Local Goddess

Makes good.

Vis-a-vis this news item, we have an old myth bound into our cultural DNA.

Actually, two myths.

The first is the hackneyed fable of the hooker with a heart of gold. A work of pure, spun-sugar, wish-fulfillment, Testostorytime fiction if every there was one.

Gonadvertising, if you will.

It is the tale of the hot, worldly, sexually-experienced woman (usually a prostitute, in order to reduce uninhibited sexuality to a purely transactional level, making it both theoretically possible and commercially comprehensible to those who are sacred to death by it) who is really, down deep, the sainted salt of the Earth.

Kinky, nympho salt, to be sure, but an all-purpose uberwoman who will mommy you when you’re ailing and pornstar you into a pleasure coma when you’re horny.

The second story is of the dark costs that come with iconographic beauty or power. A Greek tragedy in the most traditional sense that we live and relive, where the Gods will not tolerate anyone stealing market-share so they contrive to destroy the young, and radiant and talented. James Dean. Marilyn. Bruce Lee. Che. Jimi. Humans cut from this vale of tears fresh enough and perfect enough to transcend their place and time and become a cultural referent.

But before most of them were incised into the cornerstones of our PopCult Bar-n-Grill, there was Betty Page.

Betty had “It” by the freight-load.

Equal parts raw carnality, playfulness and curvaceous splendor that somehow cut together so flawlessly that she became our Naughty Prime Directive. Our National Sexy Axiom, who “would” -- and with randy, freak-ay enthusiasm -- where those other, blonder ladies probably wouldn’t.

And if they did, well, it’d probably be as much fleshy fun as tapping Barbie’s molded-plastic ass.

Betty said so much about who we really were and are.

She spoke directly to our national, fetishy libido without the need for a translator, and it is no small irony her best work was done during what any history-illiterate Fundy’ll tell you was the high watermark of American National Rectitude: the good old conformist Caucasian days of buzz cuts, 48 United States and Dwight Eisenhower firmly ensconced in the White House. And yet in the heart of the heart of the 50s, she won herself a permanent seat in the Champaign Room of our national psyche, launched a preemptive nuclear strike in the battle of the sexes, and almost fifty years after she struck her last libidinous pose, I have yet to meet the heterosexual man of any age who didn’t have a “thing” for her at one time or another.

Now usually the “hooker with a heart of gold” story is pure trash – prostitution American Style is simply a terrible and terribly dangerous way to eke out a living.

And the price-tag for becoming a icon of eternal youth is usually an early grave.

How splendid that for Betty Page, none of that happened.

She just aged, apparently well, and now makes a tidy living from her younger self.

This from the L.A. Times…

A Golden Age for a Pinup
Bettie Page -- Nurse Bettie, Jungle Bettie -- soldiered in the sexual revolution. At 82, she finds her image earns a respectable living.
By Louis Sahagun
Times Staff Writer

March 11, 2006

Bettie Page was plunging into the day's work: autographing pinups of herself in various Naughty Girl personas, with kitschy bangs, high heels, mesh hose and tasseled underwear.

Nurse Bettie. Jester Bettie. Substitute Teacher Bettie. Maid Bettie. Voodoo Bettie. Cowgirl Bettie. Jungle Bettie. Wild Orchid Bettie. Banned in Boston Bettie. Crackers in Bed Bettie.

The task ahead was arduous given her many ailments, including diabetes and stabbing pains in her back, legs and hands.

But the 82-year-old Page — a taboo-breaker who helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s — is not a quitter.

"I'm about ready to roll," she said in a Southern drawl, freshening her bright red lipstick. "But I'm going to go slow. I won't squiggle if I write slow."

CMG Worldwide, the company that markets her image, had organized the event at its Sunset Boulevard penthouse offices. The idea was to get Page's autograph on as many prints as possible, because demand for anything Page-related is soaring.

Between 1949 and 1957 she was immortalized in thousands of saucy photos. Those images have spawned biographies, comic books, fan clubs and numerous websites, as well as commercial products — Bettie Page playing cards, Bettie Page lunch boxes, Bettie Page beach towels, Bettie Page action figures.

According to her agents at CMG, who control the images of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, Page's official website, http://www.BettiePage.com , has received 588 million hits over the last five years. That's cult status.

For the last 13 years, she's been living in seclusion in various Southern California communities. Nearly five decades after the last photos of her appeared in magazines like Chicks and Chuckles, Page is finally earning a respectable income for her work.

"I'm more famous now than I was in the 1950s," she said.

Page needed about a minute to get through the 10 letters of her name. As she pushed her pen, she reflected on her life and faith and work.

"Being in the nude isn't a disgrace unless you're being promiscuous about it," she said. She added with a laugh, "After all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!"

"You're right about that, Bettie," said Maricel Hildalgo of the Tamara Bane Gallery on North La Brea Avenue in L.A. The gallery had hustled $100,000 worth of paintings and posters to CMG the moment Page agreed to make herself available for autographs.

"My land! Is that supposed to be me?" asked Page, surveying a painting of her reclining in a negligee with an ecstatic smile on her face.

Putting pen to canvas and concentrating mightily, she muttered, "I was never that pretty."

…
She tried secretarial work and marriage. But by 1948 she was divorced and had moved to New York and enrolled in acting classes.

Strolling the beach at Coney Island, Page crossed paths with New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to shutterbug clubs and suggested she wear bangs to help cover a slightly protruding forehead.

From the start, Page — whose measurements were 36-24-37 — preferred the skimpy outfits she designed and sewed at home.

"I made all of my bikinis and most of my lingerie," she said. "My favorite was my first bikini. It was green with a little rickrack all around it."

Almost overnight, she became an underground sensation, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake.

Page soon became the Klaws' busiest pinup and also starred in their peekaboo short films, "Varietease" and "Striporama."

…

During her brief career, she became the obsession of thousands of men — a fact that mystifies her to this day: "I have no idea why I'm the only model who has had so much fame so long after quitting work."


…
Perhaps that explains fans like Minnesota artist Rick Volkmar, who has spent years painstakingly touching up old black-and-white Bettie Page photos, erasing rips and tears and thousands of tiny white specks with a fine brush to rebuild the mesh of her stockings, the sheen of her hair, the shadows on her face.

In the process, Volkmar developed carpal tunnel syndrome and learned a lot about her anatomy.

"Her right eyebrow slants up and is shorter than the left one; her right nostril is higher than her left nostril," he noted. "The indent beneath her nose and above her upper lip is unusually wide. Her four front incisors are larger than normal.

"Her right eye is lower than the left one and slants down…. Her right knee has a dimple in it, and there is a famous notch on the back of her right thigh, four inches above the knee. Her thumb and hands are muscular, almost mannish. Same with her feet.

"Her rear end is noticeably squarish, and there are two creases under the left buttocks and one under her right buttocks….

"It all adds up to this," he said. "She looks like fun."

That alchemy of asymmetry and temperament inadvertently unleashed a cultural movement.

…

So what was it about her?

This by Harlan Ellison -- whom I admire greatly and selfishly wish like hell would write more -- in the same article puts it exactly right:

"There are certain women, even certain men, in whose look there is a certain aesthetic that hits a golden mean. Bettie is that. Marilyn is that."

So she not only got to be the goddess, and but she also outflanked the Fates that destroy all mortal competition for the Divine Spotlight and lived to be a nice, old Christian lady spending her golden years in comfort, bathed in California light and unapologetic memories.

Way to go, Betty.