Sex Mad

Abstract This chapter examines representations of freakshows, such as the photographs taken at the 1939 Mississippi State Fair by Eudora Welty (1909–2001) and the photographs and paintings made of Coney Island by Reginald Marsh (1898–1954), to explore the ways in which they both embody the anxiety that surrounded disability during the Great Depression and expose the ways in which gendered and abled identities are ultimately performative. Whereas Marsh used his representations of the sideshow to ameliorate his fantasies, reassure his position of privilege, and reinforce notions of whiteness, able-bodiedness, and heteronormativity, Welty found in its spectacle the opportunity to destabilize identity positions and expose the freakishness of everyone.