Bon's Mots

Bettie Page, fifties pinup queen and sex­ual pi­o­neer, passed away yes­ter­day at the age of 85. She wasn’t as hugely pop­u­lar as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield or other sex sym­bols of her gen­er­a­tion, but still man­aged to de­velop a huge cult-like fol­low­ing, de­spite giv­ing up the busi­ness in 1959 to de­vote her­self to God.

I’ve been a fan of Bettie since my early 20s. My ad­mi­ra­tion and de­vo­tion to her wasn’t as manic as what I felt for Marilyn in my teens. Perhaps it was be­cause I was older and could bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate what Bettie stood for. Unlike Marilyn, Bettie rep­re­sented a strong, po­tent fe­male sex­u­al­ity — un­bri­dled, un­abashed and fun. Looking at her cheesy pinup pho­tos or bondage shots, it was clear she en­joyed her work and took great pride in it.

“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.” — Bettie Page, Playboy in­ter­view, 1998

If Marilyn was the fragile, bruised child, Bettie was the ag­gres­sive, con­fi­dent woman. Marilyn was the woman men wanted to take care of and pro­tect. Page was the one they were slightly afraid of; she knew how to wield a rid­ing crop.

I’ve al­ways as­pired to be a Bettie, rather than a Marilyn.

Celebrity deaths tend to at­tract a new group of fol­low­ers, cu­ri­ous about this now-faded icon they are too young to re­mem­ber. I hope a lot of these new ad­mir­ers are young women who see in Bettie what they want to see in them­selves — a con­fi­dent woman, com­fort­able with her body. In this age where Barbie doll star­lets with plas­tic breasts and body dys­mor­phia are held up as stan­dards of at­trac­tive­ness (hey Hollywood — since when is a size 2 “curvy”?), Bettie (and even Marilyn, for that mat­ter) rep­re­sents a time when an hour­glass fig­ure was some­thing to be ad­mired and drooled over.

Bettie, we’ll miss you. I think God’s view just got a whole lot better.