#4 Personal Hell in the Harlem Renaissance: Gladys Bentley's Sartorial Response to Respectability
I owe you a thesis post!
I must admit. I have been caught in the whirlwind. I graduated! You probably know that from my last post. However, I neglected to mention I won my first award. (Should I make a LinkedIn post? Probably.) I won the Ida B. Wells Prize for Distinguished Work in Africana Studies. The academic work that received this prize? My thesis that I’ve been posting here. I guess, you can call me award-winning writer, Saturn Johnson.
Characteristics of Suits, Tuxedos, and Tails
Although the 1900s and 1910s ushered in an era of suits for women,these greatly differed from the suits Bentley stole from her brothers. Men and women’s clothes were not as similar as they are now. When women began wearing suits, they wore skirts not trousers and used various construction methods to create a desirable and womanly shape. By the 1920s popular style shifted towards more loose construction and a boxy shape. Most dresses did not accentuate the waist and the hemline was just below the knee. Despite going fora boy-ish look women added elements of femininity back into their looks by wearing dresses with beading, sequins, tassels, fringe, and other details.1 In the famous photo of Gladys Bentley described earlier, none of these traditionally feminine elements were present. This represents a clear deviation for what would have been considered appropriate for women to wear at the time.
Men’s fashion of the early twentieth century had strict codes. The variations in men’s suits helped a man to present a certain idea about himself and allowed him to play with his proportions. Theodore Roosevelt was the male beauty standard of the early twentieth century. His broad shoulders and rugged masculinity were enviable. Men sought to replicate his look by widening the lapels on their suit jackets.2 In Gladys Bentley’s 1930 image, her tailcoat has wide lapels as well. Since she was a tall woman who wanted a men’s suit, it would have likely been tailored exactly for her. As a performer who would want to appear fashionable whilst taking a man’s role, adopting a wide lapel to emphasize masculinity would’ve worked in her favor.
Masculine accessories of the time would have been a hat and a cane, both of which Gladys Bentley included in her performance suit. Hats were common at the beginning of the twentieth century and it would not be until into the 1960s when many people began to stop wearing hats. One obvious way that top hats increased a masculine appearance was by their height. Any man wearing a top hat would immediately appear taller.3 More often than not fashion depicts class. A man whose hat was missing would be considered of a lower class. Top hats, initially, made of silk would not be good for physical labor but would be perfect for an opera or an inauguration. It was said of canes that, “The reason is clear. The man who decides to carry a stick automatically decides thathe will not wear a battered old hat, down-at-the-heel shoes, a questionable suitor overcoat, badly soiled or worn gloves, or the kind of furnishings favored infive-and-ten-cent stores.4 Bentley’s inclusion of a cane immediately elevated her outfit as canes were known to bring confidence. It’s unclear from the photo which kind of cane Bentley liked to carry, but carrying a cane was a symbol that demanded respect and was as important as one’s hat during the time period. Because Bentley sought to acquire a masculine figure, the cane can also be interpreted as a phallic symbol. Wealth and masculinity are intrinsically linked and Bentley through the inclusion of a cane was able to convey both, even as a Black lesbian performer.
The most defining feature of Bentley’s suit was its hue. Most suits throughout history are typically dark-colored. Dark-colored suits are favored because dirt and wear would be less visible and more practical as people traversed through the streets. Bentley’s white suit is what makes her an unforgettable part of history. Bentley wears white from her satin top hat to her Oxford shoes. During her performances Bentley would often sing risque lyrics which brought contrast to her wearing white, a symbol of purity and goodness. Black clothing is preferred for a slimming look and white shows a lot of detail. For a fat Black woman, like Bentley, wearing white would have been a vulnerable act against the status quo. Often fat people, especially fat Black women are encouraged to make themselves smaller even into invisibility, but by wearing such a bright color, Bentley resisted temptation to fade into the background.
Beauty standards were well established by the twentieth century and the 1920s praised a slender boy-ish physique. Thinness was associated with health and morality. A slender figure created the appearance of piety because it would have shown self-restraint and the absence of sins like greed or gluttony. Sociologist Sabrina Strings outlines the connections between fatness, anti-Blackness, and Christianity positing that early race scientists found a connection between Blackness and fatness claiming that it was due to “a fondness of gluttony.”5 Since race science was founded to “pin down fundamental differences between Europeans and non-Europeans” as a way to prove European superiority, these classification do not exist without the denigration of the non-European other. “Gluttony” and the pursuit of pleasure serve as religious critiques as Protestant values cautioned overconsumption and preoccupation with worldly affairs.
Men’s fashion also adopted a slimmer look. The Theodore Roosevelt inspired broad frame fell out of style and a heavy emphasis on tailoring led to slimmed down silhouettes. James Van Der Zee’s Portrait of An Actor, Harlem (1929) features an actor in a mostly white tuxedo, but his outfit is quite different from Bentley’s ensemble. This actor is wearing a tuxedo, while Bentley wears tails. Tuxedo jackets have the same length all around, but the front of a tailcoat is cutaway. Comparing these two photos taken within two years of each otherclarifies the difference between a tuxedo and tails. He does not wear a top hat,he instead wears a derby hat.6 Although still fashionable for the time, a derby hatgives the actor's outfit a more casual look. Another key difference between thislook and Bentley’s is the lapels and the sleeve cuffs. While Bentley’s suit had stiffpiqued lapels, the actors' lapels have less of a dramatic cut and are different fromthe shiny, satin of Bentley’s lapels. Under his suit jacket, the black waistcoatpeeks through where he poses to hold his jacket close together instead of usingits button. The actor wears a black bowtie, black shoes, and carries a curvedcane. In contrast, Bentely wears a white bowtie and white shoes.
Despite Gladys Bentley being known for her white tails, it eventually led to her being barred from performing in the 1940s. In 1937, hoping to find a new loyal audience and stable performing position after the Great Depression, Bentley moved west to Los Angeles and later to San Francisco. In 1940, she was no longer allowed to wear pants during her performances and in 1947, a police raid took place during her show at the Jade restaurant/nightclub, under the claim of indecency which was related to both the content of her performance and her physical dress.7 She was unable to be paid for this performance as a result. This police raid and payment failure represent a huge shift in the culture surrounding Black, queer performances. The Harlem Renaissance was long gone and Bentley was no longer making $125 a week; she wasn’t even able to secure the $21.50 for the performance at Jade nightclub. Realizing that her visible queerness was becoming a financial liability, she reinvented herself in Ebony Magazine in 1952.
Daniel James Cole and Nancy Deihl, The History of Modern Fashion, (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2015), 136.
Leah Payne, ‘Pants Don’t Make Preachers’: Fashion and Gender Construction in Late-Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century American Revivalism, ” in Fashion Theory: A Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture 6, no. 1 (2015): 83-113, https://doi.org/10.2752/175174115X14113933306860.
O. E. Schoeffler and William Gale, Esquire’s Encyclopedia of 20th Century Men’s Fashions. McGraw Hill Book Company, 1973, 322.
Schoeffler and Gale, 396.
Sabrina Springs, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia, (NYU Press, 2019).
Schoeffler and Gale, 322.
Bianki, Torres, “Lay It On The Line: The Life and Music of Gladys Bentley” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, 2024), 111.
I didn’t explicitly write this in my thesis, but as you can see, dressing in a masculine fashion is a huge act of resistance. It was in the 1930s and it remains an act of resistance today. It takes a lot of confidence to dress outside the binary and I have so much respect for masculine lesbians. In today’s conservative climate, there’s a push to be more traditional and the spaces for masculine lesbians continue to narrow.
On TikTok masculine lesbians are routinely denigrated even by people within our community. People subscribe to the idea that masculine lesbians are unfairly pedestaled in the lesbian community just because they are masculine, but that is completely false. A lot of times, masculine lesbians become the subject of discourse which just contributes to their dehumanization. Some lesbians want to be with “girls” who are “pretty” and use their preference to argue that masculine lesbians want to be men and that lesbian masculinity is ugly.
Obviously, I disagree. My thesis arose out of my love for masculine lesbians and the work that they have done to preserve our community and make lesbianism visible and undeniable. Gladys Bentley was a masculine lesbian who was fitted. The way that masculine lesbians have reappropriated men’s fashion and made it something completely their own should be an inspiration to us all.
Congrats on winning the Ida B. Wells Prize for Distinguished Work in Africana Studies!!! A true honor!