Bettie Page - RIP

Bettie Page died at the age of 85 yesterday. She was a Nashville girl. She attended Hume Fogg High School in downtown Nashville (now a nationally acclaimed magnet school) and the George Peabody College for Teachers (now the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University). She missed being the valedictorian by .25%.

Though she is being hailed as a revolutionary who helped usher in the "Free Love" nonsense of the 1960's, in reality, she was a tragic figure. She was married and divorced, pursued an acting career on the West Coast and then a modeling career on the East Coast. It was there that a photographer told her to comb her bangs forward to compensate for her high forehead and the "Bettie Page look" was born. When asked about her iconic status as a high priestess of sexual liberation, she responded:

"I was not trying to be shocking, or to be a pioneer. I wasn’t trying to change society, or to be ahead of my time. I didn’t think of myself as liberated, and I don’t believe that I did anything important. I was just myself. I didn’t know any other way to be, or any other way to live."

She was a free spirit and a survivor. Later in life she became a born-again Christian. She said of herself that she was "penniless and infamous." For all the naughtiness, I suspect she was a good person and would be horrified at what is shown on the front covers of magazines and in prime-time TV now.

Despite the Playboy spreads and the Catwoman bondage shots, I like to remember her with this picture:


I am pretty sure that's the Gulf Coast of Florida in the background. The coast of my boyhood before they built the hell out of it. And that's a sandbar she's standing on...probably had been looking for sand dollars. She is full of life, happy to be here. That is how we should remember her.