Bettie Page, Queen of Pin-Up Girls

She was the muse of glamour and eroticism in the 1950s, becoming a sex symbol—or “the girl with the perfect figure.”

Bettie Page was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1923. Her mother was half Cherokee, and her father abused her sisters, so part of her childhood was deeply affected by this and by the loneliness of growing up in an orphanage due to her parents’ ongoing problems.

After her parents’ divorce, when she was a teenager, her life began to get back on track, and she studied to become a teacher on a scholarship. She got married for the first time, and her love of movies led her to train to become an actress as well.

When her husband was discharged at the end of the war, his jealousy made it impossible for them to live together, so she filed for divorce and moved to New York to work and study acting. Bettie combined a spectacular figure with the charm and sensuality of her theatrical and uninhibited personality, and after trying—and failing—to find her place on the big screen in 1950s Hollywood, she began posing for controversial erotic photo shoots.

Through photographer Irving Klaw, Bettie would adopt the unmistakable look that would immortalize her—her gorgeous dark hair and Cleopatra-style bangs—which would make her a iconic figure in front of the camera.

Since this is a matter of art, her poses in leather outfits and stiletto heels made her the first star of sadomasochism and the “Queen of Bondage” or “the Black Angel.”

She appeared on the cover of *Playboy* in January 1955, becoming that year’s *Playboy* Girl, and her full-nude photos in the centerfold of that issue became legendary

But between 1947 and 1957, at the height of the Cold War, politicians began to manipulate American society by stoking fears of an invasion of communist ideas that threatened purely American values.

Tensions peaked under Senator Joseph McCarthy between 1950 and 1954, leading to the famous “witch hunts” in Hollywood, in addition to imposing moral codes of conduct that restricted citizens’ freedoms, ostensibly to defend national security or eliminate juvenile delinquency.

Censorship targeted both movies and magazines that featured nude photos or overly erotic poses, so during those years, magazine content was often mixed in with other material or disguised to avoid a regressive system that caused great harm to artists in all fields.

Against this social backdrop, Bettie worked with photographer Irving Klaw between 1952 and 1956; he was arrested for allegedly distributing pornographic material. Irving Klaw started out with his sister Paula in a basement shop in Manhattan where he sold used books and photographs of athletes, musicians, and Hollywood stars, but the images of scantily clad young women sold by far the most, so, in search of more material, they ended up producing their own photo shoots to provide their audience with what they were looking for: beautiful, feminine women with whom they could live out their erotic fantasies.

Mail-order sales through catalogs featuring images of their models grew exponentially due to the confidentiality of their customers’ requests, as customers openly stated their preferences, sometimes unusual ones, such as having the pin-up girls glued or tied up, or wearing pony harnesses, as in bondage.

Bettie Page testified in court about Irving Klaw, saying, “He struck me as a man who was very busy with his work, but who enjoyed what he did. He devoted hours and hours to it, always busy making the girls look their best.”

Many of the negatives of her photos were destroyed, and the distribution of those photographs was declared illegal; despite this, it is estimated that there are around 20,000 photographs of Bettie.

Bettie Page’s career came to an abrupt end around 1958 when her second marriage fell apart and she plunged into a deep personal crisis; this, combined with legal troubles over her photographs, explains her disappearance from the world of erotic art photography.

Her life took a complete turn during a trip to Florida, where she converted to Christianity in 1960 at the Key West Baptist Temple under Pastor Morris Wright, eventually becoming a missionary in Angola.

She remarried for the third time but was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia in the late 1970s and was admitted to psychiatric hospitals. Arrested following an argument with her landlady, she was declared mentally ill and spent her final years in Los Angeles with her brother.

In the early ’90s, she was hailed as a true, long-forgotten icon of Pop Art, and her photos and films—which had been republished since the ’80s as sexual icons—began to generate image rights for her, of course, through the mediation of lawyers and Hugh Hefner, the owner of Playboy.

Starting in the 1980s, Bettie Page’s image evolved from that of a simple male-oriented porn model to that of a sex symbol brimming with glamour and natural charm.

She inspired comics, songs, fashion… television interviews, and in 2005, director Mary Harron even made a movie about her life: “The Notorious Bettie Page,” starring Gretchen Mol.

He never wanted to give personal interviews or have his picture taken, and he always responded by phone.

In fact, her explanation was: “I’d rather be remembered as I was before,” and in response to the huge interest in her life, she explained: “I never thought of myself as an icon; I was just modeling and trying to come up with as many different poses as possible. I made more money posing than I did as a secretary. I had more free time and could take months off work, which I couldn’t do as a secretary.”

“I wasn’t trying to make headlines or be a pioneer.

I wasn’t trying to change society or be ahead of my time. I was never a liberal, and I don’t think I did anything important. I was just being myself; I didn’t know how to be any other way, or how to live any other way. I like to be naked, to swim naked, to walk around the house naked. It just makes you feel as free as a bird.”

Bettie Page died of a heart attack at the age of 85 on December 11, 2008.

Bettie’s life shows that beauty, just like the power of dreams, enables us to overcome mountains, but it is that very effort and suffering that makes us vulnerable to the misunderstanding of fools.

Flowers, like butterflies, exist to help us understand how wonderful it is to be free, even if it doesn’t last long.