Josephine Joseph

Who is Josephine Joseph?

Josephine Joseph was an Austrian-born actress whose body was supposedly split down the middle, one side female and the other male. She claimed to be a true hermaphrodite, but there is no evidence to confirm whether this was the case or not; she may have just been a very skilled male/female impersonator.

Like most sideshow "hermaphrodites" this would have been portrayed with the "half and half" trick; woman on the left and man on the right. One side of the body would be exercised, have hair trimmed, and tanned in the sun; the other side would be covered and unexercised, making it pale and flabby, so the chest resembled a woman's breast while the hair was grown out. The performer would then wear a split costume; a low cut, tight top and hotpants on the "female" side and on the "male" side a Tarzan style loin cloth.

Josephine is most prominently remembered, however, for a role in the Tod Browning classic Freaks, 1932 at the age of 19. Although she only had two lines, she still appeared in a number of scenes, most notably the scene at the wedding reception where she begins the chant "We accept her, one of us! We accept her one of us!"