Bettie Page 1923 – 2008

The camera just loved Bettie Page and so did I.

She was a working class kid from Nashville, Tennessee, the second of six siblings. She and her sisters were molested by her father when she was still a child. Her formative experiences – from a period in an orphanage to a gang-rape by teenage boys – left her with an empathy that permeated her work.

In the 1950s, Bettie became a beloved model with many faces: sometimes she was the startled innocent, sometimes the playful fetish doll and sometimes the joyful sexpot. She had an uncanny and irresistible comfort in her own skin. Although she had earned a teaching degree from Vanderbilt University, she felt she had failed to “control my students, especially the boys,” so she took up modeling fur coats when she moved to San Francisco with her first husband Bill Neal. She was to marry at least three times, but the relationships ended in divorce.

But it was in New York, post- divorce, that she became the most famous post-war pin-up girl. From amateur photographers to the brother/sister mail-order professionals Irving and Paula Klaw to her Playboy Christmas centerfold in January, 1955, Bettie Page changed the range of mainstream sensuous images and delivered profoundly edgy work with a playfulness that appealed, unusually, to both women and men. She played the dominatrix with whips and adorable peek-a-boo spanking film clips and she played the submissive, bound and stretched and ecstatic. At a time when the SM and fetish worlds were buried deeper than underground, Bettie put a mischievous spin on the forbidden.

As I wrote in my review of the 2006 Bettie Page film, “On my living room wall I have a framed postcard of Bettie Page sitting astride a blond woman who is lying on her back, Bettie’s crotch just inches from this happy victim’s face. Bettie is stretching up her arms taking in a deep breath, her eyes closed; her white 50s lingerie contrasts with her gartered black stockings.”

Her fans were not the only people interested in Bettie Page: she received a 1955 summons from Senator Estes Kefauver to testify to his anti-pornography Senate committee, although she never actually had to appear. The stress of the investigation and subsequent vilification chased her out of the modeling field and down to Florida, where she went through hard times emotionally and financially.

In the late 1980s and 90s, a new generation of admirers discovered Bettie Page’s photographs and her image became iconic once again. This new wave was led by gay men and young women – for those two groups were discovering and celebrating their own sexuality and Page radiated a kind of universal sensuousness they could really dig. As the International Herald Tribune wrote in their obit:

“…A Bettie Page renaissance began. David Stevens, creator of the comic-book and later movie character the Rocketeer, immortalized her as the Rocketeer's girlfriend. Fashion designers revived her look. Uma Thurman, in bangs, reincarnated Bettie in the Quentin Tarantino film "Pulp Fiction," and Demi Moore, Madonna and others were photographed in Page-like poses.

There were Bettie Page playing cards, lunch boxes, action figures, T-shirts and beach towels. Her saucy images went up in nightclubs. Bettie Page fan clubs sprang up. Lookalike contests, featuring leather-and-lace and kitten-with-a-whip Betties, were organized.”

Meanwhile, Page had become a born-again Christian living on benefits, and friends – apparently including Hugh Hefner – pitched in to help her gain some of the profits being made off her work. AP quotes Hefner as saying of her:

"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society.”

In an earlier interview, Hefner attributed Page’s popularity to "a combination of wholesome innocence and fetish-oriented poses that is at once retro and very modern."

Bettie felt vindicated by finally getting a few pennies out of all the revived buzz. She herself saw nothing wrong in anything she had done. Like many working class women, she felt her limited alternatives paled in comparison to her opportunities in erotic modeling, where, she said, “I could make more money in a few hours modeling than I could earn in a week as a secretary."

The BBC obituary provides this Playboy quote from Bettie:

"I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

In a 2006 interview with The Times, she spoke of her own legacy:

“I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

And so it will be, dear Bettie Page.

Comments

[Tracy]

katz, you always bring to my middle-class attention the stories of working-class 20th century s/heros i've either never heard of or whom i know only superficially. needless to say, i love you for it!
tracy

[Joey Tranchina]

I love this... this is great... thanks...jt

Here is my post on Salon.com

Bettie Page Meet Simone de Beauvoir...jt

Should it be surprising to anyone that Bettie Page wanted to be remembered for what she was best at. A bright but ordinary teacher, secretary, housewife - she was a world-class model. Not only because she was attractive --- she was hardly unique in that - but because her up-beat attitude radiated through the camera to the viewer. She made it obvious that she was having fun doing it. Bettie Page was, and remains, a super-star, in a genre that Kate Harding has difficulty facing 50 years later.

The idea that Bettie Page's choice is to be understood in the light of a paucity of options at that time, casts harsh judgement on a women who makes a similar choice in 2008. Since there must be, at minimum. 10,000 times the number of women choosing erotic employment options today, despite the availability of myriad career paths, I find Harding's underlying attitude - "She couldn't possibly have been doing this because she wanted to." - priggish, curiously judgmental and profoundly anti-woman. If feminism is at root humanism, liberation from sexist attitudes must include liberation from the presumption of victimization that some women place on erotic employment, in the diluted name of "feminism."

-- JoeyTranchina
[Read JoeyTranchina's other letters]
Permalink Saturday, December 13, 2008 12:22

[Anita]

The above photos of Bettie Page are mesmerizing! Amazing that I had never heard of her until now. Thanks for all you do.