Jelena is a gorgeous name originating from both Russian and Slavic languages. They are also constrained by collective decisions, both conscious and unaware, about what things mean; as such, those decisions can mold widespread beliefs and attitudes as well as governmental policy in the narrow sense. What do Chechen and Circassian girls generally look like? Beautiful Circassian Woman - a photo on Flickriver Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers, She embodies ideals of womanly purity and virtue, but also sexuality; she is alluringly exotic, yet familiar. I'm sure the sultans had good taste . What I know now is that the woman depicted here fits the model of a kind of performed personality dubbed the Circassian Lady or the Circassian Beauty in mid-nineteenth-century America. 100 Beautiful Russian Girl Names (With Their Meanings) - Honey Name 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. I found a name, inscribed inpencil more than 130 years agoon the back of the photograph, Zublia Aggolia, and a title, Circassian Lady. Even today, I still know nothing about Zublia herself apart from her name, and even that is not what it seems. 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 Circassian Beauty - TV Tropes The luxurious palaces of the sultans housed Georgians, Abkhazians and Circassians as concubines and odalisques. Emma Stone. The "golden age" of the Circassian beauty may be considered to be between the 1770s, when the Russian Empire seized the Crimean Khanate and cut off their slave trade, which increased the demand for Circassian women in Near Eastern harems; and the 1860s, when the Russians massacred thousands of Circassians and conquered Circassia. He displayed a "Circassian Beauty" at his American Museum in 1865. African women were routinely portrayed as sexually lascivious, and therefore in some sense willing and complicit in their sexual exploitation. Enjoy the story, stop bringing your hate into this. [23], Circassian men were also exalted for their beauty, manliness and bravery in Western Europe, in a way Caucasus historian Charles King calls "homoerotic". This pustule produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments, and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is impregnated. You readEdmund Morgans workand actually see racism being inscribed in the law and the country changing as a result. This hair style was a sort of exhibit's trademark and was achieved by washing the hair of women in beer, drying it and then teasing it. In this way, the purest white is made an Otherby associating it, however subconsciously, with white Americans physiological stereotypes about blacks. [37] Actual Circassian hairstyles bore no resemblance to Barnum's fantasy. Maker unknown, inscribed on reverse Zoe Meleke, Circassian Lady, Born in Asia Minor, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. [37], The trend spread, with supposedly Circassian women featured in dime museums and travelling medicine shows, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls". In an astonishing historical irony, when the police gave their first press conference in the manhunt for the two men suspected of perpetrating the Boston Marathon bombing, an officer identified one suspect as a light-skinned or Caucasian male. This time, though, the people in question actuallywereCaucasians: they came from the Caucasus as modern refugees from the age-old conflicts there. 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. By policy, we must understand not only the three hundredplus years of law and governmental action that established categories of human beings fit for enslavement and other forms of oppression but also the shared conceptual and linguistic heritage that has formed the meaning of race in our world and that has worked its way into everything from everyday talk to official forms and the pronouncements of the Supreme Court. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Here the majority of the women were Circassian, who without any doubt are much more distinguished in appearance. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed how to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. 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. The idea of a woman being at the sexual mercy of her owner was not foreign to the imagination of the white public at the time in the United States, but Powerss statue of a naked white woman alluded only indirectly (and perhaps for that reason in the only way then publicly possible) to the fate of many enslaved black women: it was a well-known but largely unspoken fact that slave owners in the United States often entered into sexual relationships with their enslaved women, relationships that involved a range of coercion, almost all of which we would classify as rape today. 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. Beauty's brightest colours The very nature of the sideshow allowed the viewer to displace any genuinely discomforting questions into the realm of ambiguity, where they could then be safely bundled up and forgotten, just as we today confront our fears in the safety of a horror movie or a roller-coaster ride: as mere entertainment, a thrill to experience and then purge as at bottom unreal. Circassian Beauties | dcphotoartist [6] It is not clear why Barnum chose this hairstyle. [26], There are not any people, on the old continent, perfectly fair, except those who live in high latitudes, where the westerly winds come from the sea, at no great distance, so tempered as not to be very sharp nor very dry. Galilee Area - portrait. 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. "Circassian Eye-Water" was marketed as "a sovereign remedy for all diseases of the eyes",[35] and in the 1840s "Circassian hair dye" was marketed to create a rich dark lustrous effect.[36]. Beautiful Hijab Cute Beauty Chapel Veil Muslim Beauty Lace Wrap Beauty A soft, lovely all-over embroidered multi-color black floral English net is trimmed in a vintage style gold leaf motif trim and includes a sewn-in clip to hold it in place! 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. In the Russo-Circassian War (17631864) the Circassians were expelled from their homeland by Tsar Alexander II, forcing 1.5 million to flee to the Ottoman Empire. Circassian = Normal women wearing P.T. After all, there is no more reality to the designation Caucasian than there is to the frizzed hairstyle of the Circassian Ladies. But there was no mistaking the meaning of that fate, even then: as a slave, her body would be at the disposal of her buyer, and it was precisely this fact that would be staring the statues viewers in the face as they stared, in turn, at her white granite bodyor the many photographic reproductions of that body. Though Barnum claimed his agent, dressed in full Turkish costume, had there seen a large number of beautiful Circassian girls and women, for one reason or another he failed to return with one. Updated on February 8, 2014, to discuss recent efforts by the Circassian community to protest the Circassian genocide and the hosting, by Russia, of the Olympic Games in Sochi, the site of the Circassians final defeat and mass deportation in 1864. The imperial harem was famous for the extraordinary beauty of its maids, who were considered the most attractive in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. Abraham Bogardus, Caucasian Girl, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. 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. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". The fact is that the Circassian Lady or the Circassian Beauty was a staple of nineteenth-century sideshows, but not the Circassian Gentleman. With the occasional exception of a Circassian child (see illustration below), all the photographs we find of sideshow Circassians are of women. Such adventures bring no lasting insight or transformation; quite the reverse, in fact: they tend to shunt a disquieting experience or question off into a limbo that has the effect of making it disappear from active reflection. The portrayal of a white woman as a rescued slave at the time of the American Civil War played on the racial connotations of slavery at the time. Circassian beauties - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia The novel is based on a true story told in a village in the Turkish highlands close to the Georgian border. [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. 150 Circassian beauties ideas | beauty, beautiful, actresses - Pinterest This theme replicated itself in fiction, too. Circassian Beauty carte de visite, 4 x 2.5 inches, circa 1870 . There were also several classical Turkish music pieces and poems that praise the beauty of the Circassian ethnic group like "Lepiska Sal erkes" (Straight, flaxen-haired Circassian; "lepiska" refers to long blonde hair which is straight, as if flatironed). The untamed hair evoked exoticism; it served as a marker that this woman, who otherwise appeared entirely white, was in fact something Other. They were probably funny but rebellious. What might be particularly striking to the modern viewer, again, is the big hair, which looks so much like the Afro of the late 1960s and 1970s, then as much symbol of Black Power as a fashion statement. 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. taken by an unknown photographer and affixed to a plain brown card. Since the end of the medieval period Circassian girls were popular in trade as slaves, with many ending up in the harems of Ottoman and Persian rulers. But if they ask $4000 each, probably one would be better than two, for $8000 in gold is worth about $14,500 in U.S. currency. Despite that, her portrait has taken me down a path of discovery whose connections I would have never guessed. "I still have faith in a beautiful Circassian girl if you can get one very beautiful. It offered the viewer an opportunity to view, and stare at, a sexualized white woman and to imagine her possible fate as a slave were she not spared it by appearing in the sideshow. It is also understood from the memoirs of Princess Emily Ruete, a half-Circassian and half-Omani herself, that Circassian women, who were captured in Constantinople and brought to Africa for the harem of Zanzibari Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, were envied by their rivals who considered Circassians to be of the "hateful race of blue-eyed cats". Powers was an American sculptor who worked in Florence, and his depiction of a white woman, stripped naked with only chains covering her genitals, about to be sold in a Turkish slave market, created a sensation as well as a tremendous controversy because of her nudity, which Powers intended as an ideal form, a symbol of her pure Christian virtue in the face of heathen subjugation. Charles Eisenmann, Zumiya the Egyptian, Age 20, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1870s), collection of Greg French. I consider it to be impossible to look at them without loving them. In the case of The Greek Slave, he meant to portray a whiteChristian woman facing a terrible fate with faith, modesty, and fortitude. [37] As the original fad faded, the "Circassians" started to add to their appeal by performing traditional circus tricks such as sword swallowing. In consequence, most wives and mothers of several Ottoman Sultans were ethnic Circassians, including Perest Valide Sultan, evkefza Valide Sultan, Tirimjgan Valide Sultan, Nkhetseza Bahanmefendi, emsiruhsar Hatun, Sabal Sultan, Hmaah Haseki Sultan, Hatice Muazzez Haseki Sultan, Aye Haseki Sultan, Bedrifelek I, Bidar II, Kamures I, Servetseza I, Bezmara VI, Dzdidil III, Hayrandil II, Meyliservet IV, Mihrengiz II, Neerek III, Nurefsun II, Reftaridil II, ayan III, amongst many others. It is history and has to be known. The play tells the story of Zoe, the octoroon of the title. Circassia is a mountainous region on the northeast shore of the Black Sea in the Caucasus (see the map below, with the close-up of Circassia in green). Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Map of Caucasian Countries and Turkey in Asia (1835), Wikipedia Commons. Jul 19, 2021 - And other beautiful women who are Georgian, Uyghur, Crimean Tatar, Chechen & ??? Biographical outline of the beautiful Circassian girl, Zobeide Luti, or Top-40 beautiful Turkish actresses. Photo Gallery History of Circassian Beauties - YouTube Watch. Zalumma was the first of several Circassians in Barnums shows, and even her name was his invention. Whatever faults remain, of course, are my responsibility. has its own identity,and its history serves to enforce their sence of identity, Your email address will not be published. What the Circassian costume did do was invoke a certain Orientalism, a hint of the harem and the seraglio. Barnums obsession originally led him to take advantage of the repercussions of the Circassian war to enter the slave market in Istanbul illegally. Aslihan Gurbuz (born February 16, 1983, Chanakkala, Turkey) - actress. 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. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. All actresses are 100% of European descent. The Orientalist fantasy, especially the imagining of the harem and the seraglio, allowed Europeans and Americans to project their subterranean prurience onto a safely distant world. 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. From there, the viewerprimarily the white male viewercould contemplate a further question: whether the sideshow depicts an erotic truth that is or ought to be more than a sideshow in ordinary domestic life. 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. Maker unknown, Circassian wife and husband, albumen photograph (circa 1865). The white nephew of the plantation owner falls in love with Zoe and seeks to marry her, even after she tells him the truth of her ancestry. The Circassians were often sent to the sultans court as gifts from the governors, bought in slave markets after being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. Gustav Hugo - a German jurist once wrote that beauty can be found in a Circassian slave girl. 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. They also often performed in pseudo-oriental costume. And above all, who but must long for an article, from the seraglio of the Grand Turk, which produces a near resemblance to the Georgian and Circassian beauties? Clearly influenced by Powerss The Greek Slave, Bells statue depicts an octoroon, that is, a person of one-eighth African ancestry, as a naked woman in shackles, perhaps awaiting the auction block, her modesty protected only by her inordinately long hair. Yes, I think you would.Time to face some unpleasant facts, Khanhyou simply do not possess the global cultural awareness needed to run a website of this type effectively.Your users have been telling you this, you have been ignoring them, and they have been abandoning your site as a result.This is a very good example of why that is.Do yourself a favor, and learn from it. [41], Pseudoscientific explanations for fair skin, Brookes, Douglas Scott (2010). Circassian woman hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy We have to remember that the explosion of frizzed hair in the portraits of Circassian women was an entirely artificial effect, both cosmetically and culturally: it had to be created with beer shampoo and teasing comb; it had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women wore their hair. AngelOfChechnya 1.92K subscribers 134K views 9 years ago Video dedicated to the well-known beauty of the. In the late 18th century, it was claimed by Western European couturiers that "the Circassian Corset is the only one which displays, without indelicacy, the shape of the bosom to the greatest possible advantage; gives a width to the chest which is equally conducive to health and elegance of appearance". The Sultana Served by her Eunuchs, Painting by Charles Amedee Philippe van Loo.Circassian woman, 1870s-80s. Caucasian should become odious as a name for whiteness, just as Aryan already is now. 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Circassian Beauty in the American Sideshow - Brewminate: A Bold Blend This extraordinary hairdo was entirely Barnums invention, but it stuck as one of the defining markers of the Circassian woman, no matter what circus or sideshow put a Circassian performer on the stage: a huge mass of hair, washed in beer and teased to a frizzy cloud resembling what might remind someone today of an Afro from the 1960s or 1970s. "[19], The characteristics of Circassian and Georgian women were further articulated in 1839 by the author Emma Reeve who, as stated by Joan DelPlato, differentiated "between 'the blond Circassians' who are 'indolent and graceful, their voices low and sweet' and what she calls the slightly darker-skinned Georgians who are 'more animated' and have more 'intelligence and vivacity than their delicate rivals'". Even more subversively, the very idea of white women as sexual slaves must have presented a titillating object to the imagination, at least for white men. The Circassians are a North Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia. As a type, the Circassian Lady became quite familiar in the United States, especially after the mid-1860s, when various performers in circus sideshows began playing this role. [38] Barnum's first "Circassian" was marketed under the name "Zalumma Agra"[39] and was exhibited at his American Museum in New York from 1864. 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. [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. Barnum's wigsWhy do you perpetuate these racial stereotypes when they have been historically proven to be false?Would you be offended if someone posted images of Vietnamese people with zippers running along their hairlines? document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Circasians: The Most Beautiful Women in the World. Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. The statue sealed Powerss fame, despite the debates that the statue aroused. That would be a fitting end to a term for whiteness worn out long ago. A sovereign remedy for surfeits, scorching from the heat of the sun, freckles, blights from cold and chills of winter, scorbutic, pimples or eruptions of the face and skin, however violent or disfigured, animalcula generated under the cuticle or outer skin, prickley heat, shingles, ring worms, redness of the nose and chin, obstinate cutaneous diseases, and for every impurity or unnatural appearance with which the skin may be affected; to be used as a common wash for clearing and improving the complexion, and in a superior degree to preserve, soften, cleanse and beautify the skin. 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 first photograph of a Circassian Lady I found led me on a journey of inquiry whose strangeness I would never have guessed. p. 46, Delaware Gazette and State Journal, 2 February 1815. 42 Circassian beauties ideas | beauty, beautiful people, beautiful Photographic reproductions of Bells statue circulated onstereoview cards in the United States (see below), which allowed viewers to get a three-dimensional sense of the figure. It has been argued that the distinctive hairstyle affiliates the side-show Circassian with African identity, and thus, resonates oddly yet resoundingly with the rest of her identifying significations: her racial purity, her sexual enslavement, her position as colonial subject; her beauty. I'm sure the sultans had good taste . We are caught in the Catch-22 of history: only if we acknowledge the historical and constructed meaning of race can we face up to the ongoing burden of that history in our present.