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Category / People / Icons / Muses

The Native American Who Fought Bigotry with Broadway

Zitkála-Šá was a woman divided. Torn between her Sioux and caucasian roots, she constantly battled with her own sense of identity. But rather than succumb to that division, she used it as a tool for some seriously creative activism. To this day, one of her greatest feats remains unparalleled: the creation of “The Sun Dance Opera,”…

6 Ways to Introduce Joan Didion to the Next Generation

Is it just us, or has Joan Didion become the go-to heroine for millennial and even Gen Z “cool girls”? Move over Jane Birkin – by declaring allegiance to the late American writer on social media, Didion brings instant credibility and style to one’s online persona – even if one has never read The White…

Jane Austen’s London Instagram Account

If Jane Austen was a time-travelling instagrammer, I think I’ve found her instagram account. While the English novelist wasn’t exactly a big-city girl, and her characters mostly lived sheltered lives out in the country, London does occasionally make a special cameo in her novels, which are set entirely during the reign of George III. Austen often visited…

The Man Who Lived in a Jewellery Box

He was the man with the thriftiest of Midas touches, and the only decorator who could spend $999 at a 99-cent store thanks to one mantra, seek “beauty, not luxury.” Tony Duquette was a Renaissance man of film, theatre, interior and jewellery design in Hollywood– if you name it, he probably built it and dipped…

How Bugs Bunny Became a Queer Icon

Celebrities from Judy Garland to Madonna to Lady Gaga have been granted the title “gay icon,” but there’s one often-forgotten figure who deserves a spot on this list: Bugs Bunny. The Warner Bros. Cartoon character not only experimented with gender presentation but also married a man in at least three cartoons, in the 1950s. With…

Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine

Hollywood has a thing for origin stories at the moment, and one origin story in particular begins in Los Angeles, in an unassuming building on Gower Street, just off Melrose Avenue. This is not the origin story of a Marvel Comics character, or even of a Hollywood bigwig getting their own biopic. Now part of…

Meet Alma Mahler: Composer, Lover, Muse, Sex Doll and Liar

Alma Mahler was no ordinary woman: She shared her first kiss with Gustav Klimt, kept diaries that offered an insight on fin de siècle Vienna the same way Anaïs Nin’s journals did for 1930s Paris with the same (if not more extreme) fabrication, and drove her ex-lover to such madness he commissioned a sex doll…

She was Ukraine’s Folk Art Heroine

One of the most heartbreaking cultural losses of the conflict in the Ukraine is the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, which Russian forces burned down. Most notably in the Kyiv collection are 25 works by Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, who garnered international acclaim for her decorative paintings honouring her country’s heritage. We’re taking…

The Edwardian Style Spy Photographer

If you follow MessyNessyChic on Instagram, you’ll probably have stumbled upon a series I came to name as “Style Spy“, which to my bemusement, has probably become the most watched form of content on that social media platform, but more on that later. Today, I stumbled upon a kindred spirit of yore: Edward Linley Sambourne.…

Born into Slavery, She Became the First “Queen of Drag”

It’s a little before 11 PM on April 12th, 1888 in downtown Washington DC. President Grover Cleveland has just finished up a speech on what will become American Somoa, his wife Frances is already asleep, and, four blocks east, at the intersection of F and 12th Street, thirty Black, gay men are having a party.…

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