Women Who Get Me Hot: Josephine Baker

I love women. All kinds. All shapes. I love a woman’s energy. I love a woman’ scent, her walk, her personal style. Whether lesbian or straight or bisexual. Some women make so much from so little – they get by by their wiles and inner strength. I’ve admired a lot of women through history too. In honor of Black History Month, I’d like to tell you about one of the sexiest, strongest, bravest women of whom I’ve heard. She rose, like the Phoenix, again and again. The strength of her convictions changed lives and on top of that, she was hot. Really hot.

Her name was Josephine Freda McDonald and she was born to unmarried parents in St. Louis in 1906—you might have heard of her as Josephine Baker. She got married when she was 13 years old, but it didn’t last. Seems her husband didn’t appreciate Josephine cutting him with a broken bottle and he never returned. She had to make a living, so she started waiting tables. One day, a band found her and asked her to join them as a dancer. Though she started young, she was never known as the best dancer, the best singer, nor even the most beautiful woman—but she had that indefinable “it.” She traveled with the band and at 15 married again—to a guy named Baker. She kept the name. She did not keep the man.

Eventually, she ended up in New York, making $120 a week – big money back then. Then, she was led off to the lights of Paris. The Parisians treated her with an equality she had never experienced in the United States. But, they expected Black performers to dress and act the part of savages on stage. The trade-off reluctantly worked for Josephine. She became the toast of Gay Paris—attending parties, living the high life, and enjoying a level of acceptance she could never have achieved in segregated Jim Crow America. She was a symbol of sexual expression and freedom. She reveled in it too. I’m guessing she had some pretty fun times. At one point, before the war, she returned to the US to perform and was asked to use the service entrance instead of coming through the front door, as she did in all the European countries. It was not a fit. She didn’t please the US audiences because her performances were considered too French.

The war rolled around, and in the midst of husband number 3, a Jewish fellow, she was asked to collect information for the French Resistance. She gladly did so. The freedom she enjoyed in crossing European borders allowed her to gather and impart news and gossip that would help the Allies. Despite the danger, she did this throughout the war. She toured in North Africa to entertain the Allied troops and she convinced Egypt’s leader to appear on stage with her (a move which indicated a subtle preference despite Egypt’s stated neutrality during the war). After the liberation of the death camps, Baker performed at Buchenwald for those too ill to move. Before the war ended, so did marriage number 3.

Marriage number 4 after the war found her ready to adopt after a string of miscarriages and hysterectomy. She decided to adopt a rainbow family and ended up adopting 13 children of all races, from many different countries, of various ages and faiths, despite her husband’s concerns about their ability to afford to raise such a brood. He high-tailed it out of there too. She raised the children herself. In 1951, she headed back to the US and performed in front of an audience she insisted be integrated. The NAACP named “Josephine Baker Day,” in honor of her life’s accomplishments. Her stand on racial issues hurt her career, but she continued on.

 

Eventually, she came back to the US again to appear with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the March on Washington and to appear at Carnegie Hall. A new day was dawning, that was clear. She suffered a heart attack in 1964. Her career was in tatters and though she had help from wealthy friends for years, she was eventually evicted from her palatial home with its exotic animals, leaving her and 13 children homeless. With the help of Princess Grace of Monaco, she found a place for her brood to live and her career was briefly revived. After one more performance at Carnegie Hall, and a visit to Golda Meir (though I admire Meir, I did not think she was hot, just for the record) for the 25^th anniversary of the Israeli State, she returned to Paris in 1975, where she died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage surrounded by papers with glowing reviews of her final performance.

 

Baker was celebrated with full military honors by the French people who embraced her as an entertainer and a hero, where she never could have been in her own country. She was the first American woman to receive the highest French honor, the Croix de Guerre. She was buried in Monaco

Source: Wood, Ean. The Josephine Baker Story. London: Sanctuary Publishing Limited, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/22/AR2006122200194_pf.html
http://www.harlemlive.org/shethang/profiles/josephinebaker/jbaker.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker