Honeysuckle Divine
| Honeysuckle Divine | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Betty Jane Allsup January 21, 1938 Rock Island, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Burlesque dancer |
| Years active | 1962–1985 |
Honeysuckle Divine (born Betty Jane Allsup; January 21, 1938) is a retired American stripper, erotic performance artist, and sexual columnist. Her specialty was inserting and ejecting things from her vagina onstage; when she performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, she was described in the program as "vaginiste", a performer using the vagina. She was often arrested. According to Bruce David, editor of SCREW in the 1970s, then editor of Hustler, she was at one point the best-known stripper in the United States. She is particularly associated with SCREW, for whom she was a sort of mascot. As Al Goldstein said, her act "was unbelievably disgusting, so naturally, we made her our symbol." She was the only female associated with SCREW over any period of time.
Born in Rock Island, Illinois, Divine was the tenth in a family of fourteen children. She described her father as a "hillbilly, banjo-playing lumberjack." She was a straight-A student until she hit puberty. Religion was not a significant part of her upbringing, but when she reached her teens it started to dominate her every thought. Divine didn't drink, smoke, curse or gamble. She would help the elderly and those even poorer than her. She regularly prayed for the sick and the needy. She was a model Christian girl, but she dated boys, and had her heart broken. She became pregnant and had an abortion.
At 21, bored with life in Rock Island, she departed for Philadelphia, where she became a postulant (novice) at the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart convent. After three months, unable to "understand the spiritual lessons they tried to teach me," she left the convent, climbing out a window in the night, and went to the police, who assisted her in returning to Rock Island.
Unsuccessful in nursing school, she got a job as a waitress, but soon found out that she could make much more money as a stripper. She moved to Washington, D.C. and performed in burlesque clubs during the 1960s, under the name Pussy Bird. According to a 1975 interview, she left Illinois "armed only with a dress, a douche, and a diary."
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