They were imprisoned, infantilized, and medicalized just to keep them quiet. Here are 20 portraits of young women who break the mold.
While “bad boys” are our heroes, from Gavroche to Joey Starr and James Dean, “bad girls” have been sidelined by history.
In this book, Véronique Blanchard and David Niget shed light on the fleeting shadows which emerge from medical and court archives: “vagrants,” “hysterics,” “teenage mothers,” “prostitutes,” “runaways,” “female gang leaders,” “punks,” and “vamps.”
Using over twenty portraits, taken between 1840 and 2000, of “bad girls” who were judged to be immoral, the authors give these stormy destinies faces and life stories. They map the places of passage or confinement of these women: houses of sin (amusement parks, cabarets, balls), of correction (boarding houses, convents, prisons, asylums), or of submission (brothels, family homes).
Suffocated and chained for decades by the weight of legal, religious, medical, and family norms, these “intractable and rebellious” underage women have nevertheless, through their resistance, become actors of social, cultural, and political change. So, are they deviants or dissidents?
Véronique Blanchard & David Niget, Mauvaises filles
Published by Textuel
€ 39
