A photograph of “Egyptian Dancing Girls” from Picturesque World’s Fair shows more modest attire than is often described for the “belly dancer” show on the Midway.
The February 2019 issue of Chicago Magazine offers a historical survey of baring skin in the Windy City. “Unbuttoning Chicago’s History of Covering Up” opens with the 1893 World’s Fair, summarizing how the “belly dancers” in the Street in Cairo exhibit on the Midway Plaisance shocked some viewers, raised ire of the Board of Lady Managers, and provoked U.S postal inspector Anthony Comstock to attempt to shut it down.
