The Ultimate Object Passes Quietly into the Night

 This from today’s New York Times:

Bettie Page, a legendary pinup girl whose photographs in the nude, in bondage and in naughty-but-nice poses appeared in men’s magazines and private stashes across America in the 1950s and set the stage for the sexual revolution of the rebellious ’60s, died Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 85.Her death was reported by her agent, Mark Roesler, on Ms. Page’s Web site, bettiepage.com.

 

Ms. Page, whose popularity underwent a cult-like revival in the last 20 years, had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia and was about to be released Dec. 2 when she suffered a heart attack, said Mr. Roesler, of CMG Worldwide. She was transferred in a coma to Kindred Hospital, where she died.

In her trademark raven bangs, spike heels and killer curves, Ms. Page was the most famous pinup girl of the post-World War II era, a centerfold on a million locker doors and garage walls. She was also a major influence in the fashion industry and a target of Senator Estes Kefauver’s anti-pornography investigators.

We’ve spent a  lot of cyberink here talking about the objectification of women.   Bettie and Marilyn Monroe were the 50s icons of the women as object of male fantasy.  Marilyn couldn’t get beyond the process and died young.  Bettie, while experiencing major problems in her life, emerged in charge of herself.  You can learn a lot more about Bettie here on her official page as well as the Obit at the Times.  Her life was featured in a movie, The Notorious Bettie Page and there are books about her.

One thing that you will learn is that she was born in Jackson, Tenn and that her father, an automechanic, molested Betty May and her two other sisters.  This is a theme that runs through many women’s lives who eventually turn to adult entertainment to make money. She was a straight A student and graduated from Peabody college with credentials to teach.  She eventually decided to pursue a career in acting and took to modelling to make ends meet.  She eventually posed as a playboy centerfold in 1955. 

 Betty became depressed, as many women in that industry do, and she escaped the life at the peak of her career while fighting problems with mental illness.  She went through two marriages and divorces.  She eventually became a born-again Christian.

Her photos, however, lived on and eventually, with help of many folks, she regained control of her imagine and her voice.  It’s a good time to reflect on what we consider the difference between taking charge of our on sexuality and bodies and being objectified as toys for men.  Also, why do we still need to have this conversation?

 “I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2006. “I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form.”