Canadian actress Nina Dobrev kicks her leg up at Burning Man in the first decade of September 2022. (Photo by nina/Instagram)

Canadian actress Nina Kamenova Dobreva, credited professionally as Nina Dobrev puts her long stems on display in the first decade of June 2023. (Photo by nina/Instagram)

Canadian actress Nina Dobrev takes her injured leg to Jessica Szohr’s bachelorette party early July 2024. (Photo by nina/Instagram)

Pauline Torres carries belongings from her flooded Merced, Calif., home on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. (Photo by Noah Berger/AP Photo)

California “weed nun” Christine Meeusen, 57, (R), and India Delgado, who goes by the name Sister Eevee, smoke a joint at Sisters of the Valley near Merced, California, April 18, 2017. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Actress Nina Dobrev kicks off the first-ever Aperolidays celebration with an Aperol Spritz in hand in the second decade of November 2025. (Photo by Aperol)

In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)