Scenes of Modesty and Frivolity

These eyes, arms, and lips led the government to close down the theaters for being immoral, only for their admirers to club together to pay the fine so that the theatrical performances could continue. Some women were famed for their beauty, some for their ability to reduce an audience to tears with their dramatic art, and others for the style in which they sang “cuplés” (short theatre songs).

Looking at these cards, we can see that the souls of our ancestors were not entirely devoid of color, but were instead tinted with pastel shades: they were happy, if somewhat naive.

Monsiváis extracted meaning from these images, as well as interpretations, attitudes, and the ideology of an era. He saw that these women represented the beginning of female emancipation: goddesses of a religion that nobody would bother to invent.

These photos show the pictures disseminated by theaters and in the movies, with a female image entirely removed from that of a real woman. This abstraction helped to consolidate the role of women as objects to be paid for, whose mission was to provide and incite the pleasure of arousal.

Mimí Derba, Mimí Derba: three parts Aphrodite and one part Minerva…

The poet Luis G. Urbina went to see María Conesa in the theater and wrote that, from her mouth, “even Our Father would be an affront to decency.”

She was also known as the "Gatita Blanca" (White Kitten).

She changed the "s" in her name, Teresa, to a "z" for her stage name. She made her debut as an actress in 1919 on the film The Gray Car and participated in the staging of The Suspicious Truth in 1934 to inaugurate the Palace of Fine Arts.

The photos of Celia Montalván, which deliberately complemented those of her closest rivals, were a staple material for a small fan base that expressed a broad change in sensitivities, in its own mesmerized way.

At the age of 15 she founded her first zarzuela company with Cuban actor Miguel Gutierrez. Before turning 25, it was very popular throughout Latin America. Her company, known as Iris-Gutierrez, was later named the Viennese Operetta Company.

She was known as “La Pingüica” thanks to her small stature, and was Mimí Derba’s stage rival.

She soon participated in comedy films under the direction of filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Victor Fleming and William Wyler, among others.

She was known as "the Mexican Sarah Bernhardt."