The book Water for Elephants has a minor character who has to have this. It's set in a traveling circus in the depression and the author, Sara Gruen, did a lot of research on them from the time period. So I guess she's supposed to be representative of a real thing some circuses had then.
I wanted to throw the book across the room at first because she's a sideshow performer who does some prostitution on the side and the first time she appears is totally sexualized during one of her shows. You eventually find out she's one of the good characters in the cast, and it got me thinking about what anyone had to do back then to get by and what kind of compromises she would have to make, especially if she tried to be independent back then as a woman with this.
