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This essay studies two rival representations of femininity at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm 1835–45. Jenny Lind and Emélie Högqvist embodied these different femininities through their stage persona, their image, and their legacy. The theoretical perspective is of gender studies with a particular focus on critical femininity studies. The two divas’ respective self-representations and strategies for fashioning their celebrity are linked here to the concepts of idealized femininity and pariah femininity. It is argued that both femininities exemplify different branches of modernity that were crucial to nineteenth-century female identity and that still echo in society today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]