Women's History

Beauty contests are frequently dismissed as sexist exploitation which encourage audiences to judge women solely upon their looks. This criticism can be traced back to Women’s Liberation protests at the 1968 Miss America and 1970 Miss World contests in Atlantic City and London, respectively. One former protester recalled that the Miss America contest ‘taught young girls that the important thing in life…was to get a man, to be sexy, to be superficial’.

Such objections continue to be voiced today. Professor June Purvis recently opined that modern beauty pageants cannot be separated ‘from the decades of objectification and sexism that they are originally associated with…It has passed its sell by date’. For critics, Miss World is Miss Exploited, and should be Miss Anachronism.

These claims do hold truth. Contests often idealise highly conservative visions of youthful womanhood. Miss World cannot be divorced or have children. As a fig leaf to equality, neither can Mr England. Contest organisers also exercise extensive control over winners’ images. In 2019, Miss Nevada had her crown taken away for posting right-wing comments online. Likewise, Miss Crimea nearly lost her title for singing a song, perceived to be pro-Ukraine. Beauty queens, then, appear to be constrained by organisers’ desire for the role to be ‘apolitical’.

Yet, contests continue to be wildly popular. In 2019, almost 20,000 women entered the Miss England contest. When asked why they chose to participate, the buzzword refrain of most beauty queens is that they feel ‘empowered’ by competing. It is, however, left unsaid exactly how it empowers them. Taking these contestants seriously, it is worth considering how beauty contests can be perceived as a form of empowerment.

One means of answering this question is to look at one of the first major British beauty contests: the Railway Queen. Established in 1925 and running until 1975, Railway Queens were crowned annually at the Railway Employees’ Carnival at Belle Vue stadium, Manchester. Eligible candidates were daughters, aged between 12 and 16, of unionised railway employees. Wearing full regalia of tiara and velvet robe, Railway Queens served terms of a year performing sundry official engagements: giving speeches, cutting ribbons, and presiding over civic occasions.

The chief duty of Railway Queens was to serve as an ‘Ambassadress of Peace’ for the railway trade unions. After the devastations of the Great War, the Railway Queen advocated that no war could be ‘great’. Their chain of office was symbolic of this. Dubbed the ‘International Chain’, it was comprised of gold links given to each Railway Queen during official overseas visits. It symbolised the uniting of railway employees around the world in an ever-growing ‘chain of peace’.^[1]

During their international tours, Railway Queens undertook the role of diplomatic envoy. In 1935, fourteen-year-old Gracie Jones undertook a five-week tour of North America, travelling from New York to Montreal.^[2] The countless formal gift exchanges, speeches, and ceremonial duties Gracie performed were key to underpinning cordial transatlantic relations between Anglo-American trade unions. These overseas trips were also major media spectacles. When Railway Queen Audrey Mosson visited Moscow in 1936, she was filmed meeting Josef Stalin. This was then projected in cinemas across Britain and the Soviet Union.

Railway Queens’ own voices were palpably heard during such tours. Jones was interviewed by the Washington Post in the United States, where she stated ‘‘I had heard they [Americans] were rude and abrupt but I find them attractive, attentive, and altogether pleasing’.[3] During Railway Queen Ena Best’s 1928 visit to France, she was the only member of the party who could speak French. Alongside her many official speeches, she also had to order everyone’s meals. Railway Queens, then, were prominent trade union ambassadresses who undertook a demanding and skilled diplomatic role. Thus, becoming a Railway Queen was one of the few means by which young, working-class women could participate directly in international politics.

Serving as a beauty queen, therefore, did not reduce winners to objectified ornaments, nor ‘apolitical’ ciphers. For Railway Queens, it was an overtly political platform that enabled working-class women, typically overshadowed, a prominent, active role in transnational trade unionism.

So too, contemporary beauty queens continue to act as spokeswomen for various causes or ideals, whether supporting suicide prevention charities or campaigning for increased smear testing. Some women have even started to use beauty contests as a platform to diversify, even challenge, societal beauty standards. Women of colour participate to show beauty is not exclusively white; others project body positivity as Ms Curvaceous; still others compete without makeup to rail against convention.

Despite the looks-focused nature of such competitions, for many women it is evident that beauty queens are not merely gratuitous objectification. Indeed, for those whose perspectives and identities are otherwise marginalised, competing is a vital means of securing the limelight. Ultimately, where some women decry Miss Anachronism, others see Miss Empowerment.

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Conner Rivers Scott is a WRoCAH-funded PhD candidate in the department of history at the University of Sheffield. His doctoral research looks at British inter-war newsreels and their place in everyday life. In particular, this research will examine the ways in which newsreels (re)presented the public to itself between c.1920-c.1939, a time when the public was politically and socially reconstituted. More broadly, his research interests include twentieth-century British gender history, media history, and histories of everyday life.

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[1] Daily News (21 Aug 1928), 10; Daily Herald (27 Aug 1928), 7.

[2]The New York Times (20 Jun 1934), p.22; Los Angeles Times (22 Jun 1934), p.5.

[3]The Washington Post (21 Jun 1934), p.12.

Image source: Joseph M. Maurer, ‘Miss Universe 1930 Winners’ (1930), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miss_Universe_1930_Winners.jpg

The cinema of the interwar era (1919-1939) is commonly acknowledged as being an essential factor in influencing girls and women. From their fashion choices and hairstyles to what was considered at the time to be “unfeminine” behaviours like smoking and drinking.[1]  With the introduction of sound to the cinema in 1927, a new attribute that could be influenced was acknowledged, the voice.

In 1927 a Daily Express columnist claimed that ‘we have several million people, mostly women, who, to all intent and purpose, are temporary American citizens’.[2] The increasing popularity of Hollywood films over British films perpetuated the fear of Americanisation of the British culture and its perceived effects on demoralising society, by introducing their lax attitude towards manners, morality and speech. The perception that Hollywood promoted democratising and egalitarian values to a British population who had nearly tripled their electorate with The Representation of the People Act (1918), presented a danger to the concepts and ideals of Britishness.

Films with synchronised sound and dialogue, dubbed “talkies”, soon became the primary experience of the film viewing public, replacing silent pictures as the new norm. Film played an important part in offering a presentation of “proper” British speech, behaviour, and morality that could be consumed and imitated by audiences. With the introduction of the Hollywood talkies, the concern of American influence was exacerbated due to the alleged corruption of the British language with Americanisms and slang.

The preferred voice of the British screen was that of “Received Pronunciation” (RP), the uniform way of speaking to allow not only for the audience to understand the dialogue without confusing regional dialects, but to introduce a “correct” way of speaking by broadcasting the ‘superior speech’.[3] Yet in what Rachael Low calls ‘class-ridden Britain’, the audiences complained more about the ‘oxford accent’ and the ‘BBC voice’ associated with RP than the American slang and idioms of Hollywood films.[4] But how did this affect the relatability of female characters? Did hearing the voice of an actress ruin the illusion created of her on the silent screen, or would young women be more inclined to embody her, including the way she talked?

The female voice was subjected to unsubstantiated concerns over its suitability for broadcast, as women were considered incapable of retaining the attention of listeners because their voices were less commanding and could be at times “monotonous […] and shrill”, creating an unpleasant listening experience. Claims even went as far as suggesting that even if women’s voices were used, they wouldn’t have anything interesting to say anyway.

The introduction of sound to pictures only increased the list of things that a woman could be criticised for and added another aspect of femininity that could be idealised, learnt and conformed to. Larraine Porter suggests that sound cinema ‘created a vogue for particular kinds of voices’ and expected women’s voices to transform towards feminine desirability.[5]

Before the introduction of sound to film, cinema had already created visual forms of women that represented feminine desirability, sexuality, and the different tropes of female characters, to be instantly recognisable to an audience. This meant that women’s voices needed to match the aura of the character; high-pitched and girly for a youthful innocent image, lower-pitched for one of sexual promiscuity, and even manlier images. With the wrong voice, she may ruin her allure, desirability, and feminine image.

Cinema-goers when watching their favourite star had already formed an idea of their voices despite never hearing them which made it near impossible for actresses to meet expectations of their on-screen persona. The impossibility for these already successful silent actresses to meet vocal expectations set them up for inevitable criticism at every turn, they may be too high, too low, too monotonous, too fast, too slow, too weak and thin or too strong and mannish. Each critique set back the female voice, becoming evident that women were being punished for speaking at all, for occupying what radio considered to be a male vocal space.[6]

In The Film Gone Male written by Dorothy Richardson in 1932, she argued that the silent film was a feminine space that had been masculinised by the introduction of sound. The silent film produced images of feminine experiences and realities, and these male voices took away from the female audience’s experience, describing women as ‘humanities silent half’.[7] In silent film, the female audiences could easily envision themselves or insert their own voices and experiences onto the female characters being portrayed. Antonia Lant too, argues that the silent film was considered by female audiences to hold a feminine universalism, transposing onto silent film the value of femininity. After the introduction of the more dominant male voice in cinema, many women critics felt like on-screen women lost their voice, and in turn women in British society did too, suggesting that men became established as the possessor of the voice.

The arrival of sound to British film cemented pre-existing silent film gender tropes and set a precedence for the marginalisation of women’s vocal presence in film. Despite the fact that the majority of cinema audiences were made up of women, early sound cinema had developed an aversion toward the female voice that remains in film to this day.

Rachel Bogush is a PhD student at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on modern femininity in interwar British media. She tweets at @rachelbogush.

Cover Image: Exhibitor’s Herald, April 9th 1921. Still of the cast and production crew from the American comedy drama film The Affairs of Anatol (1921). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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[1] C. Grandy, Heroes and Happy Endings: Class, Gender, and Nation in Popular Film and Fiction in Interwar Britain, (2014), p.3

S. Harper, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, (2000),

[2] Daily Express, 18 March 1927, p. 6.

[3] A. Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars, (1991) P.215

[4] R. Low, The History of the British Film 1929-1939: Film making in 1930s Britain, (1985), p.89

[5] L. Porter, ‘“Have You a Happy Voice?” Women’s Voices and the Talkie Revolution in Britain 1929–1932’, MSMI, Vol.12:2, (2018), p.141

[6] Ibid., 152

[7] Richardson, D., Continuous Performance: The Film Gone Male (1932), in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, (1983)

We live in a world often dominated by the latest fashions and prevalent images of body modifications. Whether in traditional print media or on social media sites, women in particular are bombarded with images of often unattainable body shapes, whilst simultaneously encouraged to remain natural in appearance. A curvaceous body type can be obtained by plastic surgery, or alternatively, is now easily replicated with fashion companies selling a wide variety of padded products that can change how our bodies look in clothes. Even though these trends and societal expectations may seem aproduct of the modern age, how true is this?  

In reality, this trend has a much longer history. The eighteenth century saw a variety of extreme fashions introduced by women of the elite. This included wearing large hoops under dresses, bum padding, and even stomach padding to give the illusion of pregnancy. 

Celebrities and social media stars are at the forefront of establishing new fashion trends. But just as the modern media and public are intrigued and obsessed by the fashions and bodily choices of celebrities, so too was eighteenth century society.   Back then, the leaders of fashion were known as the beau monde. Fashion gave elite women a form of empowerment largely unavailable to them elsewhere in eighteenth-century society.^[1] This was a sphere they could dominate, arguably giving them a form of pleasure unavailable anywhere else. 

By the 1730s, the Rococo style was deeply entrenched in both French and English fashions, with a focus on the feminine being the most crucial quality of dress for women. This translated into using padding on the hips or hoops to create a new body shape. 

The use of padding to create a curvaceous body shape culminated in the 1780s into a rounded silhouette: hip padding alongside the addition of bum pads or rolls to give the illusion of a more rounded physique, as well as increasing appearance of breast sizes by using starched kerchiefs tucked into the front of the dress.^[2] This was not a new development in fashion, however the changing shape of the body was reaching new heights of exaggeration and extremes.

In 2021, we may often see satire and humour directed at those in the public eye on social media – for being too revealing, for having exaggerated bodily features, for all manner of fashion choices. The satirical prints of the eighteenth century did not hold back from attacking women’s fashion either.

Luxury and extravagance were often used as the measure for immorality or downfall in society. This meant fashion was consequently seen as a vice in need of correcting. All manner of vices appeared in satirical prints, and women’s fashion choices were also ridiculed.

The vast number of satirical prints created about women’s fashions suggests that enough women were participating in what the satires considered to be excessive and ‘humorous’ for such satirical prints to be rendered relevant. 

Demonstrating interesting parallels between the past and the present, the satirical print Chloe’s Cushion or The Cork Rump bares a striking resemblance to the famous Kim Kardashian image in Paper magazine where Kim ‘breaks the internet’. However, instead of a champagne glass perched on Kim’s ‘rump’, a tiny dog sits in its place on top of Chloe. 

Ridiculing the fashion of wearing padding on the bum links to a similarly themed satirical print, The Bum Shop published by S. W. Fores in 1785. Four women are at various stages of the buying process, with some being fitted for the pads, whilst others admire the final look. 

However, all of the women appear to have ugly faces, and look ridiculous to the viewer whilst wearing or holding the padding, indicating the mocking tone of the print. Extreme vanity is showcased in this print, stating it is a ‘fashionable article of female Invention’; suggesting that it is by women’s choice to dress this way. 

Society, and especially men, disapproved of these extreme fashions. In some cases, they were angered by women trying to alter their bodies in ‘unnatural’ ways with padding that gave them a different shape and appearance – it was considered to be false, and not a true representation of their natural bodies. 

Most concerningly for men, if a woman could change her body shape she could potentially hide an illegitimate pregnancy.^[3] A woman’s sexual reputation both before and after marriage was considered a matter of the utmost importance to elite gentlemen, as fears of illegitimate children inheriting their estates were prevalent in the period.^[4]

Considering this social issue, it is therefore understandable why fashion, female sexuality and a sense of female independence seamlessly blended together in the male perception, and thereby became a key target of their concern. 

Women controlled what they wore, making fashion unique as an area lacking domination by men; yet these prints indicate this did not stop men, and wider society, from trying to encourage changes.

The social scientist Mostafa Abedinifard puts forward the theory that ridicule (and therefore satire) can act as a key tool in society to threaten ‘any violations of established gender norms’. ^[5] This theory can help explain why satirical prints of women’s fashions were made. In Abedinifard’s words: ‘Through a mechanism involving fear of embarrassment, ridicule apparently occupies a universal role in policing and maintaining the gender order’. ^[6] By nurturing a fear amongst women of being ridiculed by the rest of society, the prints arguably created an environment of self-policing that encouraged women to stay within gender expectations.^[7] These expectations guided women towards remaining natural in their appearance and staying within the private sphere, if they did not wish to be ridiculed.

There are many intriguing parallels between eighteenth century society and our own times in terms of how women’s self-expression through fashion is viewed. Using padding to alter the appearance of certain body parts is not a new phenomenon. In a post-lockdown world where we once again reassess how we clothe our bodies, it is interesting to consider the power fashion held in eighteenth century society, and the responses it generated.^[8]

Holly Froggatt is an MA Historical Research graduate of the University of Sheffield. Her research seeks to explore the relationship between satirical prints and the ridicule of elite women, and the expectations they faced in eighteenth century Britain. You can find Holly on twitter @Holly_Froggatt 

Cover Image and Title: William Dent, Female Whimsicalities, pub. James Aitken, 1793, col. etching, British Museum 1902,0825.3 (BM Satires 8390), Wikimedia Commons.

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^[1] Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2004), p. xii.

^[2] Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820 (London, 1995), p. 72.

^[3] Erin Mackie, Market à la mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in the Tatler and the Spectator (Baltimore, 1997), p. 125.

^[4] Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), p. 25.

^[5] Mostafa Abedinifard, ‘Ridicule, Gender Hegemoney, and the Disciplinary Function of Mainstream Gender Humour’, Social Semiotics 2 (2016), p. 241.

^[6] Ibid., pp. 244-45.

^[7] Mackie, Market à la mode, pp. 238-241.

Continuing History Matter’s recent series on the history of the Sheffield History Department, Dr Linda Kirk has very kindly given up some of her time to talk through the changes that occurred within the Department throughout her time there. Linda first joined on a temporary basis in 1969-70 to fill in for Colin Lucas, having previously spent three and a half years volunteering in Africa and teaching at the University College of Rhodesia. After this initial year Colin Lucas did not return and Linda was told she need not apply to the vacant position. But after Colin’s replacement fell through, the department again turned to Linda but this time on a more permanent basis – Linda was to remain a member of the Department until her retirement in 2009.

The Department’s default position was male, with there being only ‘two and a half’ women out of a staff of thirteen and a half – Frances Armytage, who worked as a part time assistant lecturer constituted the half. The 1970’s saw an expanding department with the appointment of several ‘chirpy and self-confident Oxbridge educated people’ who had the appetites to introduce a little bit of Oxbridge into the style and manner of teaching at Sheffield.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s a history degree was structured with nine papers examined over the course of a student’s second and third years. Much like today first year would not count towards the final classification of the degree. Katie Crowley’s blog does a wonderful job of explaining the different BA courses that were offered at Sheffield at this time.

The basic structure of courses did not change much throughout this period, with the syllabus getting stuck with three blocks of continuous British History: medieval, early modern and modern. It was not the case, however, of lecturers coming in and reproducing the same notes as the previous year over and over. The course names would remain constant but what was being taught within them was changing. As literature swirled and patterns rearranged themselves so did the content of lectures and reading lists along the lines of these shifts in historiography.

Alongside these three blocks of British History, students would take a special subject that would account for two papers as well as a history exam tackling general themes in history, with questions such as ‘does history matter?’ or ‘do tyrants always fall?’. This took their total up to six. There would then be two more papers on the history of political thought and another on a period of European history, with the last being an optional choice from a selection that were being taught that year.  This took students up to the total of nine papers which would complete their degree.

It was not until modularisation in the 1990s that a structure more familiar to current students began to take shape. We start to see modules such as ‘Paths from Antiquity to Modernity’, which every single honour student taking History at Sheffield in the past 20 or so years will recognise, appearing on the syllabus.  

‘Paths’ was also the beginning of interactive and online learning in the Department. A chat room function accompanied the module where students were supposed to discuss their findings in the readings. However, this was quickly abused and degenerated into a male-led discussion on the attractiveness of their female peers. So, an end was put to that idea. An idea that stuck around a little longer was the introduction of visual material in the form of transparency projections, and then PowerPoints accompanying lectures.

Change would also occur in the ways that a history degree was assessed. Students were already completing two essays per term per course; however, the marks from these had no relation to the outcome of the degree – exam results were the only grades that mattered. The change was as a result of pressure from students, who believed if they had a bad day during the exam, it would have a disastrous impact on their degree. So, gradually, a classification that was based 100% on the exam would become 67% exam and 33% coursework, and modules that were entirely assessed on coursework such as course assignment and a dissertation would become commonplace. 

The increased weighting of essays did present an issue for the Department. Plagiarism would become an increasingly problematic issue for lecturers. With an exam, a marker could be certain that the work of the person themselves, but with essays these distinctions became blurred. What Linda found to be more disturbing was that some staff would find numerous cases in a batch of essays and some would claim to have never seen any.

In the early 1970s, students met individually with a staff member twice a term in an essay return meeting. Linda campaigned to swap these meetings for a weekly group meeting of five or so students – a rudimentary seminar. This marked a reluctant acceptance that Sheffield could not match the weekly individual essay-return supervision or tutorial offered at Oxford and Cambridge. Over the years, the group size of these seminars would grow and grow from five to six to ten. As university student numbers swelled in the 1990s and continued to grow through the 2000s, occasionally up to twenty people could be in these seminars.

This naturally presented issues. Notably, the relationship between students and staff was forced to change. In the 1970s there was an annual weekend trip to Losehill Hall in Derbyshire for second-year students and a reading party at Cumberland Lodge. This was only possible since the entire cohort of 30 to 35 single honours students could fit in a single bus. When these numbers increased to over 100 this became impossible. These trips were intended to create a ‘mateyness’ that was ‘social and interactive’, which is hard to reproduce currently apart from perhaps in the special subject seminars.     

As someone who has been heavily interested gender history, I was intrigued to hear about the ways in which the field had been covered and taught within the Department. In particular, I wanted to know the role that Joan Scott’s 1986 article ‘Gender: A useful Category of Historical Analysis’ had in shaping how women’s history was taught.[1] Women’s history has always been closely linked to feminist politics. It was the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s that saw there was a lack of female representation in standard historiographical texts and sought to re-discover women’s role in the past.[2]

In her blog a year ago, Katie assumed ‘that there was no aspiration to teach women’s history’ in the Department. This is incorrect. Women’s history might not have been visible on the surface of things, but it certainly was taught at the university. Though often hidden behind course titles and overarching themes, women’s issues were being addressed. In Linda’s second year course called Ideas and Institutions of the Age of Reason, some limited focus was on women. But within the History of Political Ideas course, she offered a five week optional sub-section (usually taken by 20 to 40 students) ‘Towards a Doctrine of Women’s Rights’. This worked through Rousseau’s Emile, Diderot’s ‘Essay on Women’, to Mary Wollstonecraft, to Condorcet’s, ‘On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship’.

Linda described herself as a ‘very, very cross, active feminist’ who was trying to ‘introduce women’s history into everything she did’. Take her special subject on the French Revolution for example: one week dedicated to grain riots would focus on the particular role of women in enforcing a ‘just price’ while they were less open to legal penalties for unruly behaviour; another re-emphasised women’s role in the march to Versailles. There clearly was a strong desire to teach women’s history and what was being taught was very important to those within the Department.

As for Joan Scott’s article, Linda recognised its historiographical importance but was insistent that it was not the beginning of women’s or gender history. There had been plenty of work done on the topic and the ideas were hardly new. What the article allowed for was an establishment of a vocabulary around the pre-existing works – that of ‘gender’ and not ‘women’ or ‘sex’. This change that surprised Linda and still remains an ideological issue within gender history today. The Department followed suit, putting on a course called Gender, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain which typically put Joan Scott’s article front and centre of the reading list.

Taking a cursory glance at the History Department during the 1970s and 1980s you could make the assumption that little changed. But looking deeper it is clear that within the broader themes covered there was a significant change in what was being taught as well as the manner it was being delivered. Today the university offers a multitude of gender and women’s related course for second and third years, but it is clear that the Department has a long history of teaching women’s issues that began long before 1986.

Peter Holmes is an MA Global History student at the University of Sheffield currently working on social and economic networks in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Liverpool during the nineteenth century for his MA dissertation. This blog is based on an interview conducted with Dr Linda Kirk who was a lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Sheffield from 1969 to 2009, who witnessed an expanding department as well as changes to the curriculum and teaching methods in her time with the Department. 

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Cover image: A renovated Barber House, formerly home to the Sheffield History Department.

[1] J. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review, 91.5 (1986), pp. 1053-1075.

[2] J. Hannan, ‘Women’s History, Feminist history’, Making History (2008), https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/womens_history.html, [accessed 7^th April 2021].

Global histories of anti-colonial rebellion are laden with male leaders. Across Africa, leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Jomo Kenyatta steered resistance against their colonial overlords in Ghana, Congo and Kenya. Thankfully, recently the contribution of women within such movements has also emerged from the shadows of history. Mekatilili wa Menza is one such activist who deserves recognition for her anti-colonial defiance in Kenya. 

Believed to have been born in the 1840s in Kilifi County, Mekatilili wa Menza became politically active between 1912 and 1915, leading the Giriama people against British colonial forces.^[1] Most of Mekatilili’s activism therefore began when she was in her seventies. Around that time, the British authorities began to increase economic pressures on the Giriama people by implementing ‘hut taxes’ and by attempting to control the palm wine and ivory trade. They also attempted to recruit as workforce young Giriama men, taking them away from the land near the Sabaki river.^[2]

In the early years of empire, there was little contact between the Giriama and the British. It is against this backdrop of laissez-faire colonialism that Giriama resistance to heightened British control emerged in 1913. In May of that year, British administrator Arthur Champion established headmen and councils to preside over 28 newly established locations which encapsulated Giriama communities. C.W Hobley, the district commissioner of Seyidie Province was determined to convert the Giriama into a well-organised community dedicated to the colonial machine.^[3]

However, traditionally, the Giriama had no central political authority. Elders Councils controlled the political affairs of Giriama societies, however, they did not act as chiefs. The emergence of British-appointed chiefs catapulted Giriama society into a New World autocracy.

This new situation partially led to the increasing Giriama’s defiance to the demands of the British, while Mekatilili’s presence within the movement also grew. She spoke at meetings in July and August 1913 in the kaya fungo, the ritual center of the Giriama. These meetings often concluded with the swearing of anti-British oaths promising to resist colonial rule. 

Visiting villages across the Giriama area, Mekatilili gave rousing speeches and, most famously, used the sacred KifuduGiriama funeral dance to encourage rebellion.^[4] The dance is still performed today and seeks to bring communities together to transport the spirits of loved ones to the realms of the ancestors. The second part of the dance calls for the involvement of everyone present cultivating a sense of community spirit in a time of sadness.

One of Mekatilili’s most famous acts of rebellion saw her attend a meeting held on 13 August 1913 by British administrator Arthur Champion, who was attempting to recruit the Giriama youth for service in the First World War. Mekatilili entered the meeting with a hen and chicks in her hand, challenging Champion to take one of the chicks from her. When he reached out, the mother hen then pecked at the administrator’s hand, humiliating him in public. As the hen pecked Champion, Mekatilili told him: ‘This is what you will get if you try to take one of our sons.’^[5]  

In his tour of inspection through Giriama areas in 1913, Champion discovered that Mekatilili and her son-in-law Wanje wa Mwadorikola had arrived before him and had been administering anti-British oaths. The two were arrested on 17 October 1913 and sentenced to five years imprisonment.^[6] Champion documented the impact of Mekatilili’s campaign in his October report where he conceded that ‘every Giriama is much more afraid of the kiraho (oath) than of the government’.^[7] Mekatilili’s activism had single-handedly undermined British authority amongst the Giriama people.  

While in prison, Mekatilili addressed Arthur Champion over her concerns about the cultural changes in Giriama society. She complained about the introduction of currency in cents, and rupees, the short skirts now being worn by Giriama women, as well as the resulting ‘immorality’ and inconsistent prices charged by Giriama women (possibly for sex). 

Mekatilili also called for the return to the traditional Giriama governance system by rejecting the British colonial government’s preferred tactic of indirect rule through government-appointed ‘headmen’ or chiefs. Soon after she made this statement, Mekatilili and Wanje were deported to a prison in Kisii. According to oral histories, on 14 January 1914, the two were released and trekked more than 700 kilometers back to Kilifi.^[8] However, Mekatilili was recaptured just two days after her arrival back home.

The Giriama War broke out twelve days before Mekatilili’s second Arrest, when the British authorities partly destroyed the kaya fugo with dynamite.^[9] Open hostilities began in Northern Giriama settlements on 16 August 1913 when the Giriama attacked a group of British policemen. Twenty police officers then broke up a crowd of Giriama and raised a nearby village to seize suspected rioters and an assortment of weapons.^[10] On 19 August Arthur Champion’s temporary camp was set alight, and in retaliation he called upon the local police to destroy nearby villages and decimate Giriama crop. All these incidents increased pressure on the British at a time when they faced substantial threat from German forces in Tanganyika. 

However, as hostilities increased between Britain and Germany, the British had little choice but to negotiate for peace, as the King’s African Rifles (KAR) had to be withdrawn for service in German East Africa.^[11] On 4 October terms for peace were arranged and the Giriama were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 Rupees or goats at 3 rupees each, raise 1,000 labourers, surrender all arms, move from the Northern bank of the Sabaki river and surrender all heads of the tribe and leaders of the rebellion. All of this was to be done within ten days.^[12]

Shortly after the peace agreement was reached, the Giriama resumed the offensive and refused to pay the funds to the British. However, the Governor of Kenya had instructed the KAR to remain on Giriama land to end all hostilities towards the British and to ensure reparations were paid. As a result, most of the fighting had ended by the end of 1914 and the Giriama paid the fine, supplied labourers and evacuated the Northern Bank of the Sabaki.^[13]

This latter situation did not last, and a number of the Giriama soon returned. In 1917, C.W Hobley, the Provincial Commissioner, ruled that the Giriama could re-occupy the North Bank asserting that ‘if injustice has been done it is our duty to repair it.’^[14] In 1919, the Giriama were also able to reclaim the kaya fungo.

The uprising forced the British colonial authorities to relax their control of Giriama land. As support crystallised around Mekatilili and her call to action, the British were forced to yield to their demands for the return of the kaya fungo.^[15] In 1919, Mekatilili and Wanje were released from prison and were allowed to move back into the kaya, holding positions as leaders of the women’s and men’s councils respectively.^[16]

Mekatilili wa Menza died of natural causes in 1924. She is buried in the Dakatcha Woodland and is memorialised every year by the Mekatilili wa Menza festival. Larger commemorative efforts have been made in recent years to mark her pivotal role in fighting British colonial oppression. During the first annual Mashujaa or Heroes Day on 9 September 2012, a statue of Mekatilili was unveiled at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi, renamed Mekatilili wa Menza Garden in her honour. 

Mekatilili’s acts of defiance have established her as a key figure in the early Kenyan anti-colonial struggle. It is justified that she is recognised and celebrated alongside the male activists who followed in her defiant footsteps. 

Lauren Brown has a masters degree (MA and MLitt) in History from the University of Dundee. She has published various articles on Kenyan history, and in particular on the Mau Mau rebellion. She is currently the assistant editor for Scottish Financial News and Scottish Housing News. She tweets: @LaurenBroon

Cover Image: A plaque beside the monument of Mekatalili. Photographer: Alex Fondo. Courtesy of Kilifi County Government

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^[1] David K Paterson, the Giriama Risings of 1913-1914, African Historical Studies, Vol. 3, No.1, 1970, p.89

^[2] Carrier, Nyamweru, Reinventing Africa’s National Heroes: The Case of Mekatalili, A Kenyan Popular Heroine p.605.

^[3] Paterson, the Giriama Risings of 1913-1914, p.90.

^[4] Ibid, p.605. 

^[5] Museum of Kenya, Google Arts & Culture, Mekatalili Wa Menza: The Story of The Giriama Wonder Woman, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mekatilili-wa-menza-the-story-of-the-giriama-wonder-woman/uQJiyBBzmBOAKg. 

^[6] Carrier, Nyamweru, Reinventing Africa’s National Heroes: The Case of Mekatalili, A Kenyan Popular Heroine, p.606.

^[7] Cynthia Brantle, The Giriama and Colonial Resistance in Kenya, 1800-1920 (University of California Press: Berkeley,1981) p.89.

^[8] Museum of Kenya, Google Arts & Culture, Mekatalili Wa Menza: The Story of The Giriama Wonder Woman, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mekatilili-wa-menza-the-story-of-the-giriama-wonder-woman/uQJiyBBzmBOAKg. 

^[9] Paterson, the Giriama Risings of 1913-1914, p.94.

^[10] A.J Temu, The Giriama War 1914-1915, Journal of Eastern African Research & Development, Vol. 1, No.2 (Gideon Were Publications: Nairobi, 1971), p.169.

^[11] Ibid, p.171.

^[12] Temu, The Giriama War 1914-1915, p.171.

^[13] Ibid, p.171

^[14] Ibid, p.183.

^[15] Ibid, p.93.

^[16] Ibid, p.95.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the mass media has impacted how many of us perceive ourselves. Growing up in the 2000s, aspects of my own identity have been shaped by my engagement with popular culture as a young girl. Reading magazines such as Girl Talk and Mizz, I developed a gender-based identity defined by popular representations of what it means to be a girl. 

Featuring fashion advice, celebrity gossip, and real-life stories of readers, girls’ magazines of the 21st century are loaded with gender assumptions that mark them as quite different from boys’ reading material. As a historian interested in gender issues, I am drawn to explore how understandings of gender roles have shaped ‘modern’ society and, in particular, how the media has defined gender-based identities in Britain.

It was in the final decades of the 19th century that girlhood began to be regarded as an important stage in life, one with its own distinct culture, located in between, but separated from both childhood and adulthood.^[1] This point of view formed part of a reaction to popular anxieties about ‘modernity’ and its potential to create social and moral disorder, with gender considered a category through which this disorder could manifest itself. The image of the ‘New Woman’, associated with growing independence and new opportunities for women in the 1890s, challenged the accepted ideal that the primary responsibilities of women and girls were in the home. Importance was therefore placed on girlhood, a time during which young women were taught the acceptable boundaries of their gender.

Starting out as a penny weekly in 1880, the Girl’s Own Paper is just one example of the numerous periodicals of the fin de siècle which stressed gender dichotomies to its readers.^[2] As the most popular and longest running periodical of its kind, the Girl’s Own is an important historical source for understanding how modern girls’ culture has evolved.

Containing nonfiction articles, stories, and a regular correspondence section, in its pages the Girl’s Own crafted its own vision of acceptable girlhood. Between 1880 and 1900, several articles in the paper expressed the need for girls to follow the traditional obligations of their sex. Readers were encouraged to live by traditional feminine values and were exposed to advertisements for household products, soaps, sewing materials, and other domestic necessities.^[3]Stories also explicitly warned girls that to follow in the footsteps of the ‘New Woman’ would inevitably lead to unhappy spinsterhood.^[4]

In an ever-growing market of gendered periodicals, however, the Girl’s Own also accepted the need to discuss more progressive ideas on girlhood in order to remain popular with readers. By the turn of the century, an increasing number of informative articles appeared on matters such as higher education and work opportunities. The justification given for such articles was that these were a response to the large number of girls requesting advice on ‘new departures, new training, and new careers’.^[5]

Advertisements for leisure pursuits also allowed for a more ‘modern’ vision of girlhood to be represented. Products were marketed as being suitable for ‘lawn tennis, badminton, and croquet wear’, activities associated with modern representations of girlhood which distinguished fin de siècle girls from older generations.^[6]

In 1890, however, readers were reminded to ‘enjoy your lawn tennis; but remember the obligations of your sex and your self respect’.^[7] This phrasing summarises well the tone used in the Girl’s Own between 1880 and 1900, as traditional ideas on girlhood and femininity were renegotiated alongside the opportunities of modern life. The author cautioning readers to ‘remember [their] obligations’ demonstrated both tolerance for the new opportunities available to girls, such as new leisure pursuits like lawn tennis, and an awareness of the simultaneous opening-up of new educational and professional fields. Nevertheless, it was also stressed that these new opportunities should be enjoyed in moderation. An image of the ideal reader was thus created within the magazine which embodied the Christian, and traditionally feminine values of the magazine’s publisher but which also considered the demands of its readership. 

Many girls engaged in the correspondence of the magazine, and anticipated a reply from their ‘dear, faithful friend’, the editor.^[8] This was yet another way in which the magazine acted as a tool with which its consumers formed understandings of their own lives and of the world around them. Experiences and understandings at such a fundamental life stage—girlhood—shaped the readers’ worldview on their way to adulthood. 

In today’s society, the mass media still acts as a vehicle with which individual identities are shaped and connected. More than a hundred years on, possibilities have increased exponentially, not only through the printed word but also because of the endless opportunities which the internet provides. The rise of social media is reflective of an increasingly globalised society, in which individuals can connect on deeper and more meaningful levels than earlier printed periodicals could provide. Yet, these older forms of communication remain important and relevant sources. They can teach us much about how our society has evolved, and how gender ideals which still exist today have been negotiated and understood in the past.

Laura Neilson is a recent graduate of the University of Sheffield, holding an MA in Modern History. She is particularly interested in gender history, and in making history accessible to the public.

Cover image: Masthead illustration for the Girl’s Own Paper in an 1886 edition. Source: Wikimedia Commons

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^[1] K. Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood through the periodical press, 1850-1918 (Ashgate, 2012), p.9; S. Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880-1915 (Columbia University Press, 1995), pp.1-3.

^[2] D. Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Routledge, 2013), p.18.

^[3] “Multiple Classified Advertisements”, Girl’s Own Paper, 3rd September 1881, p.3.

^[4] “Varieties”, Girl’s Own Paper, 6th October 1894.

^[5] Lily Watson, “What is the London County Council doing for Girls?”, Girl’s Own Paper, 27th February 1897, p.4.

^[6] “Multiple Display Advertisements”, Girl’s Own Paper, 3rd January 1880, p.4.

^[7] S.F.A Caulfield, “Some Types of Girlhood; or, Our Juvenile Spinsters”, Girl’s Own Paper, 4th October 1890, p.5.

^[8] “A Dip Into the Editor’s Correspondence”, Girl’s Own Paper, 16th June 1883, p.6.