Your Beautiful Ankle - The Bizarre History of Ankle Beauty Contests

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And thank you again. Dr. Walter Kitt compiles report after three years observing ladies ankles. Many women walk like dachshunds. Some afford hideous instances of splay foot. 90% suffer from flat foot, insipient or pronounced. Most have deplorable ankles and feet, yet the majority display their deformities with charming levity and audacity.

Speaking of audacity, Dr. Kitt, dachshunds, deformities, what kind of study was this? Well, it wasn't a study at all, just Dr. Kitt's opinion after three years spent scrutinizing women's ankles on his daily walks. Today we'd call him a creep, not a researcher, but he was a creep with exceedingly mainstream tastes because once upon a time, a lady's ankle was considered a most seductive and alluring thing.

So alluring, the ankle beauty contests were held. The way those events were conducted makes you want to gently pull the people of the past aside and whisper in their ears, what the f**k? The smoldering temptation of a lady's ankle. What's that I see? Is that an ankle? Yes, but grandma looks with deep distress. The modern style is fresh and new as higher hymns come into view.

Weird stuff. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is only skin deep. Pretty is as pretty does. A smile is the best makeup. For a culture obsessed with youth and appearance, we sure do go to a whole lot of trouble trying to persuade each other that we're not that shallow. That what we really care about is what's on the inside.

Is it? That right. Finish that. Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's maybely. Beauty works two ways. On the one hand, we know it when we see it. Symmetrical features, clear skin, bright eyes, lush hair. All signaling good health and robust fertility. On the other hand, beauty is very much defined by time and place and culture.

For example, 700 years ago, women's bodies were portrayed by Renaissance artists as full and rounded and lush. Nothing like the ideal we've been raised to chase. We're bombarded with images of bodies that are lean, gym toned, muscular and fit. No lounging about naked and giant clamshells for us. Instead, we have Pilates and barre class and high intensity interval training.

That's great. Cardio and good health for the win and all that. But tell me you wouldn't rather lie about on a velvet chase while a fat faced cherub flutters ahead, just waiting to refill your goblet of nectar. Good morning, everyone. I hope I'm going to be able to help you all with any problems you might have. I show you exactly how I go about my daily skin care myself.

First, I use my sensing thing before starting anything. One should start off with a clean slate, as it were. That's old time Hollywood actress Constance Bennett walking fans to her morning beauty routine back in the 1930s. There's a lot of creams and masks and young housemaid in the classic little black uniform, Mary, who runs a bath for Constance and hovers in the background like an extra from Downton Abbey who somehow took a wrong turn.

Then it's time for makeup. I'd be lost without my glow. But without plugging my car, it allows my skin to be just as though weren't there and keeps my makeup intact for hours. This is very important to all of us women, because the only time we're not on parade is the time we spend in front of our dressing table, sometimes not even there.

Now, my cream rouge. Lots of women think the cream road is very difficult to use, but maybe they're just lazy. The best part of this whole newsreel is watching Miss Constance Bennett spring out of bed in full glam brows, carefully penciled in lipstick, just so like the lead in a daytime soap opera, waking up radiant with every hair in place.

I kiss your hand, madam, your dainty finger tips. And while in summer land, madam, I'm begging for your lips. I haven't any right, madam, to lose the things I do. Just when I hold you tight, madam, you vanish in the night, madam. In dreams I kiss your hand, madam, and pray my dreams come true. So the late 19th, early 20th century fascination with a woman's ankle didn't come out of nowhere. The truth is, the simple acknowledgement that women have legs is a relatively recent innovation.

You know, and I know that skin care makes all kind of promises that don't really get delivered on. And you spend money and time and you're looking in the mirror and you go, I don't really see a difference. I was as frustrated as you are until I found OneSkin. I love these products because the more you use OneSkin, the clearer and smoother and more vibrant and bright your skin appears.

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That's 15% off OneSkin.co with code TrueWeirdStuff. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. Please support TrueWeirdStuff and tell them we sent you. In medieval Europe, a woman's legs weren't even described as legs. They and the arms were referred to as limbs. The freedom of displaying one's legs was simply out of the question for all women, more so for those in upper classes.

Their limbs had to be covered in floor-length clothing or dresses, whatever they were called depending on their place in the social hierarchy. Women's clothing at that time made damn sure no one caught so much as a glimpse of a lady's limbs. Skirts were made of rigid fabrics which, if not rigid enough, were reinforced by various contraptions and layers and sub-layers of fabric meant to ensure limited movement.

These clothes were rather heavy and intended to conform to the prevalent fashion rather than to any degree of comfort. All floor-length skirts, without exception, were voluminous and billowy. There was even a brief craze for something called the hobble skirt, which lived up to its name. It caused the wearer to hobble as she walked thanks to the circumference of the hemline, which was severely constricted, made more so by actually tying the billowy skirt to the ankles.

Now, jump ahead 500 years to the Victorian era. If you're thinking that those 500 years might show a little progress, a little loosening of the crazy, think again. Because Victorian England was so prudish that the word legs was scandalous. Even the legs of a table or a piano were off-limits. Now, the idea that men would be driven into a state of violent animal lust by catching even a glimpse of a woman's ankle is a comic historical exaggeration.

No doubt there was the occasional naughty Nigel or perverted Percival who found themselves overcome by the sight of a particularly graceful fibula meeting a dainty talus, a coy flex of tendon sliding silkyly over bone. And why wouldn't that be true? We're children of the internet. We've learned the hard, uncomfortable way that there's a fetish for every Ain't nothing wrong with that.

But Victorian men, for the most part, managed to get through the day without panting every time a lady lifted her skirts to exit a carriage. The heavy fabrics and bustles and hoop skirts of the Victorian period were a trial to live with. In their tightly laced corsets and sweeping long skirts, women had to navigate streets running with filth, mud, animal and human waste garbage.

And remember, these are the days before washing machines and dry cleaners. Keeping those heavy ornate hems clean was an ordeal, not to mention how restrictive and uncomfortable those garments were. How impractical for anyone who wasn't born to wealth and a squadron of domestic help. In 1881, a group of fancy high society ladies in London teamed up to something called the Rational Dress Society.

Their goal? Complete reform of fashion for Victorian women. Their ideas were considered radical and controversial and even shocking. One of the founding members was the Viscountess Lawrence Wallace Pomeroy, known more informally as Lady Harberton. My husband, James Pomeroy, is the sixth Viscount of Harberton. Quite the pedigree, but Lady Harberton was very much her own person.

One who discovered a real passion for cycling. Something made very challenging by the long, heavy skirts she was expected to wear. The fabric constantly in the way and catching in the chain. A lady dressed according to the present fashion takes up the space of at least three men. I urge our members to consider the divided skirt as a distinctive and desirable costume.

The divided skirt, what we might call gauchos. Poor Lady Harberton was mocked and jeered on both sides of the Atlantic for that one. But she was serenely composed in her convictions and argued that common sense ought to be a consideration. Think, she said, of the difficulties of train travel. In the event of an emergency, a lady is simply unable to dress quickly enough for her own safety.

That's a good point. The Rational Dress Society really was just out there advocating for five basic wardrobe concepts, all meant to make life a little bit easier for women. We ask first for freedom of movement. And second, for the absence of pressure over any part of the body. Have you ever worn a corset? A hoop skirt?

A bustle? Those garments wear you. Thirdly, we suggest no more weight than is necessary for warmth. And that both weight and warmth be evenly distributed. Fourth, that grace and beauty be combined with comfort and convenience. While fifth, not departing too conspicuously from the ordinary dress of the time. Could the woman be any more reasonable?

Even if some of her ideas were a little bit out there. I mean, she once declared that long skirts trailing through filth was a leading cause of tuberculosis in women. We wish to be able to walk with ease and comfort. But far more, we wish to abolish the hideous distortions caused by tight clothing on the body. Beauty in dress cannot exist where it is in direct opposition to utility.

And it is our overlooking of this fact persistently that women's dress has reached a point of positive danger to health and an outrage on common sense. This Victorian aristocrat, this historic baddie, didn't just talk. She lived her beliefs. In 1898, she was bicycling through the English countryside when she stopped for lunch at the Hautboy Hotel in Surrey.

Lady Harberton was dressed in her preferred cycling costume, described by the press of the day as a pair of bloomers. Think extremely generous, heavy pantaloons. The hotel refused to serve her on the grounds that she was indecently attired. Lady Harberton sued. There was no question that Lady Harberton was willing to pay.

The only excuse given by innkeeper Mrs. Sprague for not serving Lady Harberton was that she was wearing knickerbockers instead of a skirt. Mrs. Sprague refused to allow Lady Harberton into the restaurant, but ushered her into the bar where, gasp, working men were the only customers. Men in their shirt sleeves smoking and drinking, a whole row of them, the reek of spirits thick in the smoky air.

A respectable woman does not spend any time whatsoever in a bar parlor. I could not remain with these horrid men. The jury was instructed to consider, one, that service had been refused in the restaurant, but not the bar. And two, was there sufficient cause to justify denying Lady Harberton her lunch? The jury found Mrs. Sprague not guilty, and the gallery of spectators burst into applause.

It was a win for tradition, for modesty, for holding tight to the status quo. But the times were changing, no matter how hard the Victorians fought it. Hemlines had begun rising, not dramatically at first, but little by little, baby steps. All that would change with a young French woman named Gabrielle, who learned to sew in the austere Catholic orphanage where she was sent at age 11 after the death of her mother.

We know Gabrielle as Coco Chanel. Chanel ripped away the fetters of restrictive clothing that had reigned in Europe for centuries. Equally profound was the fact that Chanel also introduced skirts that ended just below the knee. In them, women's legs could feel the breeze and the sun. What was a taboo for centuries was now gaining acceptance.

It wasn't just the shorter hem that provoked shock, it was the whole dress. Where the Victorians were clad neck to floor in layers and layers of fabric, torsos cinched tight by corsets, arms covered to the wrists, the women of the 1920s, the women inspired by Chanel, favored a much more feminine look. No waist, no corseting, just fabric flowing over the body like liquid.

Arms bared, shoulders visible, décolletage on display. A radical shift. A shock to the system. It seemed to folks at that time that one minute the ladies all looked like Mary Poppins and the next like Sabrina Carpenter. It was a little more gradual than that, of course, but not much. And in the handful of years between the Victorians and the flappers, a weird little craze caught fire.

A craze for women's ankles. Complete with competitions to find the shapeliest ankles of all. Cleveland, Ohio, August 1905. Feet of pretty girls and girls with pretty feet must pass review. They called this event a Cinderella contest. The organizers set out to find judges and in an unusual twist, they selected a young woman named Miss Della Cone to handle the duty.

Unusual because these sorts of contests were more often judged by the local police. I know, I know. Sometimes America seems like one giant fever dream. When on the great day, the maids with tiny shoes and pretty insteps take their respective places, while the prince with the golden Cinderella slipper makes the rounds to see which is the winner.

It will be Miss Cone's nod of the head as much as anything else which will decide the case once and for all. The latest entry in the Cinderella contest is Miss Marie Linder of No. 52 Becker Street. Miss Linder wears the shoe size No. 2D. Her name, her dress, her shoe size, right there on page two of the Cleveland Queen Viola. Can you imagine?

These ankle competitions took different forms. There was one also in Ohio where the organizers hung a heavy canvas sheet elevated just enough so the bottom was about a foot off the ground. Behind the sheet stood a half dozen contestants with only their feet and ankles visible. At the signal of the starting judge, they raised their skirts a little above both feet and the event was on.

If you're thinking, well, this is the kind of weird fad that catches on for a season or two, then disappears. No. Nope. This went on for years. Denver, Colorado, 1912. The Rocky Mountain News of Denver has been conducting a pretty ankle contest. Just to show that the man who said that Denver girls have beefy ankles did not know what he was talking about.

186 pairs of ankles were entered in the contest and there were over 3,000 applicants for the position of judge. Yeah, I bet. Why? Because judges in these competitions didn't limit themselves to merely looking. They took their sweet time measuring, stroking, and caressing. And they were picky about the goods. There was one ankle contest reported on by the Sioux Those gray-haired old ladies of New York who entered the ankle beauty contest will perhaps keep their hosiery on in the future.

Oh, catty much. Demure Misses exhibiting well-turned and symmetrical ankles coyly asked their friends if they didn't deserve to win. Picture it. Concealing every part of the body except the ankles sounds a little creepy. Right? But this was a strategy often used in beauty competitions in the past. For example, there was a popular contest that made the rounds usually under a banner like Miss Lovely Eyes.

Contestants wore masks, veils really, that concealed everything except their gaze. More fair that way was the thinking. A judge couldn't be distracted by beauty or its absence if the only thing visible was the thing being judged. The eyes. The lips. The hands. The ankles. One New Jersey amusement park hosted a beautiful legs competition in 1951. The female contestants lined up at Palisades Amusement Park, each wearing a very short formal dress, stockings, and heels. The women also wore pillowcases over their heads, uneven ragged holes cut out for their eyes. Photos preserved from that day look like the Rockettes line all got together and dressed up as ghosts for Halloween.

The resulting image is as haunting as it is goofy. Step right up! See the lovely girls await the decision of the panel of judges. Many prizes to the winner including a lovely new wardrobe by the M.E. Blatt Company. A year's supply of Marclay hosiery. The contest is open to all girls 16 and older who have not acted or modeled professionally. The winner of that contest was Miss Peggy Mashka of Altoona, Pennsylvania and just based on old newspaper photos, she absolutely deserved the trophy. $1,000 beautiful leg contest.

Entrants are not required to make any special preparation for the competition. Merely coming in their street dresses. Legs are to be judged from the knee down, which takes in the well-turned ankle and dainty foot. Prizes, prizes, prizes. That 1927 July in New York City, the world suffered a crushing disappointment when... The most fascinating pair of legs in the United States were twinkling unsung in Birmingham, Alabama last night because their fair owner could not come to New York to show them to the world. The legs are owned by Miss Erra Briggs, who was a heavy favorite with the board of elimination for the annual beautiful leg contest of the National Hosiery and Underwear Exposition at the Hotel Waldorf Astoria. Hundreds of women entered photographs. The chosen finalists were invited to New Jersey to parade their pins for a panel of perverts. Oops, I mean underwear salesmen turned judges. It was decided after heated debate that Miss Gladys Turner of Orange, New Jersey had the best legs of those present, but there was many a sigh for the absent Miss Briggs.

All of the judges had inspected photographs of her twin attractions and there was no argument. Damn girl, now we all want to see them. The judges felt that despite the perfect measurements of Miss Briggs, they could not in justice proclaim her the winner without a personal inspection. However, she was awarded a silver cup, which will be sent to her. A personal inspection?

Oh, I bet you want to personally inspect the legs of Miss Briggs, don't you? Ew. Not surprisingly, a great many of the contestants in these competitions were dancers, actresses, and showgirls, which is why a contest for housewives only was conducted at a food show in New York City. The thinking there was that a housewife was more likely to boast the fleshy curves that were once the feminine ideal, an ideal that was being rapidly eclipsed by a different beauty standard, lithe, sporty, athletic.

There was much talk of how hips and busts were vanishing. Along with the passing of the good old days, there is bemoaned in certain circles the passing of the good old legs. The whole female figure has gone from curves to planes. The boyish has shooed the billowy and voluminous from the national spotlight. Where are the hips of yesteryear?

And so, housewives were summoned to the city so that their legs, ankles, and feet could give the judges an old-fashioned, fleshy thrill. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Larry, Moe, and Curly, what a world. This craze for body part beauty pageants really, really took off in the 1930s, along with beauty contests for almost everything else.

Homes, garden, children. That last was typically judged based on photos submitted by parents. No toddlers were stuffed into pillowcases and paraded in front of a panel. Though at this point, would you really be all that surprised if they were? The British also enjoyed a good ankle contest in case you thought America had cornered the market on this kind of entertainment. The old market town of Ormskirk, less than 15 miles north of Liverpool, hosted a very inclusive ankle pageant in 1935. The ankle contest, organized by Mrs. Chadwick, was carried out quite strictly with heats for grannies, housewives, and bright young things. They all had to parade their exhibits on a platform behind a sheet, which only allowed the ankles to be seen. There was only one judge, a Mr. Wilson, who was heckled by the crowd, shouting out their opinions and critiques of each pair of ankles.

When the winner was announced, the audience was stunned. Mrs. Pickton? The matron? Thus proving that grace does not depart with youth. However, Mrs. Pickton handed on her prize to the next in merit. So the two winners proved to be Miss Alice Chadwick and Miss Hornby, the vicar's daughter. Throughout the 1930s, 40s, well into the 1950s, the enthusiasm for ankle and leg competitions raged on, coast to coast and everywhere in between, including that far-off kingdom of glamour, Paris, France. And with each passing year, hemlines rose. Then came the 1960s and a revolution in women's fashion ushered in by the mini-skirt. You can see how that titillating thrill of glimpsing a fine ankle was diminished once you could see an ankle just about anywhere. Ankles, calves, knees, even thighs, out where anybody so inclined could take a peek.

Streets, parks, the supermarket, all the legs you could possibly want. Legs attached to women who were increasingly unwilling to be cast as objects for perusal and approval. Women, you know, actual whole human beings with agency and feelings, dreams, desires, thoughts, opinions, just like men, except they were women. So like men, but different. Not livestock or mannequins, though. A massive and messy cultural shift that we're still wrestling with. Rolling a little backward at the moment, which is apparently how humanity and history work.

The push-pull of progress and tradition, the lurching forward, the falling back, the dance we've seemed to master since coming out of the trees. Decades spent tucking women behind screens and fondling their ankles and not a single scandal? Come on, that can't be right. Of course it isn't. Of course there was at least one scandal, one that seems downright quaint to us, mired as we are in the horrors of the Epstein class, our newsfeed spitting out an endless stream of atrocities, assaults and arrests. Though not nearly enough arrests, not by far.

Captain George Gray, a Civil War veteran on the Union side, was in his office on Wall Street when the telephone rang. It was Friday, October 4th, 1912. The caller was a woman named Mrs. Israel Hall. Captain Gray was in the real estate business, and Mrs. Hall and her husband were apparently in the market. Captain, if you will come up to my house at once, I think you can put through a real estate deal. Three gentlemen are here waiting for you.

Neither Captain Gray nor Mrs. Hall had any idea that those three gentlemen weren't land speculators or developers. They were undercover police detectives with a warrant for Captain Gray's arrest. The Captain, 69 years old, 6 feet tall, was the picture of a soldier as he strode into Mrs. Hall's apartment and asked, what can I do for you gentlemen?

Alright, come down to the station with us. You're under arrest for grand larceny. Who charges that I, Captain George W. Gray, am a thief? Gray's accuser was Mrs. Mary Bell, age 63, the widow of another union officer. The detective was blunt. She charges you with stealing $51 and a gold watch from her stocking. Stunned, Captain Gray gestured in disbelief toward Mrs. Hall.

There, that comes from that dad blamed ankle and feet matching we had at her house Wednesday night. You were in the match, Mrs. Hall. You know I didn't steal Mrs. Bell's money and watch. Of course you did not, Captain Gray. Oh, but Mrs. Bell had another story to tell. I certainly met Captain Gray at Mrs. Hall's home that Wednesday evening. He and Mrs. Hall later escorted me home. There, I extended hospitality to my guests and they accepted it. According to Mrs. Bell, the Captain made himself comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable.

She alleged that he began pontificating on a most offensive subject. When it comes to the daintiest of ankles and feet, American women simply can't compete. It would be hard to find a perfect pair of feet and ankles in the United States. Mrs. Bell said that both she and Mrs. Hall were outraged. You, sir, do not know what you're talking about. In response, Captain Gray suggested that the two women have a foot and ankle match right then and there. I am from Missouri. As they say, I require proof of a visual nature. Now, if I do say so myself, I am proud of my feet and ankles and I have a right to be. Mrs. Hall and I showed our feet and ankles. The one who had the prettiest feet and ankles was to get a prize from the Captain.

Ladies, I'm afraid I can't pass judgment on feet and ankles in stockings. We took off our stockings. In my right stocking were the watch and $51. Now, I know some of you are thinking, that sly old goat wanted to get his hands on those little piggies, so he tricked the ladies into sliding off their stockings. Some of you are thinking, wow, this is a whole lot of public mortification for $51. Crazy. If it makes you feel better, $51 in 1912 is more than $1,700 today. And I don't know about you, but I'm going to fight an old foot pervert to get that kind of money back. I won first prize in the exhibition and Mrs. Hall left for home. Later, the Captain left saying, I have a prize for you that I'll send along later. That's when I discovered that my watch and money were gone. The detectives arrested Captain Gray and tossed him in jail for the night. At 69 years old, Captain Gray was positively ancient for the times.

The average life expectancy for a white male in 1912 was just a tick under 52 years. Now, the grizzled old vet was behind bars. His wife and grown children shocked and ashamed. It took less than 24 hours for the news of this little foot and ankle debacle to make it from New York City to California. With a little help from the internet, today a person's reputation can be destroyed in minutes, which makes what happened to Captain Gray even more impressive. His humiliation went viral in the days before the first commercial radio station was launched. Decades before telephones were a fixture in American homes.

Folks communicated in 1912 mostly by writing letters. Those zip codes wouldn't even be invented for another half century. For a particularly urgent piece of news, there was always the telegram. But for Captain George Gray, by the time he was escorted out of his jail cell, newspapers across the country were running headlines like, theft from widow's host charged to Asian veteran.

And? Judge of feminine ankle contest is pinched for theft. Captain Gray had to appear in court where Mrs. Bell told the magistrate, well, as it happens, I did find the lost articles in question in the kitchen of my home. Case dismissed. And so ended the mortifying saga of Captain George Gray who, though completely innocent of all charges, no doubt regretted suggesting that little ankle match for the rest of his days. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our first annual Beautiful Legs contest.

Tonight, your applause will decide who on this week's show owns the shapeliest legs. I, of course, have not entered otherwise there would be no contest. We've narrowed the contestants down to the final five. Now, if you folks in the studio audience will indicate your choice by applause, we will have ourselves a winner in no time at all. Can we see the contestants? Legendary comedian and actor Carol Burnett, whose television show ran for 11 seasons and 278 episodes on the CBS network. This February 1968 sketch is a now legendary example of the calm, talent, timing and chemistry of Burnett's cast.

The contestants were concealed behind a heavy stage curtain. The only thing visible were five pairs of shapely legs, each clad in sheer black stockings and a pair of brightly colored high heel shoes. Number one. Number two. Number three. Number four. Number five. Number five is the winner. May we reveal our contestants?

Contestant number five turned out to be Harvey Korman in tuxedo inspired drag and the audience went wild. Harvey's gams beat out classic Hollywood pinup Betty Grable, whose iconic legs were famously insured for a million dollars. Actresses Martha Ray and Jackie Gregory and even future Playgirl centerfold model actor Lionel Wagner.

There's somebody out there for every flavor of nostalgia, including nostalgia for things like the ankle contest. Harmless fun, they say. None of that woke politically correct nonsense that thinks putting a pillowcase over a woman's head so you can peer at her legs and feet without distraction is like wrong. We should get back to those days when the whole town would gather for this kind of fun. But you know what? We don't need that.

We have the Internet. We have stuff like OnlyFans. We can reduce a woman's body to its parts without even getting off the couch. That's how progress might not be the right word. Convenience, I guess. It's so very easy now to park your eyeballs on whatever exact precise specific thing it is that turns you on. No more traveling to the amusement park or the carnival or the fair to catch a tantalizing glimpse of flesh.

Thanks to the proliferation of generative AI, what you're into doesn't even have to be real. You can whip up a little foot and ankle competition of your own with contestants that are like, I don't know, raccoon above and girl below or vice versa. We're not here to judge. We're here to remember. Next time on True Weird Stuff, Amelia just wanted to help. It was a time when a woman could be called fallen for getting pregnant out of wedlock and that woman would have to somehow earn a living to feed herself and her little babe in arms. And there was Amelia Dyer offering to care for those babies, offering to be a safe place until she wasn't because Amelia Dyer was a serial killer and her preferred victims were the tiniest of all. The Ogres of Reading on the next True Weird Stuff. Our voice talents on this episode were Kary "Doc" Bowser, Charly King, Carla Richardson, Erin Cox, and Don Morgan.

Sherry, when you started talking about this and especially when you started talking about when we started miniskirts and stuff, all I could think about when I went to Catholic school was the girls in class, their skirts had to be, I don't know how many inches it was, from bottom of the hem to your knee could only be so many inches. And I can remember they would go around with a ruler.

It's weird. And the girls to get around it, after it was measured, they would roll their skirts up in the waistband so they get their skirts up a little bit higher again. That is what I remember from that. The weird fixation on women's legs. So my mom went to an all-girls Catholic school and she told me that they routinely were made to kneel on the floor and if your skirt hem didn't touch the floor you got sent home after a good smack upside the head.

And I wore Catholic school uniforms and you were constantly being eyeballed and often by male teachers to make sure that your hemlines were right. My daughters went to public school. They wore uniforms from kindergarten through middle school. And then in middle school they were allowed to wear whatever they wanted. And you know, kids were getting dressed, girls, I should say not kids, girls were dress coded right and left for your tank top strap wasn't thick enough. Your shoulder was visible.

Your shorts were too short. And we all know listen, we all know the difference between booty shorts and shorts. So we don't need to get into some pointless Facebook comment section argument about an eighth of an inch. We all know that what we're talking about is nuts here. And this fixation on women as objects to be observed and categorized and measured and judged.

So these contests I have so many thoughts about this. First of all you know there's going to be some pervs that are going to be judges. The other thing is I wondered as we were going through this other than perhaps the Sears catalog which was a thing at that time how else could these undergarment companies and companies that sold hosiery and that sort of thing how could they sell that stuff? And I'm going you go to the contest and they help to sponsor it and give it away as prizes. And then what you say is no, we don't want actresses in stuff, we want housewives.

Is that because a sense of fairness? No, because I'm looking at this as your potential customers. I mean everything in our culture is about buying and selling when you get right down to it. Very little in American culture is pure and uncontaminated by commerce because our economic system is consumer capitalism so it just makes sense, right? That everything we do is about selling us products making us desire products. It's kind of nuts when you think about it because technically we could just be spending our days gazing at the stars and eating fruit that grows on trees but that's not how we roll at all and we're so immersed in it we think there's no other way to be of course there's another way to be but inside our fishbowl we only know this fishbowl. And so even our amusements are designed for buying and selling and trading and consuming.

This one, like on the one hand you go oh here's a harmless relic of the olden times but in these ankle contests particularly in the beginning like in the 30s and 40s you had judges just groping the holy hell out of these women's legs. Men were lining up. There were waiting lists to be judges. Oh I'm sure. Now the creepiest and weirdest image to come out of this that I can't get out of my head is the idea that you're putting pillowcases on these women's heads and cutting out eye holes.

Ragged eye holes. They look crazy. This sounds like the setup for the plot of a horror movie that you had all these women that were there but one of the people there one of the women there was a bad person and she was committing murder while dressed this way or something. That's where my mind ran to. But in this country it's not a good idea to put anything that belongs on a bed over your head and have eye holes cut out. Ever. It looks like that. There's a still photograph and you'll see it on our website TrueWordStuff.com because Doc pulls all this stuff together. The photograph looks like a still from a season of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story. Doesn't it? It looks made up. It looks dramatic.

And the pillowcases are quite large and the eye holes are just slashed out with a pair of what looks like kitchen scissors. It's haunting and creepy and ghastly and strange. And yet. And yet. So Sherry, can we talk about George Gray? Poor George Gray. Captain Gray. Captain Gray served his country. He's a captain. He's an old man. He I can't even tell you how old a man he was in 1912 at age 69. He was ancient. He was ancient then.

Today it's not. Today it's different. It is a lot different. Today he's George Clooney, but back then he was a crepe keeper. Is it possible something more happened here than just an ankle contest and that was the cover for it? So she had that stuff stolen and that was the cover for it? And it ended up being in the. Here's what I think happened. I think everybody was drinking. It was these two married women and Captain Gray. And I think that everybody was tipsy. And you know, he's like, oh, I'm going to have to have these stockings come off, you pervert.

So I think she was regretful and a little bit embarrassed and a little bit intoxicated. This is just my speculation. And legitimately misplaced the watch and the money, which was a lot of money back then. $1,700. Like if I steal it from you, you want it back. That's a lot of money. And a gold watch. So I think that she made an honest mistake, but it just went so far.

And you know, for all we know, there was drama in the background with her husband about letting Captain Gray fuel her up. Like there's a million things that don't make it to the official story. But Captain Gray's reputation was ruined. He was made to look like, if not a thief, then certainly an old scoundrel. And it was, you know, the end of his life.

It's kind of unfair. He didn't really. All right. Like you said, they were drinking and maybe he shouldn't have done that and blah, blah, blah. But he wasn't a thief. And I don't know. And it is like today, though, these stories kind of take on a life of their own once they kind of get out there. Well, and he may not have even been much in the way of a pervert.

It may have been like, let's say it's me, you and Heather hanging out and we're joking around and we're like, oh, judge our ankles, Max, and you give our ankles a squeeze. And then we talk about it later and it's like, man, Max is a freak. It could have just been so innocent and honest mistakes were made. And, you know, these were clearly people that were that had warm, close social relationships. So so this is how times have changed. Can you imagine if this particular story were to get out now? People go, yeah. And so, yeah.

When you think about that and put that next to it, like I don't know what Harvey Weinstein did, what Louis CK did and some of that other creepy, weird behavior. It's incredibly innocent and it makes you so sorrowful for the ruination of Captain Gray's reputation. And I went looking. But here's the thing. I don't have Captain if Captain Gray kept a diary, I couldn't find it. You can only like we meet these people at their moment of fame or infamy and then they disappear back into the slipstream of time. And so I don't know how grievous the suffering for Captain Gray was his wife and grown children there. I mean, this was a horrifying scandal and it wasn't just local.

So, no, I don't know how, but I guess because the newswire services, it was such a delicious little story that it went viral in the days before that was even a concept. You crazy, you know, from having worked in local television news, most days there's not much of anything going on. Boy, when you're able to get a juicy little piece of meat, oh boy, let's chew on that. It doesn't matter how much truth there is in it. Well, and think about it, too. This man was, you know, he was retired military on the Union side.

So this and something that a story like this does to you as a kid, you know, everything seems even as an adult things seem so long ago and far away like the Civil War. That was so long ago and so far away. But Captain Gray fought in the Civil War. Yeah, so it doesn't make it look so long ago. No, no. I mean, here's a Civil War veteran whose reputation was ruined in the last chapter of his life by this scandal. And that just shows you that all of these things are closer to us than we think. And in 1912, that was a couple years after my great, great grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Italy.

These things are living memory for a lot of people. You remember your own relatives being around at this time. So, yeah, poor Captain Gray. Poor Captain Gray. Can we talk about Dr. Walter Kidd? Oh, what a freak. So I guess, you know, I mean, if you're talking about something that's from the 19-teens, there weren't as many doctors around as there are now. I think there's a lot more.

I don't know what kind of a doctor he was, but if you had DR in front of your name, people listened to you because they go, well, you figure you know something. You're smart enough to be able to get through all that schooling. And it was, graduate degrees were not as prevalent as they are now. And so this guy is just it's not, he's just mean spirited.

Women walk like dachshunds. Dachshunds. What? Well, it shows you the casual disregard for a person's humanity or feelings. You know, this way that women were discussed the way you might discuss livestock at the state fair. You know, the sleigh hoof, the sway back. I mean, it's just, it's dehumanizing in a way that you were so used to that we don't usually even really call it out and notice it.

We're just like, oh yeah. And then he tries to sort of soften it a little bit by saying, yet the majority displayed their deformities with charming levity and audacity. Yeah, I know somebody that's audacious here. Good lord. And the part of that was, this reminds me of one of our favorite movies of all time, Max, which is Throw Mama from the Train. Oh, I love that movie. Yeah.

There's a character in that movie who is compiling a coffee table book about women, you know? Yes. And every scene he has, he just comes off as a sweaty letch. Yes. That was Dr. Walter Kidd for me because as we point, as this story begins, you realize that he was not conducting any kind of real scientific research. No. He was just making observations on his daily walks around the neighborhood about women's feet and ankles. Like the obsession, the obsession with women's feet and ankles. But because he was a doctor from then, that's why we're reading about him 100 years later because he was some sort of expert, you know? Oh, it's just, you look at it and you go, what the what? And the one thing I couldn't find, it may exist, it does exist, but it's silent.

I went looking for like Path A newsreels about these leg and ankle contests. And there are some, but it's a silent black and white. You know, you're seeing the, you know how those old silent movies, they're a little bit sped up for us? You're seeing these really beautiful women just smiling and waving and, you know, flashing their legs and ankles and stuff. And it's very nostalgic and sweet. It gives you like a little lump in your throat.

But the reality was you're going to stand there while the local cops or a panel of local businessmen fill you up. It's crazy. All I can think about is when I worked in rock radio, I used to have to judge the wet t-shirt contest, which makes this seem incredibly quaint in comparison. But this was done at nightclubs and it seemed like it was the norm of the day.

And when I think about that now, I think, oh my God, that is so creepy. And Sherry, yes, the only reason I was a judge is because I had attained the status in society of being a rock DJ. That is my only qualification for judging this. And I'm horrified to admit this, but that's the only kind of connection I have to such a thing.

You're jealous of my glamorous life, I know. The thing is, the guy who works at the rock radio station judging the wet t-shirt contest, that is who we get to do those things. The rock DJ didn't exist in 1912, but the equivalent was who got brought in. Yeah. This is what happens when you work in radio instead of finishing a college degree.

Were you surprised by the response to Lady Harbert just advocating for women to be able to wear reasonable clothing for reasonable activities like bicycling? Aren't you glad somebody finally stood up and said, this is ridiculous to dress this way. It doesn't make any sense. You're cheering for her because it makes no sense to be dressing in that manner.

All I could think about was the fact that in the 18th century, when a lot of women were dressing this way up into the 19th century, in France they weren't even bathing. Not only are you under all this clothing, but the stench must have been awful. We were just used to it. We were used to not having the levels of hygiene that we currently enjoy in America today. You were just used to it.

That was part of life. Back in the day, if you could get into a time machine and go to the past, the first thing you're going to notice is how terrible the cities smell because there's garbage and sewage running in the streets and horse crap everywhere. People wearing these heavy garments that are dragging in that filth.

There's no whirlpool side by side waiting for you at home. There's no dry cleaner. If you were poor, you only had a handful of garments that you wore and you couldn't wash them with any kind of real regularity. We have it so sanitary, spotless, squeaky clean, easy now in comparison to how people did back in the day. Underneath those heavy skirts were more layers of skirts and woolen stockings and corsets and bustles and stays and all of those things.

It had to reek in addition to being miserably uncomfortable. Now I want you to get on a bicycle and ride around the British countryside in that get-up. Lady Harberton, I love when they send her into the bar and she's like, a respectable woman does not spend any time whatsoever in a bar parlor with these horrid men. It wasn't like she had lost her dignity through the course of this. She was just asking for people to be reasonable. That was all she was asking for.

You know what? She lost. She was shouted down and socially punished. Not that Lady Harberton cared. She was one of those people that crop up in history that are just like their iconoclasts. She's just like, excuse me, I'm doing my thing and I'm going to do my thing my way. She was nobility. She had a lot of influence and a lot of sway. They may have defeated her in that lawsuit but you blinked and the woman we call Coco Chanel was on the scene and it was a revolution in fashion.

Chanel is a complicated figure with ties to Nazi Germany. There's some distasteful darkness in the background of the Chanel brand but you can't deny the impact that she made on not just women's fashion but on culture. It wasn't more than just a change in style. It was an entire cultural shift that she really was riding that wave and responsible for in so many ways. You think about the distance between 1900 and 1920.

That's two decades but those two decades saw this extraordinary shift and it was, for folks back then, it really was like overnight. Like, oh my god where are your clothes? This is insane. This is indecent and obscene. We've all seen photos and black and white film reels of the flappers. I mean, they were wearing like nothing in comparison to their mothers and grandmothers. I'm always fascinated by seeing old pictures of people at the beach.

Because you're like, wow, how could you have been comfortable going there to the beach dressed like that? I mean, and of course during the 1920s so much changed during the 1920s. I mean, so much changed. And automobiles, the rise of automobiles a lot of women were more independent, especially in urban areas. The idea that women were smoking and drinking, even though we had prohibition in this country from starting in 1919 up until the 1930s. But it was a radical time for radical change and this was just part of that.

This is one of those True Word Stuff episodes where you can really sit back and see the pendulum, the swing of the pendulum. Because we went from this extreme, and it was a very extreme change, very swift and extreme change from the Victorian era into the roaring 20s and the flappers. And then World War I, World War II, now we're in the boom time, the baby boom in the 1950s heading into the 1960s. And women if you think about fashion in the 1940s and 1950s it was definitely more tucked in, nipped in and tailored than the loose shift dresses of the flappers.

And here comes the mini skirt. And that's the mini skirt and the birth control pill hitting the scene at roughly the same time. Just enormous, enormous changes. And there's a movement again pushing women toward more modest dress. And it's tiresome because this is that pendulum I'm talking about. It's not often in your life you can sit back and actually see it moving but we can see this push now toward restricting women's rights and privileges and opportunities and pushing for more modest dress in so many ways, Max. And we joke about it here but in so many ways this country, the Puritans never lost their grip on power. They just never did.

This is a country based on puritanical philosophies and ways of engaging with the world. And we live it every day. And we're living it again now. Yeah. And I think that also when it came along to the 1960s, there were more opportunities for everyone to see what was going on in other parts of the country because of television and also movies became less restrictive. You weren't, it just was not as restrictive in what was happening in movies as well because of the what commission?

The Hays Commission. Well, if you're a True Word Stuff listener, you learn more about the way America really is here than you were taught in school. Because if you go back to our Fatty Arbuckle episode, The Fall of Fatty, that's where the Hays Commission came in. Hollywood was falling out of favor with the heartland and the American people, the people who buy tickets and go to movies. So Hollywood catered to a demand in the culture for a return to the olden ways by creating the Hays Commission.

And the Hays Commission, then the rulings and the guidelines put in place by the Hays Commission shaped what you saw on your screens for decades afterward. And the Catholic Church used to condemn movies. Oh, yeah. I can remember my mother would say something about, you know, well, I heard that movie was condemned. It was like, bum, bum, bum.

And which, of course, had what effect? No, I just want to see it moving more. That's absolutely what happened with that. And I think at some point along the line, they realized that, that they should not get into the business of being able to do that. When Hollywood slapped an X rating on the Dustin Hoffman movie, Midnight Cowboy, that guaranteed not an empty seat in the house. Right. Because it was not pornography.

No. But I love the pornography business that said, if they're going to do that with X, we're going to call our movies triple X. And that is exactly how that happened. Double X? No, that's not good enough. We're going to call our movies triple X. Triple X. Have you ever seen triple X? That's how that came about. We keep, you know, we keep, we move in these fits and starts because we keep trying to legislate people's hearts and minds and souls. We keep trying to legislate morality. You can put, you can put robust laws on behavior. For example, if you drink alcohol and drive, your ass is in trouble. That's a law regulating your behavior.

Prohibition was a law regulating your values. Do you see the difference? Well, yeah, because the drinking and driving is for protection of the public. The rest of that stuff is because, you know, you shouldn't be doing this with a finger waved in your face, you know. Yeah, I can, here's the drink. Now, I'm going to regulate your, I'm going to legislate behavior around the drink.

I'm going to legislate where you can buy it and who's allowed to buy it, who's allowed to sell it, what you're allowed to do once you've consumed it. All of those, that's rational regulation, right? Making alcohol illegal, that's prohibition and that every time we make legislation based on morality, we fail. I mean, we see it consistently because you can't stop human beings from being human beings with laws. No, you can't and that is, all of that prohibition stuff is a fascinating thing all by itself and I saw a documentary, the name of which is escaping me and I apologize that I can't remember the name of it, but how all of that came about and what happened as a result of that is a fascinating part of our history and like you say, it became a political issue where people said, I'd like to drink, but I think that maybe this might be a good idea and so that's kind of how it got steam and it really got steam in churches that up until that point didn't necessarily have any view on whether alcohol was good or bad. Yeah, like they didn't really have a dog in the fight. They preached against the demon rum but it was understood that this is just this behavior is troublesome. It's magical thinking. It's childlike magical thinking to think we can fix the troublesome behavior by removing the substance altogether.

That's the part that's magical, right? It led to the mob gaining a lot of influence in this country is what it did. I mean, that was one of the upsides of this, one of the consequences of this. Well, and zero mystery to that because you created a black market and when you forbid it you will create a black market. That's just we know this from history. The problem is is that politicians can't they can't sway or campaign on nuance.

Everything has to be simple minded and brightly colored and a handful of syllables. You can't campaign on nuance. You have to tell people these folks are bad and we're going to get rid of all of them and they're like, yeah, get rid of the bad people and they vote for you. This substance is bad. We're going to get rid of the bad things.

These things are bad. We're going to put extra taxes on them, which drives the prices up and guess what that does? It creates the black market for that. You know, I mean, what sounds good from an election podium from a politician in practical use does not work a lot of the time. It's like being hard on crime. We're going to put them all in prison. Well, you can't the prisons are stuffed. Now what do you do? So if you look at laws that have had some positive effect, like haven't we seen a significant decrease in serious injury and fatalities since we mandated seatbelts? Yeah, right. So we didn't say folks are getting hurt driving. We're going to ban cars. Instead, we said folks are getting hurt driving. What can we do to reduce the amount of people getting hurt driving? Well, we're going to have speed limits and we're going to mandate seatbelts. And I know a lot of people hate any kind of like your libertarians, like you say, hate any kind of law. They just want to walk around naked eating squirrels. They pluck out of trees and do as they please. I'm married to someone who is not a libertarian, but he really feels like he should, you know, people should be left to live by their best choices and decisions, which makes sense on paper, right? Except, you know, in reality, here we are.

You know, if you don't have speed limits, everybody's just driving all over the damn place and crashing into each other. The dram laws around alcohol. You know, when you find out that you can get into serious trouble for getting somebody wasted at your house or restaurant, then unleashing them onto the world, that changed. Oh yeah, it did.

And yeah, it's restrictive and you've lost some freedom. But it's for the protection of us all. When it's something like that, you say, well, this is for the protection of us all. I mean, how many times have we heard tragic stories that could have been prevented if that person hadn't been drunk when they got behind the wheel? Yeah, you go, this is the Star Trek Prime Directive. The good of the many versus the good of the one.

I know you want to drink a fifth of Jack and go joyriding, but I've got to protect the many here. Now, I can't stop you from drinking that fifth of Jack and getting in your car. But if we catch you, you know, there's a penalty for that. I'll bet you didn't roll out of bed today and think, I'm going to do a Star Trek reference today.

You'd be surprised how much the Star Trek Prime Directive guides Well, maybe you wouldn't be surprised. I don't know. I am someone who thinks cannabis should be broadly legalized, taxed, and regulated. I love me a legal state. I love popping into a legal state and getting some gummies for myself and a bag of treats for the dog. Love it. I don't live in a legal state.

And I don't have a plug. You know, a drug dealer is like, cook me up. It's something I enjoy when I'm out west and in places where it's legal. I think it should be legal everywhere. I think that the reason it isn't is because the liquor lobby has lined the pockets of politicians to prevent it. I mean, look what's happened to the Farm Bill and all the businesses in the state where I live. The Farm Bill made THCA hemp legal and it sparked a whole industry and created jobs and gave people who don't drink or take Ambien an option.

There's tons of research on it. I'm not going to do an episode, well, unless I find some weird twist. I'm not going to do an episode on the cannabis game. But we all know what's what. And we all know why it's happening. Because Millennials and Gen Z's are not drinking the way other generations did. And so we got to take away anything else that's replacing alcohol for them. It's sick. It's consumer capitalism.

It's all about profit, shareholder value and private equity. That's our system. And you can say that. You're not going to burst into flames by acknowledging that we live in a society where all we do, to quote Lloyd Dobler in the movie Say Anything, is buy things and sell things and sell things that are bought and buy things that are bought and sold. That's what we do.

I love that movie. I do too. And John Cusack doing that monologue as Lloyd Dobler about how he doesn't want to buy things or sell things or sell things that are bought or buy and sell things that are bought and sold is genius, right? I saw an interview with him and he said people talk about, of anything that I've done in any movie is they want to talk about that little speech. That's what they want to talk about.

Well, don't you think it's because that little speech resonates for so many of us? Like when you were a child and you dreamed about what you would be, and you're doing what you dreamed about when you were growing up. You just thought you'd get paid for it, but you are doing what you dreamed about. I've sort of gotten paid for it, Sherry. I have.

I mean, at any time did you think, you know what? When I grow up, I want to buy things and sell things and sell things that are bought and sold and just be a cog in the machine. That's what I want. No. You know, you want it to be a cowboy or a princess or a mermaid or something. I don't know. But you didn't dream of being a cog in the machine.

And we are. We all are. I'm the biggest sucker. In our own way, yes. I suppose we are. I'm the goldfish swimming around, and every two seconds I'm like, oh my God, a treasure chest. Who put that there? Oh my God, a treasure chest. Who put that there? I mean, I'm the guiltiest culprit. The thing about the body parts contest, the ankle contest, there's a sweetness to it.

There's an innocence to it. Part of the reason that it would never happen again has nothing to do with progress or the women's movement or any of that. You know why it would not happen again? Because we have other things to do now. We have Netflix and we have AMC on demand and we have phones and we have PlayStation and movies.

You understand that people need it to fill their leisure time. Why do you think folks put picnics to public executions? Because they wanted some entertainment. Yeah, and entertainment in the day was special and rare and thin on the ground. You worked. You took care of your family. You went to church. A handful of times a year the circus might come to town or the fair or the carnival.

You might have some money to go to the movies. There might be a parade. But for the most part, you just worked from dawn to dusk just to survive. I'm not talking about 500 years ago. I'm talking about the year 1900. The year 1910 when these things started. You think, oh, that was a long time ago. It's really not all that long ago.

It's really not. If I said to you, Max, downtown they're having this beautiful legs contest. All the women are going to have pillowcases on their heads. You want to go check it out? You might. You might. But when the day came, when the day came and I said to you, hey, are you coming with me to the leg contest? You might be tired from work and decide you're going to catch up on your favorite show instead. Yeah, but if there's nothing else going on.

You're there. I'm there watching women with cut out eye holes on something that should be on a bed. I mean, that's something that we always have to remember when we go, well, why did people think that was fun? Well, because it was more fun than milking the cow or working in the factory. It was a chance to be out with your friends and neighbors. It was a diversion from the grind of your daily life. And of course, leisure time is really a relatively new invention in this country. It really is because there was a time that you were on the farm and that was seven days a week and you were working. And the idea of five day work weeks is a relatively new idea as well. Sure. I love Henry Ford.

Sure. I want to know more about this. We don't have it, but we were aware that it exists for others. Yeah, Henry Ford. Well, you know, at the time when these leg and ankle contests started, children weren't necessarily in school. Right. They many times worked on the farm. On the farm or in a factory. Which is why when they had factories, the children came in and worked in the factories. They said, well, they work on the farm, they work in the factory. And then somebody started looking at this going, I don't think this is such a great idea. I would argue and it pisses people off and it's controversial and nobody wants to hear it, but I would argue that the American empire were on the downside of the peak.

We peaked when two generations had benefited from solid education, K-12 education in the public schools. Now, once we started messing with public education in this country, no child left behind. Once we started that, you know, we began coming down that hill and today we live in an echo chamber of conflicting information and realities and the internet and our addiction to our phones. I'm the worst culprit again.

Has us in this horrifying reactive dopamine cycle where we just were bombarded at all times with information, but no critical evaluation of any of the information we take in. We're just bombarded by it and it's designed to play on, here's the dopamine piece. It plays on your emotions. You're right about those people, they're the bad people. You're right about this, this is wrong and you're constantly getting that hit, that validation. We're out of our minds. It's a fever dream. We've just lost the thread that we once ever so briefly held of a shared reality or shared understanding of reality. Where it goes from here, I don't know. I have no idea.

We are in unprecedented times. We are. So that's why, you know, like I can look back even as a woman where I'm like, oh my god, these poor women had their feet groped by every filthy old man in town in these Cinderella contests, but even I can look back at that and go, well that was a more innocent time, despite the groping.

Even then it was a more innocent time. Poor Captain George Gray. I think about him and that's the only, his distinguished work career or military career is not something we remember him for at all. It's him being mixed up in this faux scandal. Do you know what I wonder? I wonder about his descendants because he did have children and his children had children and you can assume that at least some of those children had children and there are people walking around right now who, it comes up casually, you know, maybe at a dinner get together. Oh yeah, my great great great grandfather was a captain on the Union side in the Civil War.

And what you don't know is, how many of them know this story? You probably do wonder if they do know. I do wonder. Because after this event I couldn't find Captain Gray. I couldn't find a million George Grays. It's a common name. I mean the shame of this, the embarrassment of this, because guess what didn't happen? She told Mrs, what's her head, told the magistrate that she found the watch and the money in the kitchen and it was all a terrible misunderstanding and the case was dismissed. I didn't see any retractions or public apologies. Well, you know, that's the problem with a lot of these things. You have some sort of a scandal. I remember there was somebody that was mixed up in a scandal and he said now, excuse me, but tell me where I go to get my reputation back now.

And I really felt. You don't. You don't. I can only imagine that Captain Gray spent what time was left to him. Pretty secluded. And you know, he was very old, 69, very old for the time, but he was a vital, robust, healthy 69 because I'll remind you that he was still showing up for work every day in his office on Wall Street when this went down.

My guess is that this took a terrible toll on not just his reputation, but probably on his health. I mean, this was he was, Max, they arrested him and handcuffed him and locked him up in jail. 69 years old, military veteran. Can you imagine going home to Mrs. Gray? Oh, she was the scandal. It's not what you think. I mean, this man was so humiliated and, you know, he was pounced on by the undercover detectives. It was like to catch a predator.

It was just horrifying. And he was innocent of the only thing he was guilty of was maybe knocking back one snifter too many of brandy and feeling up the lady's legs. That's not a crime. And they consent it. So it's not even like a misdemeanor because they were like, OK, like everyone consented here. Yeah. And his life and reputation were ruined. Yeah.

Because there was another woman there, I wondered about it. But my first thought was maybe something more had happened, even though he was, you know, that something perhaps more had happened. And she went, we stole him. But I can't tell that I can't tell anybody that I hooked up with him. I'll just say he felt my ankles. No, I mean, there was another woman. There was another woman there. Yeah. There were three consenting adults having a little tipsy drawing room adventure. And things went very, very, very south. And he paid for it with his reputation. So I do wonder if his descendants know that little. It would probably humanize their ancestor in a way that nothing else could. Yeah. Because, you know, if you watch like Antiques Roadshow on PBS, people come up and they're like, well, my great, great, great uncle was Ulysses S. Grant.

And I have his and they whip up like, you know, a dagger or something. Right. And they have the very dignified and important history of the ancestor. But they don't necessarily have these little anecdotes that humanize them. Although Captain Gray probably wishes we had never been born. And here we are talking about him.

Well, I couldn't I just couldn't believe that. And I made I made a critical mistake in my head because I couldn't believe that there would be no scandals. All these women getting felt up by cops and, you know, businessmen and civic leaders and nothing. But here's what I forgot to factor in. That today women are hesitant to report assault. Back then it was worse.

So there probably were plenty of other things that went down that were untoward or completely wrong or illegal. No doubt. No doubt. No doubt. But in order to know the story, the people involved have to have to talk. And these women and Captain Gray did. And the fact that it went all the way to a courtroom in New York City. Can you imagine what this man suffered? The catcalling and the mockery and the social. He was probably he and his wife, you know, were probably shunned.

If it were to happen today, perhaps the woman said he stole it and then realized and then she'd go, well, maybe I can still get the money and get more money out of this deal. That's kind of how we are. I don't know. People don't seem to have a sense of honor as much these days. It's what can I get away with? There's an interesting thing missing from this account of Captain George Gray. And I wondered if you would notice it or if anybody's noticed it. But here we go. Are you ready for what's missing from this? Tell me. The women invited him to she invited him to her home.

The women agreed to play the game. They were drinking. They agreed and took off their stockings at no time in any of these accounts are either of these women blamed for what happened that night. I didn't think about that. Yeah, I think today we'd be asking questions like, well, what did she think was going to happen? She had some drinks. She invited him over. She agreed to let him touch her legs. She took off her stockings, which she think was going to happen.

Do you see how that's missing? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. And I expect it to find that first because poor Lady Harberton, you know, got nailed to the tree for wearing a pair of pantaloons to ride a bicycle in the countryside. Right. Yeah, but she couldn't be expected to spend time in a bar with those horrid men, those filthy men in their shirtsleeves.

But neither of these two women with Captain Gray. There was not a whisper of what did they think was going to happen? Do you know why I'm going to guess on this? And that is because of the age of all the people involved. I think so. Yeah, because I think you're nobody thought anything like that. Anything would be happening. And that was the other part of Captain Gray's story.

I didn't. I didn't know it makes this one person I didn't find even like a snarky, a single snarky aside that suggested that this evening was sexual in nature or that there was any real impropriety because the foot and ankle thing was so common back then that you'll notice that when Gray got arrested and this story broke nationwide that nobody needed to explain the foot and ankle game. Right, because it was everywhere.

It was everywhere. It was like, oh, some adults were playing the foot and ankle game and some stuff got stolen. Like, oh, it's just, yeah, they're playing the foot and ankle game. Like, that's so weird to me. You know, and I feel bad now because my first thought was maybe something else was going on here. But probably not. It doesn't seem so. If that story were told today, I would think there was something more going on. But the fact that it was happening then, I know people did have sex back then. I understand that.

That genuinely didn't seem to be a part of it, though. I mean, both the women were married, right? Captain Hall was married. Captain Hall was, again, let me remind you, 69 years old at a time when most men, Captain Gray, I'm sorry, at a time when most men were dead. So these women weren't half in the bag going, hey, Captain Gray, let's have a threesome.

No, no, no. I mean, you might think that today. Were threesomes invented? Did people have threesomes back then? My grandma Black Hair told me that threesomes weren't invented until the 1960s. And I have no reason to disbelieve her. I'll never forget, Sherry, sitting with a co-worker one time and I had two co-workers, both of them women, and one of them was very straight-laced and the other person says, yeah, I had a threesome when I was in college and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the other woman was horrified and I was like, I really don't want to know this. But apparently I really don't want to know this.

Yeah, I mean, listen, probably since the caves. I mean, I'm guessing that my grandmom is incorrect that they were invented before the 1960s. My grandmom once told me that oral sex was invented in the 1960s and I just know from research that that's not true. That's not accurate. So, yeah, it was a different time. A more innocent time in some ways, but innocent always innocent because we didn't know any better.

I guess because you could be lecherous in plain sight if you were one of these judges. Yeah, yeah. And it was just part of it. Who am I to judge, really? So I'll tell you something weird that has stayed with me my whole life. So my papa, the one who was in the Navy who died in the plane crash, because he died when I was 12, he was everyone's favorite. We all just lived for his attention and approval.

We all just loved him so, so much. He was a person in our lives where if he told you you'd done a good job, it was something you knew you had. Do you know what I mean? He didn't lavish you with praise. He was a Navy guy. He was very ship shape. So when I was probably eight years old, he was spending a few months with us.

This is when we lived out in Wyoming. He was spending a few months over the winter with us. I was curled up on the couch reading a book and he said to my parents and I never forgot it because it made no sense to me at the time. He said, Sherry's going to have beautiful ankles. You'll never have to worry about that. And as a kid, you're like, well, doesn't everyone have the same ankles? And by the way, you've seen my ankles a million times. There ain't nothing to write home about, right?

They're just ankles. Sherry, do you know something? I've never looked closely at your ankles, ever. Well, I'll be swinging by later. We'll have a little contest, okay? A little foot and ankle game together. Just me, you, and the dog. Just don't put your money and your watch in a stocking. But I remembered it because praise from my pop-up was like a big deal. You had done something right.

We had to make our beds. The Admiral was coming. It was crazy. Our table manners had to be impeccable. So it was a big deal. And it made no sense to me. Everybody's ankles are basically the same. To this day, I just think my ankles are like everybody else's ankles. But that comment stuck out at me. So if you think about it, when my grandfather was a little guy through his naval career, women were being judged by their ankles and legs.

That was a standard of beauty that made sense to him. And I reflect on that now and go, yeah, okay. Now that comment makes sense. But out of context, it would be like one of your relatives saying, you say what you want about little Max there, but that occipital bone is impressive. In the 18th century, for men, it was calves.

That's why you had the pants that went to the knee. A lot of times, they were stockings. Men's calves were... I would have done well in the 18th century. You would have been very popular. I've got good calves. I might not have anything else, but I've got that. You would have been a very popular fella back in the day. So you think about 100 years ago, so it's 2026 right now, 100 years ago, the feminine beauty ideal were full cheeks, a little rosebud mouth, and big doe-like eyes. And today, that ideal is more almond-shaped eyes, very, very full lips, and sculpted cheeks. Can you picture it?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The difference between that beauty standard then, this beauty standard now. And it's just, it evolves with the times. And women's skin, white skin, very white skin, during this ankle period, was very in for women too. Yeah. And then it's shifted to, you know, like a sun tan as a sign that you were healthy. Do you know who gave us the sun tan? Coco Chanel.

I was just going to say, who also coined the phrase, you get the face you deserve when you're 50. When you're 50. Chanel, it was, to have a tan was vulgar. It was an indication that you had to labor for your bread. And so, very pale skin. I mean, even, we went through periods in human history, like during the Sun King's reign, where people powdered their skin to give the illusion of even more They even took arsenic to get their skin white. Was it not arsenic?

They were, the makeups were made out of lead. You know, which rotted their faces. This goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. So, you know, this beauty standard that you were pale and delicate because you had the privilege and the means to remain indoors. Here comes Chanel, Coco Chanel, whose early life was incredibly difficult. You know, she lost her mom. She's in this, not just any orphanage run by nuns, but one that is famously austere and harsh and run by nuns. What she accomplished, given all that, is really, truly amazing. It is amazing. But here comes Chanel and now the legs are bared, the arms and shoulders and decolletage is bared, and the skin is sun-kissed instead of very pale. Like, it was a revolution.

And you could say because, you know, sometimes we go, how did one person do all of that? Well, she was kind of the right person in the right time to be the conduit for all of that. Might be a better way to think about it. But all of those changes, like when we look at those very pale, doe-eyed, rose-bud-lipped, chipmunk-cheeked beauty icons of a hundred years ago and compare them to Giselle Bundchen with her sculpted cheekbones, her full lips, her narrow almond eyes and her golden skin, we've come a long way, baby. And we'll have a long way to go again. Because none of these things are fixed. Everything, when it comes to beauty and given beauty ideals, they're all fluid and constantly shifting and evolving. It just happens that that shift from the Victorian to the modern woman was super abrupt. And it triggered this mania for feet and ankles and legs.

And now that we know, we even did an episode on the foot fetish, which is the most common fetish. So a hundred years ago, 80 years ago, 90 years ago, when these contests were being held, the word foot fetish was not in the vernacular. It wasn't something you talked about. There wasn't a place to go other than a brothel. There was no place for a person with that proclivity until they invite you to be a judge of the Cinderella contest.

Hot damn. Here we go. And the gig is literally, wait, wait, I'm going to do what? I'm going to fondle the insteps of lovely young ladies. You can see why they lined up for the privilege. Because you know there's somebody somewhere, some guy that goes, okay, you want to know what my fetish is? All right, now what I need for you to do is put a pillowcase over your head. We'll cut two eyes out and I get to fondle your feet.

You ready? And today you can have that all day long. Yeah, I can have that all day long. You can just about door dash it to your apartment. Back then, you know, it was a little different. So a more innocent, but deeply peculiar and weird time. Because if you're someone who goes, I don't get what's weird about putting a pillowcase over a woman's head so I can fondle her feet. If you don't see that that's weird. Well, I guess thank you for being a twerdo and a listener. A pillowcase over your head, that's what happens when you're kidnapped by the terrorists.

So on our next episode, we're going to pay a visit to Victorian England and we're going to meet a woman who, you know, she just wanted to help. She really did. She was just such a helper. And she helped babies. Now some people say she helped six babies into heaven. And some people say she helped hundreds of babies into heaven. Her name was Amelia Dyer and they called her the Ogress of Reading. And that's on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts hit the plus button in the top right corner and now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser.

Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2026 True Weird is Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.