The idea British women suddenly started working during the First World War is an absolute myth. Most working class women had always been part of the British workforce—mainly in textile manufacturing, farming, education and the service industries. With the commencement of war, an estimated two million women replaced men in the workplace leading to a considerable rise in the proportion of working women—from 24% in 1914 to 37% in 1918. As a result:

...the number of women employed increased from 3,224,600 in July, 1914 to 4,814,600 in January 1918. Nearly 200,000 women were employed in government departments. Half a million became clerical workers in private offices. Women worked as conductors on trams and buses. A quarter of a million worked on the land. The greatest increase of women workers was in engineering. Over 700,000 of these women worked in the highly dangerous munitions industry. Industries that had previously excluded women now welcomed them. There was a particular demand for women to do heavy work such as unloading coal, stoking furnaces and building ships.

The war gave women greater opportunities—a wider range of occupations and an alternative to traditional roles—which led most notably to a decline in domestic service. From the 1700s to 1911, around 12% of the female population in England and Wales worked in domestic service as cooks, maids, nannies, cleaners, etc. This dropped to less than 8% by 1931—mainly due to job opportunities available for women in the workplace. Half of the women who applied to work at London omnibuses in 1916 came from domestic service. An interesting side effect of all this was the increase in labor saving devices—vacuum cleaners, automatic washing machines and domestic refrigerators.

The influx of women into the job market gave rise to trade unions. In 1914, 375,000 women were members of a trade union. This had risen to over one million by 1918. The only problem here was the fact women were still paid far less than their male counterparts for doing the same job….plus ca change…

More women in work meant more childcare services. Around 100 nurseries were established for women working in munition factories during the war. However, the government of the day did not provide similar services for women working in any other industries.

The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)—the suffragette movement—which had campaigned for women’s suffrage was split by the war. Originally formed in 1903 by Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU divided between Christabel and Emmeline who supported the war and Sylvia Pankhurst who was against it. The WSPU was not in favor of universal women suffrage but rather suffrage for a small (upper) class section of the female population—”Votes for ladies” rather than “votes for women.”

The war led to changes in suffrage as those males allowed to vote had to be resident in the UK for twelve months prior to any election. As most of the electorate had been overseas fighting in France—this meant there was only a small percentage of men eligible to vote. The Representation of the People Act in 1918 gave votes to men over the age of 21 and all women over the age of 30 who were occupiers of property or married occupiers of property. This was in small part an acknowledgement of the essential work carried out by women during the war—but also in large part due to tireless political campaigning for the right to vote. For if the women’s right to vote had been inspired solely by their actions during the war then surely women under thirty would have also been given the vote. Most women who worked in munition factories or in essential war work were single, in their late teens and early twenties. These young women were actually pointedly denied the right to vote by the Representation of the People Act. Apparently the war effort—as some historians hold—did not really merit a “thank you” to the women who worked on the home front. That would take another ten years before women over the age of 21 had the right to vote, just like men.

As part of the propaganda for the war effort, photographers were sent out to document women at work in factories across Britain. These photographs of women laborers at the Parsons’ Works on Shields Road, Newcastle, were taken between 1914 and 1918, and are held by the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums:

The factory was founded by engineer Charles Parsons, best known for his invention of the steam turbine. In 1914, with the outbreak of war, Parsons’ daughter Rachel, one of the first three women to study engineering at Cambridge, replaced her brother on the board of directors, and took on a role in the training department of the Ministry of Munitions, supporting the increasing amount of women taking on jobs in industry to support the war effort.

These pictures are not stylized as later photographs were during the Second World War for far more overt propaganda purposes. These women are intensely focussed in getting on with their job. Some seem camera shy—but it must have seemed strange to be photographed at work when it was such an ordinary yet essential thing to be doing.
 

 

 
More factory girls on the home front, after the jump…

Akiko Wada.
 
The arrival of the “beat girl” archetype in Japanese culture back in the 60s came with numerous girl rockers taking the helm of bands, cranking out garage rock sounds and pop-inspired hits some of which would go on to sell more than a million copies (such as the 1965 smash sung in English by Emy Jackson “Crying in a Storm”). Of the many that were a part of this movement, one of the most notable was a woman often referred to as the “Japanese Aretha Franklin,” Akiko Wada.

Born Akiko Iizuka (according to her website) to Korean parents, she soon adopted her maternal uncle’s name (Wada) and started skipping school (before dropping out of high school entierly) to enjoy the nightlife of Osaka. At the age of seventeen she had added “runaway” to her growing rebellious teenage resume after a trip to Tokyo. Wada’s “look” was perceived as “unconventional” even during her childhood. In elementary school Wada was already over five-feet tall and by the time she stopped growing she stood approximately 5’9. Not only did Wada sound more like a man she was also taller than most of her male counterparts on the hit parade. Due to her unique looks and vocal style she was often referred to as being “butch.”

It’s important to note here that being labeled as “butch” is a distinct inference of homosexuality. And being gay in Japan isn’t merely frowned upon, it is also considered an “unacceptable” lifestyle (though there has been some progress over the last two decades). Despite assumptions regarding her sexuality Wada has been married to a man (photographer Koji Iizuka) for the past 35 years.

Wada would embark on her recording career in 1968, singing on an astronomical number of records (somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 singles) since the release of her first single “Hoshizora no Kodoku” (“The Solitude of the Starry Sky”). Fast-forward to 2016 and the unstoppable Wada shows no signs of slowing down. Her latest release “All Right!!!” came out in July of this year—three months after her 66th birthday.

Wada also appeared in a few memorable films, a few which audiences outside of Japan may be familiar with such as the 1970 Japanese chick biker-flick (the first of the long-running franchise) Alleycat Rock: Female Boss where Akiko gets to play the cycle-riding biker girl “Ako.” Wada would reprise the role of “Ako” in the follow-up film, Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo. Wada has also hosted her own TV show, Akko ni Omakase (“Leave It To Akko”), as well as a radio show DJ Akko No Panic Studio. I’ve included a number of cool tracks from Wada’s vast catalog for you to listen to below and the groovy trailer for Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (which was lovingly remastered back in 2014 by Arrow Films) that features Wada looking larger than life, rocking out in a sweet brown pantsuit.
 

The trailer for the 1970 film ‘Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo’ featuring Akiko Wada.
 
More Akiko Wada after the jump…

 
James Bond would never have made a great spy because too many of his enemies knew his identity. Great spies are anonymous—as any fule kno. They carry out their work covertly. Only their handlers know of their existence and their stealthy actions.

At her trial for espionage in 1917, the dancer and courtesan Mata Hari was described by her accusers as “perhaps the greatest woman spy of the century.”

She was charged by the French of spying for the Germans during First World War. It was alleged her cunning double-dealing had been responsible for the deaths of at least some 50,000 soldiers. Her actions were denounced as unmitigated evil. Her liberated sexuality deemed a cover for her career as a spy and worse—a threat to the moral substance of the honorable French people.

In truth, the French were shitting themselves. Their country had been invaded by Germany. They were dependent on the Allies to defend their homeland and defeat the might of the invading German army. If this weren’t humiliating enough—after the failure of the Nivelle offensive in 1917, there was widespread mutiny among the French troops. It looked as though France was about to capitulate under the strain and surrender to the Germans. The country needed a scapegoat to distract attention. They needed someone who could be blamed for undermining morale and destroying the fantasy of French military superiority.

Step forward Mata Hari. A woman who was not so much a spy but rather the victim of weak duplicitous men determined to sacrifice her life for their government’s failings.
 

 
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle who was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands on August 7th, 1876. Margaretha’s biography is as much the story of a strong independent woman as it is about a woman dealing with the failure, stupidity and brutality of the men in her life.

Raised in an affluent household, Margaretha moved to the Dutch East Indies and married Captain Rudolf MacLeod when she was eighteen. MacLeod was a brutish drunk who regularly beat Margaretha. He kept a concubine and was riddled with syphilis.

Margaretha had two children with MacLeod. A son Norman-John who died at the age of two from complications relating to treatment for his inherited syphilis. A daughter Louise-Jeanne died at 21—again from complications from her inherited syphilis. To escape her husband’s drunken brutality, Margaretha studied traditional Indonesian dance. She adopted the name Mata Hari—meaning “eye of the day” or “sun.”

The couple separated in 1902. Mata Hari moved to Paris with her daughter where she supported herself as an artist’s model. She also worked in a circus and more importantly started performing as an exotic dancer.

Mata Hari adapted the traditional dance she had learnt in Indonesia to choreograph her own risque routines—a modern Salome discarding her veils. Mata Hari was a pioneer of modern dance—along with that other leading light Isadora Duncan—her exotic dances broke the rigid formality of ballet or even the can-can.

By 1905, Mata Hari was a dance star performing all over Europe. She sent audiences into paroxysms of ecstasy with her “feline, extremely feminine,” “thousand curves and movements,” a graceful wild animal with “blue-black” hair. Her dances almost revealed her naked form—only her breasts remained hidden as she was self-conscious about their size.

Mata Hari was courted by rich eligible men—as well as by many two-timing cads. She became a courtesan—which is a posh word for a high class hooker. It would be this access to upper echelons of politicians, high-ranking soldiers and wealthy industrialists that later led French and British authorities to think Mata Hari was a spy.

By 1915, Mata Hari felt too old to continue with her erotic dance routines and retired from performance. She was in love with a Russian pilot named Captain Vadim Maslov. When Maslov was shot down and blinded in a dogfight over the Western Front, Mata Hari asked for permission to visit him in hospital. As a Dutch national living in neutral Netherlands during the First World War, Mata Hari had to seek permission to travel to and from countries involved in the conflict. As Mata Hari had been continuing her relationships with some of her wealthy admirers in France, she had come under suspicion by British authorities due to the number of trips she made to and from the Netherlands. When she applied to the French authorities for a visa to visit her young beau, Mata Hari was coerced to become a spy for the French.

The deal went something like this—If you want to see your hot young BF then we want you to fuck some information out of a few German colonels. We especially want you to fuck the German Crown Prince Wilhelm and get all his secrets. Mata Hari was also offered a bagful of cash. It may have been the cash incentive that made her say “Okay, sure. When do I start?”

The problem with the devious French plan was that Crown Prince Wilhelm knew nothing. He was an idiot. A wastrel who liked whoring, drinking, playing soldiers and pulling his pork. How the French military intelligence (the Deuxième Bureau) thought they could learn anything useful from Clown Prince Wilhelm is utterly baffling. However, Mata Hari went off to Germany in a bid to get the inside skinny.

Unfortunately the Germans knew Mata Hari was a spy and gave her bogus information. They also exposed her as a double agent—letting the Deuxième Bureau know Mata Hari was actually their agent. Of course, she wasn’t. Mata Hari was just a useful pawn in a terrible game.

The French were suspicious. In December 1916, they gave Mata Hari some information about six agents in the field—five of whom were double agents working for the Germans. The sixth was a double agent working for the French. When the sixth agent was arrested and executed by the Germans—the French firmly beleved that Mata Hari was a spy.

On February 13th, Mata Hari was arrested and charged with espionage. She was quickly put on a show trial. It was a deeply one-sided affair—Mata Hari had literally been found guilty before questioning even began.

Captain Georges Ladoux—the man who coerced Mata Hari into working as a French spy—prepared the case against her. It was a win-win situation for Ladoux. Either Mata Hari seduced the Crown Prince and found out useful information or she took the fall as a double agent and raised the country’s morale. Hoorah! Ladoux himself was later arrested and charged as double agent, but he was eventually acquitted over a lack of evidence.

The trial of Mata Hari was given front page coverage across France. The press worked in cahoots with the French authorities to tell the accepted—or rather authorized—version of events. Maslov could have saved her—but he was embittered by his blindness and refused to testify in her defence.

Though there was never any real evidence against Mata Hari—her final script was now written. Mata Hari the world’s greatest and most evil spy was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to death. Mata Hari was executed on October 15th, 1917. She refused to be blindfolded or tied to the stake. She blew kisses at the firing squad. She was just 41.
 

 

 
More photographs of Mata Hari, after the jump…

 
For those with an interest in big ideas, these trading cards from Theory.org should fire up your neurotransmitters.

Between 2000-2001, a set of twelve trading cards was released monthly via David Gauntlett’s website Theory.org. This original set of cards featured theorists (and their concepts) from the world of social and cultural theory, gender and identity, and media studies. The first out of the pack was British social theorist Anthony Giddens who devised the theory of structuration and wrote the book on The Third Way. This was followed by theorist Judith Butler whose book Gender Trouble argued that “biological” sexes were just as much as a social construct as gender. Then came the great controversial French thinker Michel Foucault with his ideas about sexuality, gender and power structures. The deck included some interesting choices like artists Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George and concepts like Postmodernity and Psychoanalysis.

This official set of twelve trading cards was thought by some to lack a few key players and its release inspired various academics, students and alike to produce their own cards. These additions included Karl Marx, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Germaine Greer, Walter Benjamin and Marcel Duchamp.

Described as “Creative knowledge you can put your pocket™” these cards can be used to play a game of trumps—in which players can match strengths, weaknesses and special skills. For example, Foucault’s special skill of happily rejecting old models and creating new ones, might not quite beat Duchamp’s ability to confuse the hell out of everyone.

The full set is below—but if you want to own a set of these super brainy trading cards (and who wouldn’t?) then deal yourself in by clicking here.
 

#1 Anthony Giddens—British social theorist.
 

#2 Judith Butler—American philosopher and gender theorist.
 

#3 Michel Foucault—French philosopher, theorist, philologist and literary critic.
 
More thinkers and some big ideas, after the jump…

Alice Constance Austin showing her designs for the Llano del Rio community, 1916
 
If you say, “We’re going to build homes without kitchens, as a way of helping women break free of their socially inscribed roles,” most people today are going to react with wonderment or disbelief. But a century ago, the idea of removing kitchens from homes was a commonplace idea among feminist thinkers.

In the years just before the First World War, attorney Job Harriman invited white, union-affiliated, and socialist residents (yes, whites only) to join a utopian society he was planning for the Llano Del Rio socialist commune in what is today Llano, California, in Los Angeles County. A year later he asked feminist architect Alice Constance Austin to create living quarters for 900 new residents—in an effort to dream up a community without domestic labor, Austin came up with a radial design for the community in which none of the single-family homes had kitchens. Her dwellings placed a living room at one end and bedrooms at the other separated by a large “dining patio.” Her plans also included built-in furniture to reduce time wasted on dusting and sweeping.
 

This plan depicts Austin’s radial design for Llano Del Rio
 
The idea was that, in the words of Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite, “kitchens would become centralized (as would laundry), and treated as part of the larger infrastructure of the community.” According to “Another Look at the Llano Del Rio Colony” (PDF) by John M. Foster and Alex Kirkish, “Llano del Rio planned single-family houses without kitchens. Members dined communally, balancing the privacy of bedroom and parlor against the required sociability of the dining room.”

The notion of homes without kitchens had been kicking around for quite a while. In 1888 Edward Bellamy’s socialist utopian novel Looking Backward, America in the year 2000 was to be a paradise with communal kitchens. Ten years later, in 1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote the following words in her treatise Women and Economics:
 

Take the kitchens out of the houses, and you leave rooms which are open to any form of arrangement and extension; and the occupancy of them does not mean “housekeeping.” In such living, personal character and taste would flower as never before. … The individual will learn to feel himself an integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society.

 
In her socialist city, Austin anticipated labor-saving devices in the home and an underground central laundry and kitchens where hired chefs and workers would relieve women “of the thankless and unending drudgery of an inconceivably stupid and inefficient system, by which her labors are confiscated.”

In her book The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities, Dolores Hayden wrote:
 

Each kitchenless house was to be connected to the central kitchen through a complex underground network of tunnels. Railway cars from the center of the city would bring cooked food, laundry, and other deliveries to connection points, or “hubs,” from which small electric cars could be dispatched to the basement of each house.

 
Note that in addition to banishing the household of drudgery, Austin was also trying to make the town center a more tranquil place by eliminating both individual automobile traffic and frequent retail purchases (not needed with frequent food and laundry deliveries).

Unfortunately, Austin’s visions were never constructed. The First World War came along, gobbling up resources, and by 1918 the Llano Del Rio commune was a dead letter. Too bad we never got to see these ideas in action.

More after the jump…

Strong woman and acobat Louise Leers (aka Luise Krökel), 1930s.
 
Some of the images of the badass strong women in this post date all the way back to the very early 1900s however the female “strong woman” was an attraction as long ago as the early 1700s where women such a the “Female Italian Samson” and the “Little Woman from Geneva” would perform impressive feats of strength such as bearing massive amounts of weight on their backs or effortlessly hoisting several men in their arms.
 

The ‘Great Sandwina’ aka, Katie Brumbach.
 
Sometime in the late 1800s the appearance of strong women became more prevalent in sporting events and were also a common attraction in circuses where they would showcase their superhuman strength. This in turn paved the way for other rule-breaking girls such as female wrestlers and bodybuilders. One of the best known super women was Katie Brumbach called the “Great Sandwina.” Hailing from Vienna, Brumbach’s parents were also circus performers and it would appear that she was the combination of her father (who stood 6’ 6”) and her mother (who was herself a strong woman of sorts, sporting biceps that measured 15 inches around). She not only inherited her parents physical prowess and she performed with them, as well as many of her fourteen siblings. Brumbach would go on to wow audiences by lifting her husband (who reportedly weighed 165 lbs) over her head with only one arm and 300 pounds of weights with both. In her later years Brumbach joined the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a powerlifter where she snapped iron bars with her bare hands. At the age of 57 she was still able to pull to hoist her husband above her head with only one arm.

Another notable strong woman Kate Roberts went by the intimidating name “Vulcana.” In addition to her muscular build and ability to lift heavy weights (allegedly 181 lbs with one arm) she has some fascinating superhero-style folklore attached to her. In addition to saving a couple of drowning kids, Roberts dragged an unfortunate would-be purse snatcher who tried to steal her handbag all the way to the police station by herself. According to various historians Roberts also freed a wagon that had become stuck in a ditch in front of a crowd of awestruck Londoners. I’ve included images of other kick ass women in this post such as Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton (who was a notable member of the “Muscle Beach” crowd in the 1940s), and Joan Rhodes who enjoyed bending iron rods with her teeth and breaking nails with her bare hands.  There’s also a video of Rhodes showing off her strength in a cabaret act called the “Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove.”
 

‘Vulcana’ (aka Kate Roberts).
 

Abbye ‘Pudgy’ Stockton.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
Hot Seat was a syndicated talk show, running from 1983 to 1992, hosted by raving reactionary conservative commentator (and estranged father of actress Rebecca De Mornay), Wally George, who termed his delivery “combat TV.” The show’s format was a precursor to the popular “shock talk” shows hosted by the likes of Morton Downey, Jr. and Jerry Springer, with a profoundly right-wing posture. Hot Seat‘s studio audience was generally comprised of aggressively out-of-control meatheads, and George was a fist-pounding, screaming, Reagan-worshipping bully whose shtick was so over-the-top that one often wondered if the whole thing wasn’t a put-on.

In an interview I conducted last year with Nikolas Schreck who appeared on Hot Seat three different times, Schreck described George as “a consummate showman, no more or less insincere or fake than his showbiz idol Ronald Reagan, who both cunningly played exaggerated roles for their niche Neanderthal audience in the grand old tradition of American populist demagoguery.”

I love watching old Hot seat clips on YouTube. Although I find myself disagreeing with George’s positions 99% of the time, his delivery is just so much fun in a pro-wrestling sort of way that you can’t turn away from it. Generally Wally and his guests are both playing the part of the heel, and the “debates” almost instantly devolve into name calling and posturing with the rabid audience members getting into the mix, shouting everyone, including Wally, down. If you’re not a conservative, Wally is still a guy you “love to hate.”

But then there’s that really weird 1% of the time that you find yourself actually agreeing with him. For instance, when he appeared as a guest on (White Aryan Resistance leader) Thom Metzger’s public access hateshow, Race and Reason to debate him about racism having no place in conservatism. And then there’s this clip we’re going to look at today, with Wally debating a man named Mike Hubbell who claims that there’s “no such thing” as date rape.

Keep reading after the jump…

Photo by Connor Collins
 
Allison Wolfe, iconic 90s riot grrrl and Bratmobile member hasn’t stopped playing music since their break up in the early 2000s. In fact, she has gone on to be in several other bands such as Cold Cold Hearts, Partyline, Deep Lust, Cool Moms and most recently Sex Stains (whose debut album comes out September 2nd.)

I chatted with Wolfe about her new band as well as zines, Bratmobile, being a 90s female musician and an inspirational feminist.
 

 
Before Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman started Bratmobile, they had a riot grrrl fanzine called Girl Germs:

“Molly and I met in the dorms at the University of Oregon. We weren’t in the same room but we shared a wall and we would knock on the walls. We became best friends and started plotting to do all of these things. We were fairly young girls who were getting politicized who wanted to have a voice and participate. We really wanted to have a girl programmed radio show but it turned out that the University of Oregon didn’t have a college radio so I think Tobi Vail encouraged us to do a fanzine. We started the fanzine before we started playing music or did the band. It was a good way to have a voice when we didn’t have any other means at the time. We didn’t really know what we were doing but it was fun. Our first issue had an interview with Calamity Jane. It had scene reports and a lot of it was a reaction to grunge which had completely taken over the Northwest and was too male dominated. We wanted to have a girly voice.”

 

 
From there they began travelling to Olympia often to hang out. “We were a band in theory. We had been travelling up to Olympia on weekends and telling everyone we were in a band called Bratmobile.”

Calvin Johnson called them and told them he had set up a show for Valentine’s Day 1991 and wanted them to play with Bikini Kill. At this point they were not truly a band so they had to scramble to get songs together. “We went to our friend Robert Christie and were like ‘What do we do?’ He loaned us his practice space and let us use their equipment and but we didn’t know how to write songs. He said to listen to a bunch of Ramones records but I thought if all bands listen to the Ramones in order to start bands then I wouldn’t and I vowed to never listen to them which isn’t exactly accurate but I never owned any Ramones records or listened to them that much.”

Allison said she listen to a lot of female rap and hip hop before the band started such as Salt n’ Pepa, Yo Yo, Bytches with Problems, TLC and others. “That was a big influence on us, all these really awesome, kinda goofy but politicized women in rap and hip hop that weren’t commercialized yet. It was more politicized. They had messages that were pretty important. Also, the first Batman movie had come out and Prince did the soundtrack and the Batmobile was an influence on us naming the band Bratmobile.” Their first show, which was just her and Molly at the time, was pretty much a capella. “There was a little bit of guitar and drums going on but not much… We jumped off stage and Kurt Cobain walked in right then and I walked up to him and said ‘You missed us!’ and handed him one of our fanzines.”
 
More after the jump…

The VHS box cover art

Girls Bite Back (aka Women in Rock, 1980) is an ahead of its time document acknowledging female rock musicians. Directed by Wolfgang Büld (who also directed Punk in London, British Rock and Lovesick) the movie opens with a photo slideshow of many pioneer musical greats including Bessie Smith, Debbie Harry, Joan Baez, Cher, Dolly Parton, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt, Cass Elliott, Wendy O Williams and many others while Nina Hagen performs. After this we see a segment of interviews by some of the featured performers (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Slits, Girlschool, Lilliput, Zaza and Mania D.) and I’m amazed at how relevant their answers still are today. The women are asked what it’s like being female musicians, their overall answer is that they’re just musicians. Being female is not the important thing about what they’re doing. A young Viv Albertine is quoted saying, “We are fucking women making music—that’s all there is to say about it.” Unfortunately even with that badass mentality, 36 years later there is still a need for Viv Albertine to deface a punk exhibit for not acknowledging these important women and their impact on music.
 

The Slits

The most relatable thing about the women in this movie (at least for me) is a segment where they discuss their desire to be recognized as musicians and how they don’t want to be categorized as feminists or anti-male. It’s become a strange world where feminism is sometimes taken too far, as if it means hating men and wanting to be the superior gender, when really it’s all about equality. Girls Bite Back really captures this idea.

An indifferent Siouxsie Sioux is interviewed saying that if it was four years earlier she wouldn’t be playing in a band. She says, “It’s too easy. It’s the thing to do if you’re bored. It used to be more of a risk.” Siouxsie actually seems quite depressed in this footage. That’s probably the saddest thing about the film, as she seems entirely over her music career almost as it was beginning. However, she builds up more enthusiasm by their third live song “Jigsaw Feeling.”
 

Hard rockers Girlschool

Wolfgang Büld did a great job of picking out the bands featured in the film, I mean really his band choices were on point. It’s an awesome range of bands with rare footage of live shows and intimate interviews. There is something nicely raw about it as well, no captions to tell you who each band is, no subtitles when Mania D. is interviewed (they speak German). These imperfections, while a bit frustrating because you want to know what they are saying, make the film feel low budget in a labor of love, intimate kind of way. If you’re a die-hard Nina Hagen fan, you will be disappointed. She’s only in the very beginning and end, no interviews. However, the concert footage of her is pretty rad.

Girls Bite Back is a film female musicians should see. It’s poignant, witty and a great little rockumentary. If nothing else, it’s worth it alone to watch see the live performances by Girlschool and The Slits’ interview segments—they’re so fucking cool.
 

 
Atelier Manassé was a highly successful photographic studio established by husband and wife team Adorján von Wlássics (1893 - 1946) and Olga Solarics (1896 - 1969) in Austria in 1924—though some sources cite 1922.

Principally based in Vienna—with a smaller office in Berlin—the studio flourished during the 1920s and 1930s. It was known for producing highly flattering portrait photography of film, theater and cabaret stars. It could be said Adorján and Olga were the airbrush pioneers of their day—artfully painting out any blemishes or wrinkles and reducing the unsightly flab from legs and waists. The resulting photographs were mass produced and sold to fans as much sought after postcards.

But Atelier Manassé did not just specialise in lucrative publicity photographs—it also produced a vast array of erotica. In particular Olga dedicated herself to producing highly original nude photography which is credited with establishing the “pin-up” long before Playboy magazine. But Olga’s work was far superior and far more influential than any cheesecake photography—it drew on many avant garde ideas and cherry-picked styles from Surrealism and Expressionism. More importantly, Olga’s photography presented liberated images of women—relishing their own sexuality, their own bodies and their power of seduction.

There is a dedicated collectors market for Atelier Manassé photographs and even magazines all being sold at auctions and online for a goodly sum.

The following are some of the more Surreal and seductive photographs that typify the best of Atelier Manassé‘s erotica.
 

 

 
More beautiful photographs from Atelier Manassé, after the jump…