Mata Hari was not a classic beauty by the standards of her own day, lacking the fine features and pale complexion then favored by popular taste. The many photographs of her, however, show that she was indeed a strikingly handsome woman. Her dark eyes were particularly expressive, and in some images she looks very Asian.
Mata Hari was a tall (5’9” or 5’10”), dark-haired woman with a classic hourglass figure: narrow waist, wide hips, and long, strong legs. She usually wore her hair up, though she sometimes let it down or braided it. On rare occasions, she may have bleached her hair blonde. Mata Hari seems to have been rather sensitive about her bust. She usually kept her breasts covered with a “cache-sein” (a thinly padded bra), even while having sex and in performances where she was otherwise nude. She claimed that her ex-husband had bitten off her nipples in a fit of jealous rage, but this was untrue. The doctor who examined her body after her execution said that her breasts were ugly, but a former lover denied this strongly, insisting that Mata Hari had “quality breasts”. One official French Army document described her breasts as “heavy”. Mata Hari danced bare-breasted more than once, and her topless performance as Salome in 1912 brought her great acclaim. Her breasts may not have been ideal according to some standards, but more probably she knew that concealing a small part of the body while exposing the rest had an exciting effect. Exotic dancers today still observe the same principle.
Mata Hari put on a little weight in her last years, but she still wore clothes elegantly. More importantly, she never lost the powerful sexual magnetism that had been hers from the beginning. The fact that she could find and keep a lover as young and handsome as Masloff is testimony to this. As a man who knew her well said, “she was “a personality”“.
Mata Hari in her Own Words
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Mata Hari’s strong character was evident in her words. She was a good writer with a beautiful hand, composing her own advertising copy. Mata Hari was also well spoken, and excelled at charming and deceiving interviewers and reporters. Much of what she said and wrote was done with the tongue in the cheek. She had a sharp wit and a gift for making memorable phrases, as the following quotes show:
On her life: “Remember that all my life as a woman, I have lived as Mata Hari, that I think and act as such, that I have lost all notion of travel, distances, dangers, nothing exists for me...I lose--I win--I defend myself when someone attacks me--I take when someone has taken from me”.
On her career: “I took the train to Paris without money and without clothes. There, as a last resort and thanks to my female charms, I was able to survive. That I slept with other men is true; that I posed for sculptures is true; that I danced in the opera at Monte Carlo is true. It would be too far beneath me and too cowardly to defend myself against such actions I have taken”.
On herself: “I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win”.
On her taste in men: “I love officers. I have loved them all my life. I prefer to be the mistress of a poor officer than of a rich banker. It is my greatest pleasure to sleep with them without having to think of money. And, moreover, I like to make comparisons between the different nationalities”.
On dance: “The dance is a poem, of which each movement is a word”.
On her own nude dancing: “In my dancing one forgets the woman in me, so that when I offer everything and finally myself to the god--which is symbolized by the loosening of my loincloth, the last piece of clothing I have on--and stand there, albeit for only a second entirely naked, I have never yet evoked any feeling but the interest in the mood that is expressed by my dancing”.
On what she would have done if her act had failed and she had not become a star: “I had a gun ready and my decision was taken”.
On being accused of prostitution and espionage: “Harlot? Yes. Traitoress? Never!”
Mata Hari’s dialogue with Captain Ladoux, when she asked for money to spy for France:
- Ladoux: “You must be very expensive”.
- Mata Hari: “That--definitely!”
- Ladoux: “What do you think you are worth?”
- Mata Hari: “All or nothing!”
On one occasion, Mata Hari danced nude at a women-only lesbian party (see below). During the performance, she discovered that one of the party guests was actually a man dressed as a woman. She chased him from the room with a spear, yelling: “There is an intruder in the house!”
A poem written by the young Margaretha Zelle for a school friend:
- ”If your eyes in reader’s quest,
- Seeking joy among these pages
- Upon this sheet have come to rest,
- Remember that the writer’s best
- Wishes are yours throughout the ages”.
Mata Hari and LesbianismEdit
Mata Hari’s own orientation may be of some relevance in the controversy. Mata Hari had innumerable male lovers and she seems to have been overwhelmingly heterosexual. There is some suggestion, however, that she was not exclusively so. Many of Mata Hari’s lovers were officers, and she herself enjoyed dressing up in military uniform. Mata Hari and the Russian actress Alla Nazimova were also said to be lovers, though they may never have met.
Women, as well as men, certainly found Mata Hari attractive and were aroused by her nude dancing. Natalie Clifford Barney, a wealthy American expatriate, was a well-known hostess in Belle Epoque Paris. Barney, known as “The Amazon”, was also the center of an artistic lesbian/bisexual circle that included the writers Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette ) and Renee Vivien and the actress and prostitute Liane de Pougy. Barney had a house in Neuilly with a large garden, and she and her friends liked to stage amateur theatricals and dances with lesbian themes there. When she met Mata Hari, Barney was immediately impressed and hired her to dance at her home. Mata Hari gave at least three nude performances (one of them on horseback as Lady Godiva) at Barney’s garden parties. For one such appearance, Mata Hari herself insisted that only women be invited. Colette, who was then struggling to make her own career as a nude dancer, greatly resented Mata Hari and envied her success. Despite this, Colette went to great lengths to see Mata Hari dance, and she was impressed by her legs, buttocks, and torso.
Colette wrote that one of Mata Hari’s performances at Barney’s house “brought the male--and a good portion of the female--audience to the limit of decent attention”. The American lesbian writer, Janet Flanner, became a close friend of Barney’s after the war and also talked to many of Barney’s friends who had witnessed Mata Hari’s performances. Of her nude dancing, Flanner said that “The only woman who had that kind of extraordinary style was Mata Hari. “There” was a woman who was equal to any event”. Mata Hari remained part of Barney’s circle, and frequently lunched with Barney and her friends. Barney wore mannish “Amazonian” style dresses, and Mata Hari often wore similar outfits while riding. According to Flanner, Mata Hari got a brand new “Amazonian” dress from Barney just before her execution, and was wearing it when she was shot.
Natalie Barney had a legendary sexual appetite and she enjoyed the challenge of seduction. Janet Flanner later denied that Barney and Mata Hari had been lovers, though Barney had so many sexual partners that neither she nor anyone else could keep track of them and she classed the less important ones simply as “adventures”. Given her association with Barney and her friends, and given what we know of Mata Hari’s adventurous and unconventional nature, it is certainly possible that she at least experimented sexually with women. Many secondary authorities now list Mata Hari as bisexual, and she has become a popular lesbian icon. As in many such cases, however, the real evidence is far from conclusive.
After she was safely dead, Barney, Colette, and Pougy all criticized Mata Hari harshly. They even said that they had never found her attractive. This was a curious assertion indeed, since Mata Hari had performed nude for them 3 times. Unattractiveness would hardly have earned her 2 return engagements at the Barney home.
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