See also: Denver Book Fair is closing, and it has some great finds...of the naked lady variety
Let me reiterate my prudiness before I discuss my interest in pre-1970s boudoir photography: I prefer a sex life that is not broadcast to the world or even my friends, especially in an age where being even remotely freaky on the sex front is not only acceptable, but feels as if it is the norm. It often seems that within my social circles, it's not only okay to talk about the weird shit you do in your bedroom, it is almost expected. Not to shame anyone who is into sexual behavior that happens to be off-putting to me; I just think that I am the exception more than the rule when it comes to sexual interactions/preferences in 2014. I also hate watching/being anywhere near most contemporary pornography. But I do like tasteful pictures of naked ladies.
I don't remember when I first encountered Bettie Page's image -- it was definitely sometime in the mid-'90s, when rockabilly style was crossing the multiple musical genres I was into and every No Doubt video was like an homage to Gwen Stefani's swirl of a ponytail and pinup hair curls. Bettie seemed to be everywhere I was -- my car and guitar had Bettie on them, I plastered the walls of my first apartment with her bondage posters, and, after going through many Stefani hair phases, I locked into the "Bettie Page bangs" look for a solid half-decade. She was, and still is, fascinating to me.
It wasn't Page's beautiful body that first caught my eye (I really didn't come to appreciate hers until I got older and saw more than enough misrepresentations of naked bodies elsewhere in pop culture); it was her expressions. Also, the idea that I was looking at something that might have been controversial to some was exciting. But in the small, '50s shoebox of a childhood home I grew up in, the walls were crammed with large, colorful paintings, many of them nudes painted by my uncle; Bettie was hardly my first tasteful nude.
I also remember, at a young age, flipping through a grand coffee-table book of Vargas girls that lived on one of our household's many overstuffed bookshelves. I was fascinated by Alberto Vargas's take on women's shapes: Vargas girls were clothed more often than not, but they wore things that couldn't have been anything but painted on. These were images of women with creamy white and caramel skin almost always draped in sheer pastels (a color scheme I still am attracted to, regardless of the context) -- minty and peachy nightgowns -- with black and blond hair flapping in an invisible wind. Decades after they were introduced, the Vargas girls appeared on album covers by the Cars, which is probably why I skipped my parents' multiple copies of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in favor of Candy-O.
Vintage issues of Playboy would be my next foray in the world of naked ladies. The pre-1970s copies are packed with silly photo scenarios and women on rotary dial phones looking as sexy as you possibly can while taking a message. I fell in love with these images when I started doing collaborative collage work in my last band. The art of piecing nudes together and blacking out the eyes of the models became our trademark album and flier art -- in part because it was simply a fun activity, in part because it was a way for me to confront the absurd stereotypes of women used in traditional, historically misogynistic rock-and-roll imagery.As my current collection of nudie mags and semi-tasteful art of the naked-lady variety grows, so does my own curiosity about what it is, exactly, that I like about this art form. Bettie Page is the most fascinating of all of the women I have known through their pictures, mostly because until Bettie Page Reveals All was released, her real-life story was all but a mystery -- but also because she remains a singular face in the often-anonymous world of naked-women imagery. (And, yes, I saw the 2005 debacle The Notorious Bettie Page, which was mis-cast, terribly written and, according to Mark Mori, friend and creator of her authorized documentary, made with no consultation with Page or anyone who knew her, only furthering the famous model's mystique.)
Maybe one day when I'm a rich and famous blogger, I'll finally be able to afford an original Vargas or a set of real Bettie Page photographs -- or, better yet, a larger-than-life Jenny Morgan or a Man Ray. Until then, I'll continue to collect inexpensive, modest smut rags and enjoy the world of semi-nude lowbrow art.
Be my voyeur (or better yet, let me stalk you) on Twitter: @cocodavies
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