Episode 127 - Legendary Women Who Seduced The World (& How You Can Too)

Written By Mary Lofgren
 

  • Mary

    Host

    00:45

    Hello, beautiful babes and beings, welcome to today's episode and welcome to Come to your Senses. So there are many things in life that I am obsessed with, my obsessions. I sometimes struggle with being obsessed, but really I'm just a very passionate person and I can be obsessed with almost anything, but the main thing, the thing that unites all other things, from lip gloss to liberation, is my obsession with powerful feminine beings. So, as we know, there are lots of different types of power in the world. There's privileged power, which is power that's inherited or given in a hierarchical structure. There's proximate power, which might be being in proximity to someone who has privileged power and inheriting some of that power, being protected by some of their privilege. There's dominant power, which, when well executed, such as setting a healthy boundary, can feel really good. Dominant power, when not executed skillfully, can feel like control or even abuse. And then we have embodied power, and this is the kind of power that literally gets me up in the morning, and it's where nothing outside of you can shake your inner knowing confidence and self-worth. Throughout history, there is one storyline that cannot be erased. There are many aspects of the feminine that have been erased from history, but there is one that in ancient times, in biblical times, in all times, the one storyline that always seems to leave its mark is the storyline of the sacred seductress. These fillies who kicked down the barn doors lived their lives by casting the spell of their sensuality and seducing the world to their embodied sense of power. And today we are going to hear the stories of some of these legends. So when I initially created this episode, the title that I was calling it was Bawdy Broad Wisdom, and my intent is to make it kind of like a backstage pass. When I was performing burlesque, one of the best aspects of being a performer was being backstage with other performers. It was like this ancient sacred ritual of adornment and chit chat and laughter. And I just remember especially being backstage with some of the performers that I most deeply admired, just feeling like I was soaking up so much wisdom from just watching the way that they embodied and hearing their crass humor, and it was just divine. It was a sacred experience, and so, without further ado, let's saunter backstage and soak up the wisdom of these seductive showgirl legends.

    04:41

    So where we're going to start is with the word showgirl. What does it mean to be a showgirl? To me, what that means is. I am a woman who refuses to stay hidden. She is a woman who chooses to show all sides of herself and adorn them in beauty glamour. She's known for flaunting her flaws and using them as part of the unique code of her attraction through authenticity. And that brings me to an excerpt that I want to read to you from my book Sacred Seduction, which was written as my former burlesque persona, Kitty Cavalier. So this is from the chapter on conscious attraction. What is the guaranteed way to ensure seductive success? Why don't we ask the experts? Imagine you're in a cafe and you notice someone who catches your interest. All of a sudden, three epic seductresses Frida Kahlo, Josephine Baker and Mae West appear before you as your seduction counsel. When asked what to do, Frida says go over there, order a double shot of tequila for both of you and ask them if they have an intuition about when and how they will die. Noted, Josephine wiggles over and says no, no, no, darling, you must force the band to play the birth of swing and start gyrating your body like a snake in the grass. Finally, Ms. West saunters into the spotlight of your attention, demanding that you go over there and fan yourself. When this gathers the person's attention, say oh sorry, sweetheart, are you suddenly feeling hot in those clothes? Don't worry, it's just me. With so many different options, what is a girl to do? All three of these applications are excellent and historically proven to get you what you want. But remember, as a sacred seductress, rather than relying on how we think things should look, we trust deeply in how things feel. What approach feels right to you Tequila, gyration, provocation or something completely different? Authenticity is at the heart of what makes a sacred seductress different from the stereotype of seduction. A sacred seductress is deeply connected to her instincts and she follows them without hesitation, despite what external influences might say. She is not afraid to receive counsel, but it is her inner authority that always gets the last word, and that inner authority is really the thread that ties all of these legends together, and so what we're going to go into now is our gems on each of these legends. Each of them has their own unique story, but what all of them have in common is this quality of erotic aliveness, where their life story contains a richness, an expressiveness and an artfulness that was informed by their individual expression, as well as their love and devotion to their communities and to seeing positive change in the world for those communities. And so, as we read through each story, I'm also going to share an art form that I think is unique to each of these legends and a question for you in your life to awaken and extend this ancestry, this lineage of erotic aliveness.

    08:59

    So, my friends, introducing our first seductive legend who embodied the art of sacred resistance Josephine Baker. So you've probably seen a picture of Josephine Baker if you're not already aware of her and her legend. She was an incredible burlesque performer in 1920s Paris. She left the United States when she was 16 to go and perform in Paris and was very well loved and very well received by French audiences. Josephine was a black woman with an African American ancestry, born to vaudeville parents. When Josephine was eight, she had to quit school in order to stay home and take care of her family and contribute to the household by cleaning the houses of wealthy white families. She was born in St. Louis and when she was 16, she moved to New York City and became a dancer and then made her debut in Paris. She was very famous for her dances in skirts. You might know her signature, famous banana skirt. She really made herself a name with something called the Danse sauvage, which she wore only a feather skirt, and skirts became part of her signature, and she went on to become one of the most popular, most admired, most highest paid entertainers in Paris. We all love and know Josephine for her funny faces, her provocative costumes, her embodied allure. But, josephine a less known aspect of her legacy was her deep love of service and resistance. In World War II she worked for the French resistance, at times smuggling messages hidden in her sheet music and even in her underwear. She worked for the Red Cross. She entertained troops abroad and at the end of the war she was awarded with some of the highest esteems the rosette of the resistance, the legion of honor to a France's highest military honors. Josephine tried to return to the United States to earn the same acclaim that she had in Paris and in France, and achieve that in her own country, but was shunned and discarded as a result of the rampant racism. And so Josephine was a fierce fighter for civil rights. In 1947, she began to adopt babies from around the world, and she adopted 12 children, creating what she called her Rainbow Tribe, and invited people to her estate in the south of France to demonstrate the way that interracial families could live together harmoniously. She participated in the march on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr and eventually the NAACP named May 20th officially Josephine Baker Day. So, while she was a legendary performer and entertainer, those skirts were the tip of the iceberg of her true contributions and talents that she shared so generously with the world. So this art of resistance, a question to ask yourself in sparking this legend inside of yourself, is what rules am I ready to resist in my life? So maybe you were taught the rule to keep to yourself, not to get angry, not to show too much skin, especially at your age, that if you don't know the right thing to say and the correct thing to say, you shouldn't speak up at all. Lewis once said some good trouble. And with the art of resistance, what do these rules result in in terms of your behavior, your choices, how you feel on a day-to-day basis? Do they move you closer or further away from the kind of showgirl you want to show up as, which, again, is simply a woman who chooses not to hide her true essence? And are you willing to, as John Lewis would say, get yourself into some good trouble?

    14:09

    Our next legend is one of my favorites Natalie Clifford Barnet. And what Natalie embodies for us is the art of erotic agitation Hang with me here, the art of erotic agitation. So Natalie was born in the late 1800s to an aristocratic, very wealthy family, and her whole life, natalie well, natalie's father was a staunch rule follower, shall we say, and his best hope for his daughter and for his own legacy was that she married well, whereas her mother was a bit more of a libertarian and really taught and encouraged her daughters to think for themselves. So Natalie, in again the 1800s, early 1900s, was an openly gay woman. She was known in Paris as the Don Juan of Lesbians. She seduced the legendary courtesan Léon de Puget, resulting in Léon de Puget writing a book of erotic poetry and stories about Love affairs between women. In fact, fabulous story about Natalie. One of my favorite seduction stories of all time was that Natalie, who had a crush on Leonde Pucci, one day showed up on her doorstep dressed as a page boy and Natalie said hello, I am a page of love sent by Sappho. Natalie had notorious love affairs with a number of different legends, including the literary legend Colette, and one of my favorite stories about Natalie was her temple de Amitié, temple of friendship. So on her property in Paris. She had this beautiful temple with columns, and every Friday she would host literary salons where the great writers of the 1920s would come and share their work. She was a fierce advocate of women's rights and in 1927, in reaction to the I'm reaching here with the pronunciation but the Académie falsaise to my French and Parisian listeners. I'm very open to feedback and pronunciation tips, but in reaction to the refusal to allow women into their ranks, natalie founded her own women's academy. And so a question to ask yourself to embody Natalie's legacy is what should am I ready to shed? So, when I think about all of the shoulds placed on Natalie's life, you should be heterosexual, you should marry a man, you should keep quiet, you should use your money to demonstrate wealth, you should follow the rules, you should have monogamous relationships. You know, natalie's privilege of wealth and whiteness allowed her the freedom to be very expressive and very counterculture with her life. I want to honor and acknowledge that, and I also want to honor and acknowledge her erotic expressiveness and her willingness to agitate in order to live her deepest truth. So what shoulds am I ready to shed? What shoulds have been placed upon you and what would be the opposite of those shoulds. So I wanted to tell a story from my own life about this. Recently I did a shoot with my good friend, Allie Monday, who was a past podcast guest for Come to your senses conversation all about friendship, freedom and farts. You can go to the link in the show notes to check out that episode. And Allie does this amazing, honest, fine art nude photography, and she asked me if she could share some of my images on the internet and I was like you know, I don't know about showing nudity on the internet. You know it's like when you put something on the internet it's on there forever. And I used to be very cavalier, living up to my surname, kitty cavalier, with my body on the internet, which I kind of later regretted a little bit. And I was just kind of naive at the time and didn't realize that your shit lives on the internet forever, and so I was hesitant. But I selected some photos that I would be comfortable with and recently Allie posted them in the most reverent, beautiful reel and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes as well. And I've watched that reel, the little videos on Instagram, dozens of times like oh my God, like that's me, and there's something about being seen by an audience, and this is why being a showgirl has had the most explosive effect on my sense of self and self esteem. That allows me to see myself through the eyes of beauty and adoration and sacredness in a way that I would never be able to see myself, just if those photos were hidden on my computer. And so the shoulds for me in that case, some of them were. I shouldn't make myself vulnerable, I shouldn't let other people see my quote unquote flaws or imperfections, and knowing what should you're ready to shed is a great starting point. But a follow up question to that is well then, what am I ready to embrace? What would be the opposite of that should? So in my case, it's like what I was ready to embrace is visibility in my vulnerability and ready to embrace love and adoration and adornment of the body that I have now, which is very different from the body that I had in my 20s, when I was sharing myself as Kitty Cavalier.

    21:05

    And so what shoulds are you ready to shed in honor of Saint erotic agitation, Natalie Clifford Barney, and our final legend that I'm so excited to share with you is the legend Marsha P Johnson, Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, was a legend of the trans rights movement. A gorgeous beauty, often adorned in flowers it's one of her signatures and a true leader in sacred service to her erotic aliveness and the legacy that that was leading her to. So Marsha grew up assigned male at birth and perceived as male, and yet would love to adorn. As a child, and when she was in her teen years she moved to New York City with $15 and a sack of belongings. And Marsha encountered many struggles and a lot of suffering because of the transphobia discrimination you know. In the 60s and 70s just being gay, much less transgender, was actually a crime, and Marsha was a sex worker, often encountering abuse, and the lack of employment opportunities due to her identity resulted in her having houselessness as part of her story. And yet Marsha maintained a vivaciousness, a resplendently broad and wide heart and a devotion to the rights of her community. So Marsha was a participant and on the front lines of the Stonewall riots, which was a major turning point for gay rights. Marsha and her good friend Sylvia Rivera founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, also known as STAR, which was an organization dedicated to shelter transgender individuals who were shunned by their families, and she created Star House, where transgender youth could stay and feel safe, and a story that I love that I read about one of her advocates was from this woman named Mariah who, when she arrived at Star House, she said something to Marsha and Marsha says you don't call me Marsha, you call me ma, I am your mother now. And Star House started in the back of an abandoned truck in Greenwich Village and then moved into a dilapidated building which was later evicted. And this woman, mariah, is an uplifter of her legacy and of Star House. And so the question to ask yourself is what do I want to be? My erotic aliveness legacy? And remembering that here it comes to your senses, we define the erotic as Audra Lord would define it in her epic article Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power, the erotic as our fully feeling self, our fully engaged life force. And when I think about that showgirl, when I'd be performing on stage, or even when I'm waiting for takeout in a restaurant and I'm in showgirl posture, which is one of the tools that I'll be teaching in showgirl charm school, it's like my life force is fully in my body and I'm allowing it to be visible to those around me and it has a change, an instant and noticeable impact on myself and on those around me. That was me snapping in the background for emphasis. And so your erotic aliveness legacy, what is the energy that you want to be remembered for and what catches your awareness of your fully feeling self that you want to devote yourself to. So an organization I'm really passionate about is called A New Way of Life and was founded by Susan Burton, who wrote the book Becoming Ms Burton. Highly recommend checking out that book, and the book is all about Susan Burton's journey with addiction and being incarcerated multiple times and the way that the prison pipeline keeps the incarcerated in a never ending cycle of addiction and destroys people's lives, minds, hearts, and the way in which people of color are so much more frequently given prison sentences over white population, which is more often given options for second chances and for treatment, and that Susan's life really changed when she was given the opportunity to get treatment. And so she started a new way of life to provide a safe refuge for women who are coming out of incarceration to have a safe place to rest, to recover from the trauma and to rebuild and regain their families and access free legal aid. And so I support this organization and I also. It has inspired a spark in me, in my own legacy, when I think about and dream up the legacy of Come to your Senses. One of the things that I'm working towards in my five to 10 year vision is being able to have either a segment of Come to your Senses or its own nonprofit that creates opportunities for art and dance and expressive sensual, embodied therapies for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated population. So it's like my fully feeling self, my erotic self, comes alive in art and dance. My fully feeling self breaks open when I think about the trauma of incarceration and the impact that that has on the lives of the incarcerated population and everyone in their orbit, and so marrying those things together is a part of what I want my erotic aliveness legacy to be.

    28:28

    So where is your erotic aliveness legacy leading you, and one place it might be leading you? I'm so passionate about sharing showgirl charm school because I am telling you there is nothing in the world that has impacted my sense of confidence, aliveness and devotion to my unique inner spark and the imprint it is here to contribute and leave on the world. Nothing has been more impactful than learning how to embody this showing of who I am through the body, through burlesque, and so, if you'd like to join us, there are early babe bonuses that are available right now, including $100 off your tuition and the Sensual Living Meditation album, which has delivered the moment you enroll. You'll also receive a PDF copy of Sacred Seduction, my book. When you Enroll, there is a showgirl discovery kit, the showgirl charm school retreat and the showgirl charm school backstage pass Q&A. All of this takes place on Zoom, so it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, and so please go to schoolofsensualliving.com slash showgirl to learn more and to grab your ticket. Space is limited for this event, and so schoolofsensualliving.com slash showgirl, I will see you over there, as always. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so grateful if you would share it with a friend, like, subscribe, rate and or review. Your love and appreciation means so much to me on the podcast and makes such a difference in our ability to grow our listenership. So thank you in advance. Thank you for listening today. Go live your seductive legend, and I will see you in our next episode.

Salome.

Cleopatra.

Marsha P. Johnson.

Authentic, expressive, sensuous style can change your energy from dismal to diva in no time at all.

These are just some of the women who have taken the world by its bra straps and left a mark on history that cannot be erased.

From Josephine Baker's iconic burlesque performances to Frida Kahlo's distinct brand of power, we unfurl the stories of these audacious women who defied norms, drawing their strength from their unabashed erotic aliveness.

Today’s episode takes you on an enchanting journey into the lives of legendary women.

Their inspiring stories of unabashed sensuality and inner authority will teach you how to rule the world, just like they did.

Let’s salute these legends of erotic expression, and awaken the legendary Seductress inside of YOU.


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Mary Lofgren
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