Exclusive Comic: Josephine Baker – the great grandmother of twerk

The history of feminism is also a history of heroine worship. Simone De Beauvoir. Frida Kahlo. Cindy Sherman. Yoko Ono. MirandaJuly. The list is long, fortunately. But for the illustrator Pénélope Bagieu, the true advocates of emancipation are the everyday heroines who are sometimes little known – or who are well known but have hardly been honored for their fight for the freedom of the female sex.

Again and again the French tells of such strong women – most recently in “California Dreamin'”, in which the life story of Mama Cass, the singer of Mamas And The Papas, is recapitulated in a wonderfully light-footed way, which is graphically perfect for the sun-drenched songs of the band is equivalent to. With “Undaunted” (reproduction), Bagieu goes one step further, in which she not only gets involved in the fate of a heroine, but also juxtaposes several handfuls of biographies in two volumes.

There are female writers and female artists (like the Finnish-Swedish “Moomins” creator Tove Jansson, who lived in an open lesbian relationship when homosexuality was still a taboo), an empress (Wu Zetian), a lady with a beard (Clémentine Delait) and even a mermaid (Annette Kellermann). Bagieu speaks of her “wonderful girls” and indeed she describes their happiness and suffering full of sympathy and indulgence, with delicate strokes and restrained coloratura.

“Intrepid” – feminist, free and visionary

The visionary element that characterizes the actions of these very often clever, but sometimes also wonderfully naive women and today makes them absolutely retellable, often only becomes clear at second glance. These are girls, women and old ladies who may have considered themselves average and who didn’t make it into the history books – or eventually got erased from them.

ROLLING STONE exclusively presents an excerpt and shows the exciting life of dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker. Before she is declared a cliché again with a few words, we prefer to remain silent and let the (funny, thought-provoking) pictures by Pénélope Bagieu do the talking.

Ninth Art Comic Blog

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