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SPEAKER_07: This year, Hyundai features their all electric Hyundai IONIQ lineup as a proud sponsor of the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas with two high-tech models. The IONIQ 5 can take you an EPA estimated 303 miles on a single charge and has available two-way charging for electronic equipment inside and outside the car. The IONIQ 6 boasts a mind blowing range of up to 360 miles and can deliver up to an 80% charge in just 18 minutes with its 800 volt DC ultra fast charger. Check out Hyundai at the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas as their all-star IONIQ lineup hits the stage like you've never seen before. Hyundai, it's your journey.
SPEAKER_05: Hi, before we start the show, I wanna tell you about another show I think you might like. Heaving Busoms is a romance readers podcast in which two best friends, Aaron in Alaska and Melody in New Jersey, gush, giggle, snark, and snort their way through a different romance novel each week. If you love fangirling about your latest read with your best friends, you'll love listening to Aaron and Melody do a deep breakdown of every romance trope and sub-genre they can. Ballrooms, billionaires, aliens, bigfoots and more. The best part is you don't actually have to be a romance reader yourself or read the books they recap because they tell you the story scene by scene while adding their own comedic flair. The recaps come with a heaping dose of unconditional friendship, open-hearted feminism, and hilarious tangents. From Tessa Dare to Alyssa Cole to Sarah J. Moss, Aaron and Mel are tackling every kind of smooching book they can find and they're always taking suggestions. I recommend starting with episode 30, The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, or episode 38, Mastered by Her Mates by Grace Goodwin. Just don't listen around the kids because like your favorite books, these two can get a little explicit. You can find heaving bosoms wherever you listen. Check it out. Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womanica. Today's musician was perhaps her truest self on stage in her top hat and tuxedo, belting out the blues and flirting with the audience. Amid a cultural moment of creative exploration, she defied gender conformity, becoming a truly idiosyncratic performer. Let's talk about Gladys Bentley. Gladys Bentley was born on August 12th, 1907 to a Trinidadian mother and an American father. Gladys' birthplace has often been listed as Philadelphia where she grew up, but in a rare television appearance in 1958, she told Groucho Marx she'd been born in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
SPEAKER_01: Now where are you from, Glad?
SPEAKER_04: I'm from Port of Spain, Trinidad.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a job with Gladys?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, I'm an entertainer. I sing and play for a living in nightclubs all over the country and I just finished a book called-
SPEAKER_05: The oldest of four, Gladys weathered an unhappy childhood. From a young age, she refused to play along with gender conformity and her family resisted her early attraction to women. Gladys poured much of her frustration and confusion into music, emerging as a talented singer and piano player.
SPEAKER_04: I don't want no man that I got to give my money to.
SPEAKER_05: At 16, Gladys ran away to New York City. It was the dawn of the prohibition era and speakeasies, establishments that illegally sold liquor sprang up across the city. The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. Gladys immediately began performing at house parties and illegal brownstone basement clubs. When the Clam House, Harlem's immensely popular gay speakeasy announced an opening for a male piano player, Gladys jumped at the chance. It was there at 133rd Street and 7th Avenue that Gladys's career skyrocketed. In a top hat and a perfectly tailored tuxedo, Gladys belted out original blues numbers and lewd parodies of popular songs. She often tangled with male entitlement and abuse, simultaneously declaring her own sexual autonomy and flirting with women in the audience. In tackling the patriarchy, Gladys was continuing the legacy of performers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But Gladys also incorporated her own sexuality and gender presentation into her act. While her pronouns were publicly feminine, Gladys became one of the first performers to embrace a non-binary identity.
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the great attractions in Harlem was to go to Gladys Bentley's little hideaway down in a basement where she played a piano.
SPEAKER_05: She later wrote, "'Even though they knew me as a male impersonator, "'they still could appreciate my artistry as a performer.'" Gladys drew crowds from around the country with her performances, becoming Harlem's most famous lesbian entertainer, a feat given the Renaissance's thriving queer community. Gladys was also a muse. She appeared in Langston Hughes' autobiography and now public letters between Harlem socialites and as a character in at least three novels. Hughes wrote that she was "'an amazing exhibition of musical energy. "'A large, dark, masculine lady whose feet pounded the floor "'while her fingers pounded the keyboard, "'a perfect piece of African sculpture "'animated by her own rhythm.'" In the mid-1930s, Gladys began performing at the Ubangie Club, just a few blocks away from the Clam House. There, it was said, Gladys commanded a cast of 30, often appearing on stage with a backup crew of drag queens. But post-prohibition, Gladys struggled to find her footing. Her fame in New York and elsewhere had grown, but she herself had become less acceptable as the Depression trudged on. In 1937, Gladys moved out to California. Some of the venues there made her wear a skirt, but she was still Gladys, still talented and clever and bawdy. For a while, she built a home base out of Mona's 440 Club, the first lesbian bar in San Francisco. Then the lavender scare swept across the country.
SPEAKER_01: Homosexuals must not be handling top-secret material.
SPEAKER_05: Creatives and artists came under attack. In 1952, Gladys penned an essay called "'I Am a Woman Again' for Ebony Magazine," writing that she'd been taking hormones to turn her heterosexual. She never stopped touring, but she began appearing in women's clothing and even claimed to have been married twice to men, though at least one of them denied it. Gladys Bentley died in 1960, at the age of 52, from the flu. For a time, she was the reigning monarch of Harlem. On an old map tracing the city's speakeasies, you can still find her old haunts. Gladys's clam house sits snugly between Lennox and 7th. A dashing figure pounds away at the piano. Gladys Bentley, it reads, wears a tuxedo and high hat.
SPEAKER_04: I've heard about your lover, your pince and rome.
SPEAKER_05: All month, we'll be talking about musicians. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Wamanica Weekly. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Encyclopedia Wamanica, and you can follow me directly on Twitter, at Jenny M. Kaplan. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow. What do you think of when you hear the word STEM? You know, science, technology, engineering and math? School? Lab coats? Numbers and formulas? Here's a new way to think about STEM. Let's say your middle school-aged daughter loves taking selfies. Well, that's STEM. Behind those cool pictures lies some pretty cool software engineering. Or maybe she's a roller coaster finisher. Roller coasters wouldn't be fun, or possible, without mechanical engineering. Maybe she likes baking. That's chemistry. Or loves animal habitats. That's environmental science. Girls who experiment, get messy, fail and try again are girls who grow up to develop new technologies, find new cures and help make the world a better place. To find resources to keep your girl interested in STEM, check out She Can STEM. That's She Can STEM. This message was brought to you by the Ad Council.
SPEAKER_02: It's time for 60 Minutes. New episode airs Sunday, September 24th on CBS, and streaming on Paramount+.
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