Bettie Page, RIP

I was talking to an old friend from Milwaukee last night on the phone, and she was lamenting the passing of Bettie Page. "I know she lived a long life, but I'm still very sad about her death" my friend said.

Aside from death being sad in general, I wasn't exactly sure why Bettie Page's death seemed to matter to my friend so much, and so I asked her about it. To paraphrase, my friend felt that not only was Bettie a pop culture icon in general, but that she was a feminist icon as well, and my friend is nothing if not a feminist. I think.

I was still at a bit of a loss. A feminist icon? Is it because she took control of her own sexuality in an era with distinctly more gender biases than exist today? Because I would argue that an objectified woman is still an objectified woman, no matter who "controls" that objectification.

My friend seems to think that because Bettie Page allowed herself to be objectified, it took a certain amount of power away from the patriarchy. "And if there are less gender biases today, as you say, then we have to thank Bettie Page, in part, for that."

"But," I countered, "no matter who made the decision, she was still the one being photographed, she was still under a somewhat authoritarian male gaze."

"But it was her choice", my friend responded.

"Well, if that's the case, then just about every woman who's ever posed provocatively for explicit photographs is a feminist icon, every porn starlet who ever existed is a feminist icon, because none of these women are forced to do it at gunpoint. They've all made that decision."

"And Bettie Page made it okay for all those women to make that decision for themselves." My friend went on to argue that some women didn't, and still don't, have much of an economic choice. That society has left plenty of women with few viable options outside of stripping, prostitution and/or pornography. As Bettie Page herself said, posing the way she did was more fun than being a secretary, and paid better as well.

I couldn't necessarily argue with that, but I still wasn't exactly sure how or why the woman might be considered a feminist icon. When all is said and done, she posed for those photographs for a series of male photographers, and those photos were consumed mostly in secret, by a legion of men in "camera clubs", what today we might call Hustler magazine's subscribers list.

"Back in the 1950's, most of those photographs were deemed illegal, and many of the negatives were actually destroyed by court order. At that time, hardly anybody outside of those camera clubs had seen Bettie Page photographs, or even knew who she was. Certainly the typical American woman wasn't aware of Bettie Page in 1955. How can she be a feminist icon if hardly any women were aware of her existence?"

My friend shot back, "But in hindsight, many women became aware of her and her photographs, and in the aftermath, those women realized that they could own their sexuality, and not feel ashamed of doing so."

"I'm just not buying it," I responded. "If you want to argue that Bettie Page helped introduce bondage and other fetishes to a wider audience, I'd have to agree with you there and give the woman her due, but being a feminist icon, I just don't really see it."

"In fact, if we want to call somebody a feminist icon on your terms, what about Marilyn Monroe? She was exceedingly famous worldwide, and yet she posed naked for Playboy. In the 1950's that's a much more powerful and provocative statement than anything Bettie Page ever did, and it reached a much, much wider audience, including other women."

I didn't really have much else to say on the matter. Our discussion boiled down to matters of opinion in the end, and I don't believe either my friend or myself was 100% in the right. In my mind, the most conciliatory idea I could muster was that Bettie Page made it okay for other women to allow themselves to be objectified. She paved the way for Kim Kardashian to be pissed on in a home video available on DVD for $19.95.

Is Kim Kardashian a feminist icon? If she profited from those DVD sales, I guess she is.

I dunno. Women are still mostly a mystery to me, in or out of bondage gear.

Rest in peace, Bettie Page. You were something.

Hotcha! Hank