The supposedly scientifically established purity of the Circassian Ladies whiteness played on a white audiences need for reassurance about its identity in a world where octoroons like Zoe might dare to cross the color line. - YouTube 0:00 / 3:21 Circassian-Abkhaz Beauties! According to Voltaire, the practice of inoculation (see also variolation, an early form of vaccination) resulted in the Circassians having skin clean of smallpox scars: The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the small-pox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully from the body of another child. Many Georgian and Circassian families even encouraged their daughters to enter concubinage for the promise of a life of luxury and comfort, and many Circassians become favorite wives or consorts to the Ottoman sultans. The idea that a white woman might be sold into slavery, and especially sold into a slavery that marked her as a sexual object in a potentates harem, was a matter of both moral horror and transgressive fascination to the white imagination. Slow down please, and enjoy the info. Hailing from the North Caucasus and the northeastern Black Sea coast, Circassians are an ethnic group historically famous for their alluring females. Observations on the Hypothesis of some modern Writers, that America has been peopled by a distinct Race of Men and Animals; with some Proofs arising from the Natural History and Appearances of the new Continent in favour of the Mosaic Account of the Deluge", "Horrible Traffic in Circassian WomenInfanticide in Turkey", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Circassian_beauty&oldid=1141901272, Natalia Krlikowska-Jedlinska. See more ideas about people, costumes, picture. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. in, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 12:54. The term Circassian Beauty refers to the romanticized portrayal of women from The Caucasus: breathtakingly beautiful and feminine, slender-waisted and pale-skinned, with rosy cheeks and lustrous, big blue eyes. Circassian is the name of a people living on the northeast shores of the Black Sea. The beauty of the Circassian women in the 19th century were considered legendary throughout the world. The crucifix also shows up in Powerss statue The Greek Slave, where it can be seen, along with her removed clothes, just beneath her hand on the post on which she leans. Beautiful Circassian Woman. Mine Tugay (born July 28, 1978, Istanbul, Turkey) - Turkish actress. It is worth underlining that this costume and hair had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women looked, as the illustrations below indicate. All the more remarkable is that the Afro of the 1960s was to a large extent a symbol of rebellion against the norm then for many blacks, namely, straightening the hair to look more white; with the Circassians, we have a nearly reverse effect: frizzing the hair to appear more other, while still remaining identifiably white. Circassian beauties are admired for their abundant and luxuriant yellow hair and blue eyes. And that, in turn, would suggest that the white American lady was, at bottom, in her unadorned, uncultured nature, no different from the Circassianand so no different from the African. There was scientific, such as Voltaires letter On inoculation, and even mercantile as many products began to be sold with an allusion to Circassians, such as the Bloom of Circassia in London. Whiteness, then, might be seen as no longer a guarantee of liberty and mastery, and so the prospect of the Circassian Lady offered the subtle thrills of danger and ambiguity. H. R. Doane, Zaluma Agra, Star of the East, cartes-de-visite, two views (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. And if we accept that it can be destroyed, we must then accept that it can be destroyed by us and that it likely must be destroyed by methods kin to creation. But dont we now have a choice? Perhaps it will take an event as revolting and traumatic as the Marathon bombing to finally uncouple the name Caucasian from whiteness and lay it to rest. The legend of Circassian women in the western world was enhanced in 1734, when, in his Letters on the English, Voltaire alludes to the beauty of Circassian women: The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed it is in them they chiefly trade. In 1802 "the Balm of Mecca" was also marketed as being used by Circassians: While most Circassian tribes were famous for abundance of fair or dark blond and red hair combined with greyish-blue or green eyes,[12] many also had the pairing of very dark hair with very light complexions, a typical feature of Peoples of the Caucasus. We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. By the early nineteenth century, Circassians were associated with theories of racial hierarchy, which elevated the Caucasus region as the source of the purest examples of the "white race", which was named the Caucasian race after the area by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. And we can account for this by connecting the dots: both African slaves and Circassian slaves were subject to sexual exploitation, even if the latter were supposedly rescued from that fate, and this is the point of contact that played so powerfully on white Americans imagination: wildness, even a contained and constrained wildness, suggested that the sexual exploitation was in some sense natural to the enslaved womens own instincts, character, and desires. [12] The fact that Circassian women were traditionally encouraged to wear corsets in order to keep their posture straight might have shaped their wasp waist as a result. We, the children of Circassian women, were usually called "cats" by those of our brothers and sisters who had African blood in their veins, because some of us had the misfortune of possessing: blue eyes. Zoe looks white and lives free on a plantation in the American South. Circassian beauties is a term used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northern Caucasus.A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines.This reputation dates back to the Ottoman Empire when Circassian women living in . Why the Circassian Lady as the title for this particular type of circus performer? Credit attribution requested to the photographer and to the Ministry of Tourism Cosmetic products were advertised, from the 18th century on, using the word "Circassian" in the title, or claiming that the product was based on substances used by the women of Circassia. The play was a huge hit in England, but when it came to the United States, the ending changed: there is no marriage, and Zoe dies along with her lover in a final fiery cataclysm. garments of a respectable whiteness. It is derived from the Slavic girl's name Yelena, which is a slavicized form of the Greek name Helen. From personal experience of travelling to many countries in the Caucasus, they tend to be very very beautiful. (Although we must remember that this was a fantasy: the Circassian Ladies were performers playing a part.) [23], Circassian men were also exalted for their beauty, manliness and bravery in Western Europe, in a way Caucasus historian Charles King calls "homoerotic". Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven. Jul 31, 2017 - Explore lynda heath's board "circassian women" on Pinterest. . So one of the most beautiful would do, but be sure & get a decent-looking chap of 16 years old or more. The article also claimed that children born to the "inferior" black concubines were being killed. For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, Already in his 1775 text, Blumenbach specifically identified the Circassian women among the peoples of the Caucasus as the single most beautiful representatives of this pure and primordial Caucasian type: Take, of all who bear the name of man, a man and a woman most widely different from each other; let the one be a most beautiful Circassian woman and the other an African born in Guinea, as black and ugly as possible (Blumenbach, Anthropological Treatises, 363). And yet, at the same time, because the Circassian was thought to be the purest, most primordial exemplar of the white race, that may have led the white viewer to yet another thought: that the sexual fate and the sexual proclivities of the Circassian Lady (no true lady by Victorian standards because of these very proclivities) might just as well be those of any given American Lady, who must be, after all, the racial descendant of the woman on exhibit. The legend of Circassian women was also repeated by legal theorist Gustav Hugo, who wrote that "Even beauty is more likely to be found in a Circassian slave girl than in a beggar girl", referring to the fact that even a slave has some security and safety, but a "free" beggar has none. Originally published in German in 1775. Under these circumstances it was bound to happen that occasionally a kind of ridiculous "racism" broke out among my brothers and sisters. See more ideas about women, traditional outfits, traditional dresses. What do Chechen and Circassian girls generally look like? See more ideas about women, crimean tatars, beautiful. In this passage, Blumenbach is discussing the fact that all human beings form part of the same species, because they can reproduce together, despite the external differences of appearance. Also peculiar is how many of the Circassians have names beginning with a combination of Z and A or A and ZZublia Aggolia, Zalumma Agra, Aggie Zolutiaas if they were the alpha and omega of whiteness. Crane, Sylvia E., Greenough, Powers and Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century Italy(Coral Gables,Florida: University of Miami Press, 1972). Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, and Hunter, John, On the Natural Variety of Mankind inThe Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, trans. 0 Ratings 0 Want to read; 0 Currently reading; 0 Have read; Not in Library. Of breathtaking beauty, big and bright eyes and everything that could constitute a Venus. Was how the American traveler and writer Maturin Murray Ballou (1820-95) described the Circassian woman. Said that the Circassian beauties with the hair "Massimi as moss" captivate with their beauty and are much in demand in the harems of Oriental sovereigns. Admired for their pale and translucent skin, delicate features, light eyes and hair, small waist, good posture and elegant behavior. The legend of the Circassian woman involved a provocative component for white Americans: the idea that the Circassians were the most primordial form of the white race, and therefore also the purest and most beautiful exemplars of whiteness, especially their women; yet at the same time, these Circassian women were subject to the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire. The Circassians With The Most Beautiful Women In The World There are folk songs in various languages throughout the Middle East and the Balkan peninsula that describe the superior appearance of Circassian girls. Emily Jean "Emma" Stone was born on November 6, 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona to Krista Jean Stone (ne Yeager), a homemaker & Jeffrey Charles "Jeff" Stone, a contracting company founder and CEO. What fair one but must yield implicit faith, when she has the honour of the Countess De fairly pledged, that all sepacious [sic] impurities will be at once removed by this wonder-working nostrum. As Linda Frost has suggested, the Circassian woman occupied a very peculiar place in the nineteenth-century imagination, a place that challenged the dominant classifications of race, gender, and sexuality. Symbolic and only barely covert sexualization seems to have thrived in the liminal space of the sideshow freaks, as in this portrait of a snake charmer: The mystical symbolism of a freakish whiteness seems to have been even more accentuated in the case of some albinos, the whitest persons of all, who adopted the cachet of mysterious powers, such as mind reading, as a feature of their sideshow acts: This comes full circle in the portrait below of Aggie Zolutia, representing the highest possible pitch of a fetishized whiteness: an albino Circassian. Beauty's brightest colours Appear in advertisements on Turkish TV, in the theater. 30. Our choices about language are never just private. Frost, Linda, The Circassian Beauty and the Circassian Slave: Gender, Imperialism, and American Popular Entertainment, in Never One Nation: Freaks, Savages, and Whiteness in US Popular Culture, 18501877(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). These Circassians were actually women from the countryside of the United States who had a more exotic appearance, which he exaggerated by styling them with afro haircuts. It is history and has to be known. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". Europeans had sympathized with Greece not only for its being the font of Western civilization and its ideal of freedom but also for its resistance as a Christian nation against the Muslim Ottomans. The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, Never One Nation: Freaks, Savages, and Whiteness in US Popular Culture, 18501877. This lovely name offers a range of beautiful pet names, such as Jelica, Jele, Lena, Lenotschka, and Lenka. "Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in a Turkish costume and dubbed her Zalumma Agra, Star of the EastThe Circassian beauty was an instant success, soon to be followed by a succession of imported beauties with an enigmatic letter Z figuring prominently in all their names. [19], Regarding one of her half-sisters who was also from a Circassian mother, Princess Ruete of Zanzibar mentions that "The daughter of a Circassian was a dazzling beauty with the complexion of a German blonde. [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. The play tells the story of Zoe, the octoroon of the title. Another Circassian celebrity from Turkey (Tokat), Sari Seker Sema is a prominent radio and television host, presenter, DJ and columnist. [13] Many of the Circassian women in the Ottoman harem were described as having "green eyes and long, dark blond hair, pale skin of translucent white colour, thin waist, slender body structure, and very good-looking hands and feet". Racial theories of the mid 19th century held that the people living in the Circassian mountains near the Black Sea were examples of the "purest stock" of the Caucasian race. One Circassian woman, favoured with an aristocratic appearance, was avoided and even hated by the chocolate-coloured African women through no fault of hers, but simply because she looked majestic. [37] Actual Circassian hairstyles bore no resemblance to Barnum's fantasy. "[17], In his book A Year Among the Circassians, John Augustus Longworth describes a Circassian girl of typical Circassian features as the following: "She had regular and pretty features, blue eyes, and fair complexion; her hair was of a light auburn colour, and hung in a profusion of braided tresses over her shoulders, from a bonnet of scarlet cloth, trimmed and crossed with broad silver lace, not unlike the Albanian skull-cap. The first photograph of a Circassian Lady I found led me on a journey of inquiry whose strangeness I would never have guessed. She was tall, and well, though slightly, shaped; and held herself, like all Circassians, men or women, very erect."[18]. In the American context, that meant that human beings seeking to escape from their own form of very real enslavement could expect their liberty to be respected nowhere in the nation, not even in the supposedly free states of the North. The charged ambiguity of the Circassian Beauty, straddling sexual transgression and religious transcendence, marks this type of person with a certain mystical value grounded in her freakish whiteness. The Circassians are a North Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia.

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