Interview with Bettie Page

Summary:

            Betty Page is known to be one of the famous pin ups of all time, the Queen of Pin Ups. She modeled only for 7 years, but the amount of magazines she had been pictured in was more than Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford put together. This time frame when Betty had been seen all over was during the 1950s. She appeared in all types of photos in calendars, playing cards, magazines, etc. (Estiloz, 1996). According to Tim Estiloz, Bettie was “the perfect combination of girl-next-door sweetness and a naughty sensuality all wrapped up in one drop-dead gorgeous package” (Estiloz, 1996).

            Bettie Page grew up during the depression in Tennessee. Page had always imitated what she saw from the professional models and actors by posing as they did, never having thought that she’d wind up as one, herself. Page was offered a Hollywood screen test after having graduated college and according to Page herself, during the screen test the people directing it “tried to make me up to look like Joan Crawford, they bunched my hair way out on the sides, penciled my eyebrows…” (Estiloz, 1996). Page said that after watching the screen test, she found it hard to recognize herself.

            Page didn’t succeed initially in Hollywood and worked as a secretary in New York. Page began working with amateur photographers who photographed her in bikinis at first, but she also took pictures in the nude, as well. Page never felt that there was anything wrong with the pictures she took. “I don’t believe God disapproves of nudes, he put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden…and they would’ve probably been naked all their lives if they hadn’t disobeyed him” (Estiloz, 1996).

            Page moved onto more serious photographers and posed for scores in men’s magazines. Page was one of the first centerfolds for Playboy, following Marilyn Monroe in 1953, in 1955 (Estiloz, 1996). There was a “special something” Page possessed and Page had heard that it might’ve been her smile that expressed her fulfillment in her work that she truly did enjoy. Page reveals that when posing, she would often imagine she was posing for her boyfriend (Estiloz, 1996).

            Page did some photographs with bondage and fetish themes and danced in sevreral burlesque style eight millimeter films. She wore a cone shaped bra to “tweak the conservative mindset of the 1950s” (Estiloz, 1996). Her pictures were seen as sexual to others, but she never saw them as being sexual.

            Page married three times, and all three wound up ending rather ugly, so to speak. Howard Hughes even tried to get together with Page at one point, but she denied him. Page believed that people fear models, essentially, and she wasn’t asked out as much as she was before she was famous.

            Page yearned for a change in her life and wound up leaving New York in 1957. She believed she had been too old at the age of 34 to continue modeling as well as feeling as though there were too many pictures of her out in the world already…  and she was simply “tired of it” (Estiloz, 1996).

            Page is remarkably popular in today’s society and is still found on calendars and comic books all over. She is a legend of the Pin-Ups… she is “eternal” (Estiloz, 1996). Bettie made a request that she not be seen by the public as she looks today. She wants to “preserve her memory” of what she was known to have looked like in her youth. (Estiloz, 1996).

Analysis:

            Pictures of Bettie Page can be found all over and she remains a legend to this day. When Page posed for pictures, she wasn’t trying to put on a façade and pose as something that didn’t occur naturally to her. Page was real and her photos exude that aspect of her modeling style. She never saw her pictures as sexual or “wrong” because she viewed her body as something God-given and meant to be viewed by the world, in a sense. She felt as though the first humans were naked and probably wouldn’t have been naked had they not disobeyed God – but being in the nude was never something God disapproved of. Page loved her work and although her love life wasn’t where she might’ve hoped it would be, having married three times, she is still active today and lives happily on her own in California.

Reflection Questions:

1.      Why did Bettie Page not see her pictures as sexual, especially while posing for them, how did it not cross her mind?

2.      Why does Bettie Page “hate old age” ?

Estiloz, T. (Writer) (1996). Interview with bettie page[Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Ynlp7sxZs