Kim Kelly went to Coney Island this past summer to attend sideshow school, a four-day course in fire-eating, sword-swallowing, and other sideshow acts run by Adam Realman of Sideshow by the Seashores. She tells us about the classes and what she learned about sideshows.
A few days after graduation, once my fire-eating burns had healed, I called Realman to talk about the history of disabled performers and the sideshow. There are three traditional categories of sideshow performers, he said, explaining their place in the hierarchy. First, there are the working acts, such as fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, glass-walkers, and everything in between. These performers were considered the lowest rung because, as Realman explained, “anybody can do that!” The next level up are the self-made or “self-inflicted” performers, people who’d made the conscious decision to modify their bodies in various ways, like the famous “tattooed ladies,” Captain Costentenus the Illustrated Man, and the modern-day Lizard Man, with his full-body green scale tattoos and sharpened teeth.
Finally, at the top of the ladder are the “natural borns,” who made up acts such as early 1900s British conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny “The Half Man” Eck, whose fame followed the sisters’ by a few years. “In a traditional sideshow, the natural borns were considered the royalty ... the creme de la creme of the sideshow; they were people who were born different,” Realman explained. “These were the people that were the highest-paid performers, because you can’t manufacture this.”
Kelly is a "natural born," and could have been a full-time sideshow "lobster girl" in another age. She has a rare congenital disorder called ectrodactyly, or lobster claw syndrome. Kelly tells how the old-style "freak shows" gave way to disability rights, leaving sideshows full of mostly working acts in the modern era. Read Kelly's experiences and what she's learned about sideshows at Vox. -via Damn Interesting
