Isabel Clúa (Universidad de Sevilla), researcher at the Research center Theory, Gender, Sexuality (ADHUC), has authored Cuerpos de escándalo. Celebridad femenina en el fin-de-siècle, published in the series Mujeres y culturas (Icaria, 2016). This book analyzes how the vedettes that lived in the turn-of-the-century Spain benefited from their presence in the public sphere in order to subvert nineteenth-century stereotypes about femininity. Trapped in the universe of frivolity and eroticism that characterizes the popular culture of the time, where they are portrayed as the object of both male and capitalist fantasies about the consumption of the feminine body, artists such as Carolina Otero or Tórtola Valencia use the aforementioned imaginary to transcend the boundaries of the stage. Hence, they succeed in becoming subjects with economic self-sufficiency and with a space where they can exert their own agency.
