Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Victorian Beauty Standards

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Why did Victorians value pale skin so highly? And how were black bodies viewed by Victorian society?In this episode Kate is joined by author and historian Dr Rochelle Rowe of the University of Edinburgh.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I'm me. You're you and you are listening to Betwicks the sheets. And we're so glad that you are. But before we can go any further together,

I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast book. My adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adults, subjects. And you should be an adult too. And if you're not, then just go home right now before your mum writes us angry letters in the morning. Right.

the rest of you, on with the show. If you're looking for signifiers of just how warped Victorian views on the human body truly were, then look no further than the long-standing tradition of the sideshow. Filling tents up and down the country were punters from all walks of life. I mean, Queen Victoria herself was said to be a big fan of these. And what more validation would you need? Inside these curtain walls, however, lurks the sinister side of the 19th century notion. of entertainment. Exploitation and racist portrayals of people's bodies reinforced how ugliness and beauty

were thought of in the 19th century. It was a world where ideas of what was grotesque and what was hypersexualized collided in deeply disturbing ways as we are going to find out today. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob. Good, pushing. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time.

Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello, and welcome back to Patrix Ashish, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. As we know, the Victorians were mental. That is just a fact of history, and I'm a historian, so I'm allowed to say that. The misinformation that shaped their beauty standards

were wild and insidious to say the least. In this fourth and final episode of our mini-series on beauty standards, throughout history, we are getting deep into the murky world of the Victorians. Joining me today is the amazing author and Victorian expert, Roe, and she's going to help us to see the beauty and ugliness of the 19th century. And help us understand how the expansion of the British Empire and colonialism informed ideas of beauty and ugliness that are with us to this very day.

Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. it's only Roe, how are you doing? I'm good, thank you. Yeah, really well. It's sunny here in Edinburgh. Oh, is it? Oh, well, that doesn't happen very often. Wow. It's bright and warm. Yeah. This episode is the final one in our little mini series about historical beauty standards. And we're looking to you to tell us about the Victorians who, I love the Victorians. They're mad as a bunch of, as a box of They really are. And I know that you have researched black models and black beauty standards in the 19th century. And I'm wondering just as a starter question, what brought you to that research? What's

your research's origin story of where you are now? Oh, I was always interested in black beauty culture, actually. And my early research, which led to my first book, was all about the 20th century. and decolonization in the Caribbean and something of a national obsession with beauty competitions that exist there or did through the middle decades of the 20th century. I think they're still going quite strong, actually. There's still a lively interest in beauty competitions in the Caribbean. But that's kind of what led me to it because there's such a swirl of different ideas about beauty in the Caribbean. And I was interested in the colonial influence and how people resisted that and somewhat observable. absorbed it as well and worked within it. So that's where the interest began and now my research

has expanded somewhat. I love that. Just as a complete detour, did you see the outfits from the Met Gala? At the time of recording, we're a few days after the Metcgala. I'm obsessed. And I actually already teach my students the book, the Black Dandy, that is the centre. Oh, I love that book. Yeah, that research being the centre of the theme and the idea for the Met Gala. So my students thought I'd done it on purpose and they were like, did you know? That was going to be the theme of the Met Gala because it was announced last autumn. And I was like, aha. Of course.

Perfect. I didn't know. It made me look cool, so that was good. For anyone listening who's not aware that the theme of the Met Gala this year was, well, the theme was tailored for you. But the exhibit that goes along with it was Black Dandy. throughout the, I can't remember the exact title of it, but that's what it was looking at, was how black culture used this image of the dandy. I thought that was fascinating. Who did you think got it right on the red carpet? Oh gosh, I thought Janelle Monet nailed it. I think

they have always cultivated a dandy-esque appearance and so I wasn't surprised that they nailed it at the Meta Ball. Some of the looks are absolutely incredible. And it was fascinating watching it. I'm not a fashion historian. I couldn't pretend that I was. But I do research the 19th century quite a lot. And looking at this idea of the dandy. I read Monica Miller's book just before the Met Gala as well,

just to get a really good look at it. I know that we're not particularly talking about dandies, but dandies are kind of beauty. Can you just explain to anyone who's listening what a dandy is and what dandies were in the 19th century? So dandies are, it's kind of a pejorative name given to men who take a really strong interest in fashion. And it's not just fashion and how they use fashion,

but there's a whole kind of repertoire of wit that they are employing with that as well. It's how they gesture. And they're often somewhat at the margins. They're pushing margins of what is considered acceptable, you know, gender roles and suitable, I suppose, behaviour for men. And the thing about the black dandies of figure that Monica Miller has you know, written an exceptionally beautiful book on, is that they are often in these incredibly difficult situations. And it's fascinating to look at how they have deployed this wit and

gesture and style to navigate really difficult circumstances. So she looks at historic figures that she approaches as dandies of sorts who kind of were navigating, in fact, Georgian British society. There's a man called Julius Subis, who's born into enslavement, but becomes like the sort of favoured, almost pet, you know, it's quite dehumanising. He becomes this sort of favoured boy in a, in a, I think, a very wealthy household. But as he grows up, the whole question mark is, what do you do with a favoured, enslaved child who then has grown up with all these tastes in finery that were essentially not meant for him, you know? And so he, as a grown man, I think, becomes quite a sort of, I suppose, a controversial figure and an unusual

figure because he's kind of saying, I'm still entitled to all of this finery and I'm going to use it in my life. And so he takes up sword fighting. He trains people in that and works with horses a lot and somehow weaves a path for himself through elite society where he, in scarecrowes doesn't belong exactly. So I think she takes that concept and looks at it through. a range of periods and says, look at all these men who are using clothing and style and wit in special ways to protest their own sort of dehumanisation, essentially. It's an incredible book and the way that she picks out fashion as a sort of a sight of rebellion and defiance, but also sort of a plea for acceptance. I thought what was interesting about

the figure of the dandia, maybe I've got this wrong, but especially as moving the 18th to 19th century, it really comes out of, is you start to see men's beauty being looked at in a very different way. Up until now, in the episodes that we've looked at, we've done medieval beauty and we've done Roman beauty, and the emphasis is almost always on women and women's bodies. And it's like, men get to be there and go, well, look, I'm not fat and I'm not bold, so I'm beautiful. End of. But the dandy suddenly comes along and suddenly, like, the binary between male and female collapses and now men are beautiful. And that's quite threatening. Yeah, yeah, it's quite unsettling, I think, for some people. And, you know, certainly my research shows that beauty has

consequences, not only for black women in Victorian Britain, in 19th century Britain, but for men as well somewhat, you know, men can, to some degree, make a bit of a living of being beautiful. Yeah. which I guess we'll talk about later, like their work as artist models. They're very sought after black men as artist models in Victorian, Britain, London, I would say, and perhaps other places as well. There have been some constants throughout this series that I've noticed popping up. Pale skin, and no matter what race you are actually, seems to have been a really big feature that most of history is be pale.

The other one, youth, I haven't found anyone yet that's saying that we get more beautiful as we get older. what about the Victorians? What are they doing? Is this still obsession with youth and paleness in force for them? And what are they doing with it? Yes, I think they are very interested in paler and paleness and somewhat looking a bit sickly as well. That's a weird Victorian thing that they do. Tell me about that. That sort of consumptive looking beauty, you know, I'm laughing, but it's not funny that people were suffering from things like to vote. But there was a way in which fashion being, I'm a lover of fashion, but I will also acknowledge that it can be really perverse. And so, yeah, this thing of like actively cultivating a somewhat weakened, you know, look. And that being seen as good for women really says a lot about how gender roles were working for white women, this idea of being frail, small, tiny, in fact.

And yeah, and sort of almost like they're fainting away was quite popular. Although these things are never a complete constant, they're always in tension, and the ways in which black women are drawn into these debates about beauty are really interesting because they are often taken as something of an extreme opposite to like these prevailing beauty Sanders, you know, this interest in Pala and so on. But there's a lot of projection and a lot of fascination with the black body, nevertheless. And it's something that I've traced back through the centuries. And you can think about it as having a long history right back to the colonial encounter when lots of European explorers are traversing the world and sending back these stories, these fanciful tales of women who are either extremely beautiful or monstrously ugly. And they can be really, really variable these accounts.

And over time, they only start to harden into this extreme of black ugliness, so-called, with the need for a moral justification for enslavement and for colonialism. And that's when you start to see more consistent accounts. And it's never quite consistent, but you start to see more accounts of beastly black women, as though slavery almost is meant for them or something. So there's this kind of attempt to justify this regime by saying, It suits the people. They're meant for work and the women are ugly, so it's fine, which is me being a bit reductive. But yeah, essentially that's what we see. In a nutshell, that's it, isn't it? That's what's happening. I'll be back with Rochelle after this short break. What you've got in Europe, and I suppose in America as well, is this preservation of the white woman as this pale, frail body, the angel in the house, always in need of protection. but what kind of goes along with that is that that's like a fevered middle class fantasy.

That's not the reality. Regular working class women were not lying on a chaise long all day looking pale and sickly. And it is all caught up with notions of race. But the other thing I see is that people of colour were being fetishized as well as being hypersexual. What has your research shown you about that? So essentially I've looked at two women who, both of whom's experiences are actually not all that exceptional.

For all that it might appear so, they both have experiences that are quite representative of some of the ways in which black women are moving through 19th century society and are caught up in these debates about beauty. So the first, Sarah Bartman, her examples become quite infamous down the years. I know you've talked about her on this podcast before as well. and she's become better known because her story seems so extreme. She's exhibited as an oddity, essentially.

She's trafficked from the Cape Colony in the early 1800s when it becomes modern-day South Africa, but it's sort of newly under British control. And she's essentially trafficked there. She's an enslaved woman there, trafficked to Britain and exhibited as an oddity. and as the show is some kind of a meeting of a site of scientific inquiry or pseudo-scientific inquiry. So it draws the scientists, it draws the general public, starting with the elites and then, you know, gradually more and more middle class people come to see her. And it's also something of an erotic display as well. And there is lots of concern from abolitionists at the time that, you know, is she an enslaved woman on display?

because they are campaigning for the end of slavery. And so there's concern that this is an enslaved woman who against her own will is being exhibited in this way. And so, yeah, as you say, the exoticisation is ever present through Victorian and 19th century society because she's there. There's a lot of projection onto her. People are fascinated.

She is exhibited in Ireland as well, later in France. And there I think some of the desire is much more nakedly shown. In Britain there's this veneer of respectability that follows the show around somewhat in the way that they advertise it and things. But in France there's a bit more of an open sort of purient interest and concern that this woman might be a bit too sexy, essentially, and is she corrupting our men and women?

But it's the same appetites, I would say, in both in all the places that she's horribly exhibited. Just for anyone that didn't catch our episode on Sarah Bamar or doesn't know who she is, can you tell us why she was being exhibited in what was essentially a sideshow and then later as a medical curiosity? So she's exhibited because she's seen to have, in European eyes, almost exaggerated body parts. And so it's part of this process of objectification and abjectification and othering. of black women and their bodies. As I say, she's not as exceptional as people might perhaps think. There is a whole traffic in people and also, you know, plants and animals from empire. They're all

sort of being moved through and shown for their exoticness and for their curiosity. And so it's almost seen as an educational show to some extent, but the sexual interest in her is really focused on her buttocks, on her genitalia. A legend grows up that women from that part of the world have larger genitalia. And so essentially it's all the things you might expect that people are coming to look at, but they're able to dress up their interest in some kind of scientific curiosity. We need to know about people of the world kind of thing. And there's always been an interest in classifying humankind, you know, and in Europe and since, you know, the Enlightenment, trying to order and classify humankind.

So they're interested in her as an example of what is referred to as the hot and tots, but it's not a nice name. It's a sort of pejorative name that is used to describe the quotient people of Southern Africa. And so she's described as the Hot and Top Venus, and it's kind of a mocking name as if to say this is what they consider beautiful in Southern Africa. But she becomes almost a type, not her herself, but the exhibition of her becomes a type. And so through Victorian culture, you'll find references to the African Venus and to Hot and Top Venus. So to some extent, the show itself is repeated, I think, with different people in that role.

But also it just kind of takes on a legend in Victorian society because tragically, she's dissected after death in Paris by a preeminent scientist, Georges Cuvier. It's grim, you know. And so she's dissected and exhibited for me. many decades. So, you know, the really awful thing is that she's exploited in life and then this show has this kind of an afterlife. And people are able for, I think, over 100 years, they're able to go and view, I don't know how long her actual remains are on public display. I think at some point they're taken downstairs into the bells of the museum, but they're in the museum of humankind, of mankind in Paris for many years. So even after death, you know,

she's exploited and it's hard to really quantify the impact of that treatment and that display of a black woman's body on like European popular culture essentially and so that's why her example is somewhat infamous and she wasn't the only one no not the only one not the only one there was a woman exhibited in leads I found an advertisement for her the hot and tot Venus again it wasn't so about me and I couldn't find out anything else about who this person was but there were others. Yeah, there really were. And I think it feeds into what becomes elements of freak shows and the circus that become more and more popular. You know, it's the mass entertainment of the 19th century as it continues. Circuses and these kinds of shows become really popular. And, you know, you've got the bearded

lady and all sorts of other people who were exhibited essentially as oddities. And it fits into that history, essentially. It's very complex and like that, like the Monica Miller book where she's talking about boundaries being blurred, you sort of get the sense that that's what's happening in cases like Sarah Bartman, because on one hand, she's clearly being mocked and ridiculed and exhibited as a freak. But then there's also this very intense fetishization that goes with it. And there's this projection from the white community about she must be hypersexual and are women are not. And it's all bound up in, I suppose, notions of body and beauty and modesty. Yeah. It's so fucked up. It's really perverse. And so what you start to see is you start to see,

and as I say, this has a long tradition, but in the Victorian period, there are more men of science, pseudoscience, who are really interested in theorising on race. And they are saying to white women. An example would be Alexander Walker who wrote a book on beauty that is essentially urging white women to be beautiful because it's like a racial national duty almost. And so we start to see some of these attitudes again hardening into scientific fact. You know, Francis Galton, the famous eugenicist, he's another one who, interestingly, perhaps because of Bartman's legacy, is in Southern Africa and is trying to measure the dimensions from a distance. He's too shy to actually ask anybody to be submit to measuring.

But he describes in his writing the way he is measuring South African women's bodies to understand beauty. And he's doing a similar thing in Britain. He's going around the British Isles and he's kind of covertly trying to judge who's the most beautiful. And again, trying to make this into like something with some sign of kind of scientific credibility. So it only kind of increases through the century, I would say, this obsession with beauty and with race and putting the two things together. But yeah, as you were saying, urging white women to do their part almost whilst also cultivating this fascination with the other and this fear of the other whilst also sort of somewhat desire. you know, the other as well with these shows and these exhibits.

In the 19th century, you get, obviously, industries booming. They're famous for it, the industrial revolution. And shopping and consumerism explode as well. And part of that is the beauty industry. There's always been a beauty industry, but it really gets going in the 19th century. You have endless books about being published, as you were saying, about how to be beautiful. And for most of the 19th century, it seems to be a very no-make-up makeup look. Obviously, you're supposed to have makeup on, but you're not supposed to look like you have

makeup on. Like rouge, no, that's bad. And the hair is generally swept up. And they've got all of these oils and lotions and potions and like drops to put in your eyes to make them look bigger. And I was just wondering when you were saying, what was accessible to black women at this time as a beauty industry? Was that accessible to them? Because in all of these adverts and all of these books that I've read, I can't recall one of them, considering that the person they're writing for wouldn't be white ever.

I think that's a really good question. I speculate, I can't say I've found evidence of this, but I speculate that for black women, their beauty practices are going to be somewhere at the meeting of a kind of a healthcare thing because a lot of women under enslavement have to, they have to rely on themselves within, you know, enslaved communities to some degree for care,

have to rely on themselves. there are surgeons on plantations and things that do the basics, but essentially women are known for becoming healers and adept at managing herbs and things. And so you get women like Mary Seacol, who famously says that she's descended from a line of doctoruses. That's the term they use. And so she's very knowledgeable about plant life

and how to use it in the care of the body. And so I imagine that women are bringing this, to some degree with them. A very pragmatic response to needing to look after the body and having to some degree like share knowledge between communities and get hold of particular things that are known to be good, like Shea Butter and things like that for care of the hair and skin. And there is an interest in beauty and fashion that, you know, comes down through the years

that's partly about distinguishing yourself, even within the privations of slavery and colonial, society. So if you're a free woman of colour, you want to show that you are someone of that status and not enslaved. So you might tie your headscarf in a different way and wear slightly grander clothes because you're not under the same restrictions and restrictions as enslaved women. Some of the women I write about in the 19th century, it's a great question to be asked. I'm interested in how they are grooming their hair and their bodies and how they're styling themselves. They have hard lives. They're working long hours. I don't imagine it can be their primary.

preoccupation, but nevertheless, you know, like they must be doing something to dress their hair. And it's a bit like research I've done into the latter part of the 20th century when it was all about going to certain shops and getting things that are only imported, you know, in certain places. So you'd go to a shop that would have a whole bunch of things for your culture, whether it be food or hair and skincare. I'll be back with Rochelle after this short break. And the other woman that you've researched, and she is, fascinate him and they all are is the pre-Raphaelite model Fanny Eaton and that's her actual name and I'm afraid that historians are complete children when it comes to you find any Fanny in history you do

have a bit of a giggle but Fanny Eaton please tell me about this remarkable woman she is remarkable and I am fascinated with her life her and her mother actually so she is born just at the end of slavery in the Caribbean and Mauritius. So the law changes in 1834 and she's born in 1835. And I just think that's such an auspicious date. I mean, thousands of people are in the same situation, right? So on the one hand, it's not so auspicious, but there's something really incredible about the fact that she's born into this process where they are beginning to dismantle the legal structures of slavery. Materially, not a lot changes for people in terms of their lives. And so I think it's really significant that her and her mother somehow come to Britain

in the years after the end of slavery in the Caribbean. They're clearly looking for a better life somehow. I speculate that they came with a big, like a wealthy family, as many West Indian women were sought for workers, nurses and nannies and such like. So perhaps they were brought as servants with a family. But where I find them in the archive is living independently, living in the Kings Cross, area. So if they did come that way, they don't stay in those circumstances. And so her mother, so she's born Fanny Antwistle. Her mother is Matilda Foster. And she's a woman, a black woman, a great name. She's a black woman in the records. And her daughter is of dual heritage, European and African descent. And so she's a mixed race woman, which is really significant in

Jamaica. And I'm not sure to what extent she'd have been read as Brown in Britain. I think. quite possibly in some situation. It all kind of depends. Race is so fluid. And so in some of the work that she did, her somewhat ambiguous racial features are used to the advantage of artists. But I also speculate that perhaps on the street she was still read as a black woman, as many people were at this time. But yeah, she's a Jamaican woman in London in the mid-1800s. And I think she meets on the street perhaps one of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and so she starts modelling. They did that a lot. Right.

They didn't have gone up to interesting looking women and just gone, can I paint your picture please? Yeah. And they are really, to the point we made earlier about this sort of consumptive, slightly frail-looking beauty. They are completely acting in defiance of that. They like women who look tall and strong and ruddy-cheeked and as though they're, Bucks them as though they get outside. That's what they tend to model and picture. And so by then she is Mrs. Eaton.

She's married a taxi driver. She's working as a domestic labourer who goes from house to house. So really hard toil. But she has this side gig as a model and does it for 20 years and basically sits for a good number of these pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. And her likeness is in so many a very very. artworks essentially. So I... Do you realize it was for so long? Yeah. From her 20s to about 44, she's doing this. And it's only when her husband dies that

she seems to stop. I can't say absolutely. And then, you know, the family, she, nine of her children survive. She has 10 children and nine survive. And I do think this is really significant because, as we've said, you know, she's born just the first generation out of slavery and motherhood in slavery is, you know, this awfully precarious state. Your children are sold away from you more often than not, I think. And, you know, some women refuse to bring children into enslavement. If they can get hold of an abortifacant, then they will. It's a really awful state of affairs. So I do think there's something poignant about her and her mother staying together. The census records show us that they're living for some years in the same neighbourhood. And she names her first child.

after her mother, and, you know, there's a sense of a bond there. But yeah, after the death of her husband, the family move around the south of England. But she lives a long life. And for the middle part of her life, she's a model, which is really interesting. And it's not bad money, I would say. I think, you know, she's making a bit of significant supplementary income from modelling. But again, she's not the only one. There are other black people working as artist models at this time. There was, was it law in 19th century France? There was that famous exhibit, wasn't there, black artists' models? She's known only as law.

Yes, yeah. Denise Morel's work, yeah, that's incredible. I was really inspired by Morrell's work in doing some of the work I've done on artist models in Britain because there's a similar thing of modern artists. Again, bucking this trend somewhat in terms of like prevailing pseudo-scientific attitudes towards race that really condemn blackness, artists tend to be somewhat more broad-minded and also very interested in developing an expertise in sort of showing the range of humankind. So they are, as you say, forever spotting people in the street and asking them to sit for them. And so Morel's work shows that this is happening a lot in France. And that actually if you want to show that you are an artist who is depicting modern life,

you're going to show that that is somewhat multicultural. The life in the modern city is one where there are people of different ethnicities all around. And so a similar thing is happening in Britain. But what's interesting is the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood always paint Mrs. Eaton, Fanny Eaton, as other ethnicities. So she's Jewish, she's Indian in their work. sometimes she's imagined as white because they do this kind of like fantasy medieval mythic kind of work and they make her white in that. She's a face and figure model. So essentially they make her

look as however they like, but you can recognize her features. I find that interesting because Jamaica is always in the news and race is being talked about an awful lot in Victorian Britain. For example, was abolishing slavery a mistake. You know, these are like debates that are rife when she is working as a model, but she's never depicted as a modern woman in London in the way that artists are doing in France, which is interesting. So for a final question, one of the things that I'm very interesting. So we have this, we're at the peak of British colonialism. I'm going to say racism was abolished. No, it wasn't. Slavery was abolished. So it's very much at the forefront of people talking about. So we have this constant conversation around negotiating

black bodies and spaces and beauty. And you've argued very eloquently that this white beauty was about basically not being black, just be white and small and petite and lovely. Did white culture steal anything from black culture when it comes to beauty standards? Because you see that a lot today is certain prominent people, mentioning their names, but who steal. Yeah, they steal. Appropriation, they steal from black beauty in the black culture. And I'm wondering,

in the 19th century, do you see any evidence of that? Yeah, I do think what we see, you know, if you look at the example of Bartman's life, there is this thing of consumption, consuming the black body, appropriating from it, and then almost erasing it as the origin of the idea. And so one of my students recently wrote about the bustle, you know, and this fashion for a really full rear to Victorian, I guess we're talking middle or late latter part of the century, dresses. And there is a lot of concern at the time in the press, people mocking fashion and women's interest in fashion and are saying, is this some kind of hot and top Venus display?

Like, what's going on? Why do these women want to look like this? And so I think that could be very likely an early example of this kind of cultural appropriation where something is both mocked and desired at the same time and sort of picked up and dropped, you know, so the bustle, the full skirt, full rear to a skirt comes and goes and then there's something else that's fashionable. But certainly I do think that although many people are resisting this, of course, but there's something about the state of colonial relations and this abjectification of the black body means that people can essentially consume at will.

And white supremacy is partly about like ordering, organizing all the races, deciding what the types are and then maybe appropriating from these supposed types, you know, different elements. And so I think it's really interesting to think about the history of our popular culture as actually being, you know, enmeshed with all of these ideas about race and the other, circulating all the time. Well, you've been absolutely fascinating, Rochelle. Thank you so much for joining us today.

And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not in person. Not in person. No, thank you. It's been really fun. I've enjoyed chatting with you. Well, I'm on Blue Sky. I'm on the new Blue Sky.

They can find me as Dr. Rochelle Roe on there, all one word. They might be interested in my first book, which is all about, as we talked about at the beginning, beauty in the Caribbean and in Britain, actually, amongst what we now refer to as sort of like the Windrush generation. That's called Imagining Caribbean Womanhood, and it's published by Manchester University Press. And I've just published an article which you can get hold of free open access on black modern. muses in the work of artist Jacob Epstein. So that might be of interest as well. And this work on Fannie Eton and Sarah Bartman will be out later this year in a book called Cultural History of Beauty in the Age of Empire. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thank you, Kate. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for listening and thanks so much to Rochelle for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on the murderous affairs of King James and The Truth About the Minor Tour, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.