In 1902, when she was 19 years old, Maude Fealy posed for this photograph by Burr McIntosh.

Maude was one of a handful of actors who successfully moved from the stage to silent film and from silent film to talkies.

I was reading a little about Maude and I found this picture labeled “Fealy featured in Representative Women of Colorado, 1914.”

Wikimedia

The idea of a picture of a “representative woman” struck me as really funny. What purpose does it serve to have a representative woman, and how did they determine who should represent everyone? Was Maude a composite of what an average Colorado woman looked like (build, height, hair color, age, and clothes)? I find it a little suspicious that a beautiful movie star just happened to be Colorado’s representative woman.
“Representative woman” reminds me a bit of The Onion’s “Area Man.”

The Onion

Representative woman is actually a pretty interesting idea. What does a modern representative New Jersey woman look like? What about a representative man from Michigan? I’m not sure how anyone could use that information in a productive way.
But it would make a great art project.

Speaking of composites, have you ever looked at  Parabon labs website? If not, you might find it interesting. The company uses DNA samples from criminal cases to create composite drawings of suspects. They also use it to identify bodies by providing a picture of what the person could have looked like in life. In cases where the suspect was found and charged or the body was definitively identified, they show the person’s picture next to the composite. It’s really remarkable!