, she’s not worth telling the story of because she was bad.” 

Ann: Can you remind me/tell everybody how she made this money? Like, why was she so good at investments? Like, she was very, very stingy, but lots of people were. 

Therese: She was a contrarian investor. She was incredibly patient. She could see… okay. My example in the book is let’s say a railroad crashes into an orphanage. That railroad’s stock is going to plummet, right? But Hetty would say, “Yeah, it’s going to plummet for now and it’s going to be super cheap, but in five years, everyone’s going to forget this and they’re going to remember that this kid-smashed R and R railroad has got the only water rights to a bridge over an important river. So, I’m just going to buy this all up and quietly wait five years, and then I’m going to own everything to do with this railroad.” And that’s what she did over and over. 

Some people even think that’s very unpleasant. She was almost, like, she was somehow making money off the suffering of others, which is fair, that’s kind of how you make money in the business world, I assume. I’m actually really bad with money but she wasn’t. And everybody wants to then say, “Okay, well, we can’t say anything about her unless we can prove she did something good.” And I said, “You know what? She was Hetty. That was her job on this planet.” She didn’t do anything good, she did something amazing. She was living in an era where you had to have your husband’s or father’s co-sign to open a savings account. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. Because the whole thing, like, people keep talking about that now. It’s like, it wasn’t until the 1970s that women could get a mortgage. 

Therese: And she was a self-made billionaire of her own brain power.

Ann: In, like, the 1900s. 

Therese: And she might’ve been mentally ill, I think she was. I don’t know if you’d call them paranoid delusions because when you’re that rich, people probably do want to hurt you. 

Ann: Genuine. Yeah. 

Therese: But she would do, she would not pay for hot water in her apartments, even when she had her kids with her, and she slept with a gun tied to her wrist, and she had this terrible bulging hernia that she wouldn’t pay 200 bucks to have repaired. She just kept it in place with a stick jammed in her underpants. The one person who recorded it was the doctor, we don’t know, he could have been exaggerating, but also it tracks. [laughs] It tracks with Hetty. 

Hetty is my anti-hero. Her only redemptive quality is that she could have been worse and also, she did something that was really hard to do, I don’t care if it was unpleasant and not nice. She broke, she shattered the male sphere of moneymaking. She’s like, “Screw you all!” I’m going to do what I want to do. And she didn’t actively hurt anybody but her own kids and in fairness, they inherited millions, upon millions, upon millions of dollars and they seemed okay, for the most part. And I just don’t want to defend Hetty. I want her to exist. I want to set her free and say, “Look at her, look what she did! What do you think of that?” And everybody have your own opinions, but acknowledge she existed and acknowledge she did something no one else could do. And if she wasn’t the nicest person, well most of us aren’t nice people! But most of us can’t do what she did! And I really resented being told, “No, she’s not worth remembering because she’s not nice,” and that was almost the exact quote of my first editor. 

Ann: I feel like you should, you need to put that on the cover of the book. [chuckles]

Therese: That would have been a great title. “These women don’t belong in a book.” That would have been such a good title. Oh, where were you, Ann? [Ann laughs] But yeah, that’s my book and I really enjoyed writing it. I love… These people delighted me. And also, taking really, finding people that we already kind of know about, like Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president, that’s what I knew about her. And I looked into her and I’m like, “Oh my god, she’s a mess, a beautiful chaotic mess!” And she ended life as not remotely a feminist. She ends up like, she went back to Catholicism, or not even back, she became a Catholic and moved to a tiny village in England where it was nice and quiet, you know? That was her life arc, and nobody wants to have that ending because they wanted it to be a fierce badass and blah, blah, blah. 

She wasn’t! She was a damaged child who did the best she could with what she had. And it was a really cool ride, it was fascinating and she brought down Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, who was, like, the biggest hypocrite and the most famous preacher ever in America. And she’s like, “You know what? He’s horrible and I’m going to tell you how.” So, she got erased from the current history, contemporaneous history, because she did that too. You don’t start a morality war with the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and her brother, you’re not going to win. And she didn’t but she still did it! She was right. He was a hypocrite. He was a total, total, whatever the male term for slut bag is, I think we should call it a Beecher because that was his name. [Ann laughs] A total raging Beecher, and he should have been held to account for it and he really wasn’t, even though she exposed him. Life was hard and she lived it, she did great things, not great things, and that was her life. And that’s good, that matters! Do I make sense? Tell me I make sense. 

Ann: No, it totally makes sense. 

Therese: Or is it my special coffee talking? My Folgers crystals but not that fancy.

Ann: [laughs] No, it reminds me of, I think, especially for women in history, the amount of people that have to be on board to make, like, a new movie, a biography movie, about a woman from history. The story ends up being so distorted to make them seem like this wonderful heroine. And I think the same thing happens to men sometimes too but especially— So I just appreciate that you fought to get these just, like, messy bitches in your book. 

Therese: Thank you. Ann, why do you think we do that? Why do we need that as a society? Why do we… 

Ann: Like, want the women to be these, sort of, perfect heroes? I don’t know. I don’t know. 

Therese: We don’t want to watch a movie celebrating a dirtbag, that’s fair. But why are we so opposed to just somebody who’s a mixture of yin and yang and good and bad, like we all are? Is it like we don’t want to face that we all have this darkness in us? Because if we deny it, it’s just going to get stronger. If we embrace it, we have a chance. 

Ann: I don’t know. I think it’s something like, I just know especially with women’s history because that’s most of what I do too, I think it’s like, people want to be like, “No, women were heroes too.” It’s almost trying to make women, like, a pantheon of women heroes that sits up there with like, I don’t know, god knows, Napoleon and George Washington or these other men who I hate. [Therese laughs] But like, you want to get the women who are up there, her these pristine, perfect… You know, and if they were rebels, it’s kind of like, “But in a cute way and they were pretty.” 

Therese: And it’s so diminishing and more than that, it’s a lie. I’m tired of lying, it’s not necessary. Why are we all pretending we’re going to be good? Let’s just admit we’re messy and we’re chaotic and we’re still okay. And we can still be kind, and we can still contribute, but we don’t have to be phenomenal, you know? I don’t know. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s a book, like again, we’re talking about these books, and again, I have all love for these books that came out, I don’t know, 10 years ago, there was a whole bunch of like The Rebel Girls, and there’s a book called like Phenomenal Women, and then there’s the like, She Persisted. I understand the motivation is to be like, “Look at these women, women did great!” And for a long time, there was no women’s history popularly published so it’s like, that was the first step. But then eventually, it’s like, you know, I have on my fridge, I’m saying next to my fridge and I have these magnets I bought one time that are like “Women from History,” and like, I didn’t put them all up because I’m just like, I don’t want to celebrate all these people necessarily. I won’t say who I didn’t put up but it’s kind of like, okay. Even, like, Elizabeth I, I’m like, I’m not a big fan, but it’s like, well, she was a woman, but we don’t need to celebrate every woman just because she did something. Anyway, I appreciate that you have these, like, messy sluts in your book and I appreciate that the title of your book is The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews

Therese: I didn’t pick that title, actually. So, thank you again to Simon Element for that one because they know what people will actually want to pick up and buy. I wanted to use the word “slatterns” and my editor has got, like, her head in her hands and she’s like, “Therese, nobody even knows what that is.” I’m like, “People who buy my book would! Wouldn’t they?” She said, “It’s not going to hit SEO content.” I’m like, “What the hell is that?” And she’s like, “Just let me do my job.” And I did and it worked. She had the right idea, I did not, because it’s a good word for people who like the kind of stuff I write. Like you! I’m so flattered. Thank you so much for sharing all this with me. You have such an amazing podcast. Your deep dives are so intricate. 

Ann: Thank you. I was going to just compliment you as well and say, just, there are so many books that are like, “These women made a scene!” and you read a book and it’s all, it’s like Rosa Parks and people who did important stuff, [Therese laughs] but it’s kind of like, it’s not the messy bitches. And your book is, your title, your book delivers on that promise. You’re not just being like, “Here’s the same people you’ve heard about a hundred times who are kind of, like, demure and nice.” It’s like, no, these are people who are like assholes and they’re great. 

Therese: Oh, thank you, dear. And I’ve enjoyed this so much. Thank you for being so interested in this. It’s so neat to meet somebody who likes the weird stuff you do, you know? 

Ann: Yeah. Well, I think the very first email that we exchanged, we were talking about Lola Montez. 

Therese: Yeah! You knew Lola Montez! I was so excited about that! Oh my gosh, she was in my first book. She was, like, the only female I could find from Victorian era who had any book, or input, or anything to say about women’s health conditions or society. Everything else was old men who were off their frickin’ rockers, which was hilarious. 

Ann: But Lola Montez is, like, the last person you should turn to for advice about anything, really.

Therese: [laughs] She totally, with great flair, she made crap up but they were all doing that. She just did it with great flair. And to become an Irish dancing hall girl and end up a baroness or a countess, that takes some skill. I don’t know if it’s good skill, but I’m going to give her proper credit for that. That’s awesome. Good for her.

Ann: I think when Lola Montez, I think I did like three hours of podcasting about her because I had to talk about every single thing she did. 

Therese: Oh my gosh, I have to go back and find your stuff then because she was my special treasure. And she’s another example of, you kind of play by certain rules that society is giving you in the time and the place you live. And Lola, I think, had her heyday in the early part of the 1800s and she simply wasn’t going to change the world through politics, and she didn’t have maybe the brain to change it through literature and all that. So, she did that by being just an awesome booty call and then taking it from there and good for her! That was what she had, and she made it rock, she made it grand, she made it great. And then she was an accomplished writer by the end of it, all this stuff. She worked with what she was given and made it beautiful. 

Ann: Well, it’s sort of like Celeste. She had her career, like, dancing, and then when she couldn’t dance anymore, she’s like, “Well, I guess I’ll just write some books now.” Like Celeste is like, “I guess I’ll just talk about my weight loss now because I can’t be a fat lady anymore.” It’s like, people who just like, especially poor/working-class people. It’s like, well, you got to keep grifting. Like, what are they going to do? Go be a secretary. Like, you got to keep coming up with something new. 

Okay. What I’m going to say, we’re going to do an official podcast wrap-up. So, Therese Oneill, your book that we were just talking about is called Unbecoming A Lady, your previous two books, which before I met you, you know, on the computer, I had read and loved. So, you have Ungovernable and you have Unmentionable. So, this is kind of your, the titles are all similar. 

Therese: Oh, I like those books. They’re funny and they’re fun. 

Ann: And that’s the thing. And that’s what I try to do on a podcast too, is like talking about history, but making jokes too, I think is important. 

Therese: People ask me what I write, and I always stare at them with no answer. Even after all these years, I’m like, “Well… History humour.” And they’re like, “That’s the genre?” And I’m like, “No, but it’s what I write.” 

Ann: It’s a genre of like your books, my podcast. 

Therese: It’s a genre of pretty much me. [chuckles]

Ann: There’s like one other woman who writes kind of like this and I’m like, “Okay, okay. It’s a genre now, there’s three of us.” 

Therese: [laughs] Yay! So yeah, I really love my job. The world is funny. Sometimes we laugh so that we do not cry, but the world is really funny. And the chance to bring it up and show it to everyone, how fun it is, I love my job. 

Ann: And I’m happy you’re writing these books and I’m glad that through this labyrinthine process, this book came into existence. 

Therese: Thank you, dear. [Ann laughs] I can’t wait till I’m a proper crone and I can just call everybody “Sweetie.” 

Ann: Yeah, I don’t know. I consider myself, and I’ve said this on the podcast, like a young crone, like I feel like I’m in my early crone era. 

Therese: I like that. Once perimenopause is full-blown. 

Ann: Yeah! Yeah, like, I live alone with a cat. I feel like this is like, I’m just tiptoeing into… crone. 

Therese: I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to wear the tackiest tie-dyes you can find and I’m going to, I’m going to call everybody “Sweetie,” and I’m going to, things that aren’t even free samples at the grocery store, I’m still going to take a taste. It’s just going to be glorious. It’s going to be glorious. 

Ann: I’m honestly looking forward to my full-blown crone era. 

Therese: And they can get mad, but how mad can you get at a crone? Because they’re just… What are you going to do? What are you going to do? [both chuckle] Our power comes from strange places, but that doesn’t mean we should reject it. 

Ann: I agree. Well, thank you, Therese, for joining me today on the podcast. 

Therese: I’m so happy to be here Ann, thank you. I had a really good time.   

—————

So, if you’re in a situation where you are looking to buy a present for somebody, or you are suggesting presents that you want someone else to buy for you because of holiday-related reasons, this book is a fantastic choice. Unbecoming A Lady: the Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America by Therese Oneill. It’s a lovely book to give as a gift because it’s a beautiful-looking book; it’s got photographs in it of the various sluts and shrews, but also it has beautiful illustrations, there are beautiful illustrations on the cover. It’s just a nice time. I think it’d be a nice gift to give or to receive this holiday season. Give yourself a gift, borrow it from the library, read it yourself. 

We’re going to be back next week with another gift suggestion, author interview, like another fantastic book that actually coincides with this one in interesting ways, which you’ll find out about next week when you hear that episode. And yeah, this is Vulgar History, the podcast, and I’ll see you next time. So, usually, we’re talking about the shitty women from history [chuckles] and these next few weeks, we’re talking about some books that are about that same thing. 

You can also keep up with me and the podcast. I’m on Instagram, I’m @VulgarHistoryPod, I’m also on Threads @VulgarHistoryPod, I’m on Bluesky @VulgarHistoryPod. You know, wherever you are on the internet, I’m probably there except for, not on Twitter. So, I also am on Substack, which is where I have my, it’s like every other week, what do you call it? Fortnightly newsletter, which is basically just me yelling about feminist shit on Substack in a written format. So, it’s called “Vulgar History A La Carte” and if you go to Substack and subscribe to that, then you get those little newsletters. You can get them in your inbox, they get emailed to you, or if you just go in the Substack app, then they’ll just pop up there being like, “Hey, Ann wrote a new thing,” and you can read it and it’s all free. So again, it’s “Vulgar History A La Carte” on the Substack. 

You can also support this podcast on Patreon, which again, you can go to on your device, go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, or if you have the Patreon app, just look me up there. And what happens there is on Patreon for free members, you get just various updates I share, you know, like interesting links or articles I find, or like what’s up, what’s new, what’s happening. I put value-added content there, like photos of some of the people we talk about on the show and stuff like that. And I like to put that stuff on Patreon because it doesn’t rely on an algorithm. People who actually want to follow the stuff that I’m talking about can actually find it there for free. 

And then also, if you want to pay a little bit of money, for $1 a month, you get all of the above, but also you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History, including the past episodes, you can get ad-free versions of those too. And if you pledge $5 or more a month, you get also all of the above and bonus episodes of things like The Aftershow, where I talk with some of my guests when we get going and we talk about other topics. But also, So This Asshole, I talk about shitty men from history, there’s a bunch of those you can listen to. Vulgarpiece Theatre, the currently on hiatus, but coming back soon bonus show where myself, Allison Epstein, and Lana with Johnson talk about costume dramas from history. There’s a huge backlog, not backlog… archive, archive, a valuable archive of episodes of Vulgarpiece Theatre if you want to listen to those as well. And also, if you join the Patreon for $5 or more a month, you get to join our exclusive Discord group, which is just like a giant group chat for the Tits Out Brigade, which is what listeners of this podcast are called, if you didn’t know, where we just chat about anything. You can access the Discord when you join the Patreon at $5 or more a month. 

In terms of gift-giving suggestions, we also have our gorgeous brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, who, Torie, the owner has just been dropping new things, left, right, and centre lately. There are some beautiful new designs. And so, this is a small women-owned business that makes beautiful heirloom pieces of jewelry inspired by classical mythology and women from history. And so, they have their “Difficult Women” collection, of course, which features lots of women we’ve talked about on the show. None of them are women from, like, 20th century America so it’s not specific crossover with Therese’s book, but we’ve got like old-time women who are complex and interesting. Agrippina is there, Anne Boleyn is there, Cleopatra is there, lots of goddesses from classical mythology are there as well. Artemis is there, lots of people. If you want to buy some stuff from Common Era Jewelry, their pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil and Vulgar History listeners get 15% off everything you buy from them by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. 

And again, gift-giving suggestions, Vulgar History merchandise, which you can get at VulgarHistory.com/Store if you’re in the US. If you’re outside the US, go to VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. There’s a lot of funny things there, beautiful designs made by artists whose work I have paid for and were not created using AI. 

You can also get in touch with me using the form at VulgarHistory.com, it’s like a “Contact me” button there. If you want to get in touch with me for some reason. Next week, we’re talking with an author of a book and in that book, there is some connection with one of the people we talked about today with Therese. So, it’s interesting how things all overlay with each other. And until next time, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.

Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.

References:

Click here to buy a copy of Unbecoming A Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America.

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