Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

In 1940, American journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken received a letter from a woman named Georgia Sothern. She wrote, "I am a practitioner of the art of strip-teasing...there has been a great deal of...criticism leveled against my profession. Most of it...arises from the unfortunate word strip-teasing, which creates the wrong connotation...if you could coin a new and more palatable word to describe this art, I and my colleagues would have easier going. I hope...[you] can find time to help the...members of my profession."

Mencken replied: "I sympathize with you in your affliction. It might be a good idea to relate strip-teasing in some way to the...zoological phenomenon of molting,...which is ecdysis. This word produces...ecdysiast."

So Georgia Sothern the stripper became Georgia Sothern the ecdysiast. Through her promotion of both the word and profession, a union arose called the Society of Ecdysiasts.

However, the Queen of Ecdysiasts, Gypsie Rose Lee, was not amused. In a 1940 interview, she leveled her guns at Mencken: "Ecdysiast, he calls me! Why, the man...has been reading books! Dictionaries! We don't wear feathers and molt them off...What does he know about stripping?"

The extent of Mencken's conversance with stripping is unknown. But he did know his classical languages. The term ecdysis comes from a Greek term meaning "casting or stripping off". And the term has become the scientific name for the periodic moulting of lobsters, crabs, snakes and lizards.

Radio Script > Ecdysiast