Bettie Page Bound, gagged, flogged and now blogged, Bettie Page, legendary underground pin-up of the 1950s, has died from a heart attack after a lifetime of making other people's pulses race faster.
Prime candidate for "woman your grandfather most likely spilled his seed over", Bettie was more than just a pin-up. In an age when a mere hint of cleavage got you damned as the Devil's Whore, Bettie did fetish with gusto.
In her trademark black fringe, long gloves, pinched waist and high heels, Bettie did not do missionary. She laughed at romance, bought style and class to low-rent sex, made pervs feel like lords (and vice versa, accent on "vice"), and turned women into pasha-pleasing mistresses. Men wanted to slap her around and, hey, she even enjoyed it.
But that's false consciousness, I hear you say, comrades, and opens up a whole wide world of power play and sex games. Me? I'd rather do the smacking. Sigh! Forever grappling with the dilemma of the feminist vamp.
Madam Miaow says ... Stick me in a dog-collar and corset and call me mama. Never had objectification looked so good 'til Bettie booped.
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She definetely offered a new face of sex at a time when everyone was so repressed. Yet there was always this innocence about her that made her so special. No one will ever be able to capture that mixture of innocence and sex appeal like she did so flawlessly.
ReplyDeleteRIP Bettie!