Who was Honeysuckle Divine? Honeysuckle Divine was an OG sex freak, way before being a sex freak was cool. In her vanilla-posing society, Honeysuckle was a brave soldier paving the way for our fetish obsessed society today. All in all, Honeysuckle was a cherished erotic icon. Let’s take a deep dive.
Early Days
Honeysuckle Divine was born January 21st 1938 (chaotic Capricorn queenie) in Illinois and was one of fourteen children. Typical nun-to-sex-worker pipeline, Honeysuckle was a devout Christian growing up and at 21 became a novice at a convent.
However, everyone knows you can’t keep a good girl down and after 3 months she left, feeling she couldn’t understand the lessons that the nuns were trying to teach her.
After working as a waitress for a while, Honeysuckle (much like us all) realised she could make more money by stripping. During the 1960s, in her 20s, she moved to Washington DC and began performing in burlesque clubs, under the name ‘Pussy Bird’ (love it) and worked as a prostitute as well.
As it goes, Honeysuckle had many a famous and successful client, including President Lyndon B. Johnson. She describes the first time they met:
One night (Johnson) came into the striptease club where I was with some other guys and he bought me a bottle of champagne. He made a date with me, and we went to the Statler Hilton, and then he took me home in a taxi to my apartment.
I find it so funny how prostitutes through history get to see such a vulnerable and exposed side to some of the most respectable/high status men of the time.
It creates a funny contrast, knowing that most of society scorn you for doing what you do and view you right at the bottom, and yet you have this stranger insider’s insight to the top of the food chain…
Fame
Carrying on, Honeysuckle didn’t feel so satisfied with her current performance. She was just an average dancer, and we all know Capricorn queenie’s will not rest until they’re the best.
So she decided to mix it up a bit…or a lot. Her new performance included tricks such as shooting ping pong balls out of her coochie, blowing out candles with her coochie, putting a mop up her coochie and literally mopping the stage that way (girl’s got grip!), she even made it smoke a cig – no wonder she quickly became a headliner all over the country.
She was also into food play before it got big, smearing peanut butter down there and then spreading it onto bread and selling the sandwiches to the audience.
Basically, Honeysuckle was a wild one, and given the popularity of her shows, there was clearly an audience for this shit at the time. So no matter how much boomers want to argue that ‘it wasn’t like this back in my day’..I mean, maybe it was? It just wasn’t mainstream, and many people kept their desires quiet.
Honeysuckle’s popularity led to her being the ‘mascot’ for the infamous porno magazine, SCREW. She also wrote a column for several years called ‘Diary of a Dirty Broad’.
She continued to perform, but many times, she was arrested for obscenity. But she always got back up again and carried on trying to perform, in a fight for a more sexually liberated society.
She continued to perform into the mid 1980s, where she would have been in her 40s. Honeysuckle is still alive and well today, though she has been retired for a while and lives the quiet life back in her home state, Illinois.
Here’s to Honeysuckle
I have humongous amounts of respect for people who probably feel very ostracised by society, but stand their ground and continue to fight to do what they want and resist being weakened by the judgement of others.
It takes such a huge amount of strength. Take Dame Vivianne Westwood, who got ridiculed on public television in 1988 for putting her male models in pearls. Now if you walk into any hipster cafe in the realms of East London, you’re bound to see at least one dude with a string of pearls around his neck.
Honeysuckle too was ahead of the game, and knew not to take the moral codes of her time as the only correct ones. She knew that we shouldn’t feel the need to hide our bodies, and she had no shame in having a little bit of fun with hers.
She was open minded- and to me that is the biggest signifier of real intelligence. I hope that today, she sits in her home in Illinois and feels good knowing that she was a sex freak before it was cool to be a sex freak. Here’s to Honeysuckle!
Iso
Iso is a writer and filmmaker based in East London. She is passionate about all things erotic and leads a sexy, shame-free life in hope that she can inspire others to do the same. Originally from a Northern seaside town, she is naturally drawn to the best things in life: candyfloss, trashy karaoke bars and heart-shaped sunglasses.
