To dress up in skirts : depictions of the Lady Comedian in Swedish press 1890-1899

The aim of this essay is to analyse the damkomiker (‘Lady Comedian’) as the figure emerges in 1890’s Swedish news articles. The Lady Comedian was commonly defined as a man who cross-dressed in feminine clothes and performed in some way, often singing or dancing. The figure was closely tied to nineteenth-century urban culture and often performed in cafés, salons, and restaurants. I show that the term ‘Lady Comedian’ was the scene of a gender identity negotiation, where language shaped the definitions of the Lady Comedian as a figure, role, identity and term. I ask the following questions: what gender related linguistic mechanisms characterise the newspaper articles that write about Lady Comedians? How do the articles describe the Lady Comedian’s appearance, voice and scenic expression? Making use of tools from queer theory as well as conceptual history, I show that the news articles use gendered language structures, such as pronouns and male honorifics, in order to arrange the Lady Comedian into a binary gender system. The descriptions of appearance, voice and scenic expression also work to align the figure with ideas of two opposite genders. The figure is constructed as a man dressing up as a woman, thus playing a role. Depending on whether the Lady Comedian’s scenic expression leaned towards the humorous or the erotic, the daily press organises the figure as more masculine or feminine, respectively. In summary, this essay nuances previous research concerning the Lady Comedian, by analysing them as a queer figure. In doing so, it contributes to research on queer urban culture and gender transgressive practices, as well as to that of nineteenth-century entertainment.