On our way out of the Met after viewing Superfine (see previous post), we glimpsed a pink hallway and couldn’t resist it. We didn’t know what the exhibition was, and it turned out to be a treasure.
The exhibition is about a pair of private resorts run by Susanna Velenti, a cross-dresser, and her wife, Marie Tornell, exclusively for cross-dressers, in the early 1960s. The tenderness and happiness in these photos almost brought me to tears. They had their own stage for performances and their own magazine for them to model their styles. Having worked with many clients who identified as cross-dressers, having seen how thrilled they were when they saw themselves in femme clothes and makeup, I know how important this can be. The placards in the exhibition share stories from the people who frequented the resort, describing the risks they took and the humiliation they endured when caught, and how the resorts were their only safe havens, the only refuges where they felt understood.
From the exhibition website:
“Casa Susanna brings together photographs and publications created by and for a community of cross-dressers who met regularly in New York City and the Catskill Mountains throughout the 1960s. Two modest resorts run by Susanna Valenti and her wife, Marie Tornell, provided safe spaces for guests to freely cross-dress en femme during an era of strictly defined gender roles. They used the camera to create and affirm their femme identities, exchanging photographs at gatherings or sharing them by mail. These snapshots—some candid, others playfully performative—were rediscovered at a Manhattan flea market in 2004 and have come to be known as the Casa Susanna photographs. The exhibition also features issues of Transvestia, an underground magazine that published the photographs along with fiction, poetry, makeup and clothing advice, and autobiographical essays by members of the community.”
A documentary about the resort
As always, when I look at images of cross-dressers from the past, I think about some of my clients who wanted to be “sissified” or “forcibly feminized.” They weren’t “out” to anyone; my knowledge of their fantasies was precious cargo. I don’t know how they’d identify now that so much more gender-inclusive terminology has reached the mainstream through the internet and social media. I do know that many of them would have cried with joy at the chance to visit a place like Casa Susanna. I wish for them, so much, that they found this freedom somewhere. I hope I provided a bit of it. I hope they know how much I enjoyed, appreciated, and respected them.
This moved me. I will go see the exhibit. 💜
I can’t wait to see this exhibit!