RISQUE BUSINESS
By Danica Lofrom the New York Post
CHAMPAGNE DREAMS: Dita Von Teese performs her signature champagne glass dance tomorrow night at Happy Valley, indeed.
March 27, 2006 -- BACK when she was just Heather Sweet from Rochester, Mich., Dita Von Teese was in love with splashy, MGM-style Hollywood glamour. "I knew who all the stars were - Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich - by the time I was 7 or 8," she says. "They were my first influences as a little girl." Small wonder, then, that - as Von Teese - little Heather has grown up into a sexy, modern-day version of her childhood obsessions. The pin-curled hair, the lacquered lips and nails, the hourglass figure: She's a dead ringer for any circa-1947 starlet, with the notable exception that she is not wearing clothes. With Von Teese in town to toast her new book of cheesecake and fetish photos and Gretchen Mol's Bettie Page biopic set to open next month, burlesque - long fodder for the demimonde - is going mainstream.
Just how mainstream? After soaking in her signature champagne glass routine at Happy Valley tommorow night, fans can stop by the Virgin Megastore Thursday where Mrs. Marilyn Manson will be signing her brand-new coffee-table book "Burlesque and the Art of the Teese" (Regan Books).
For the tome, Von Teese culled her favorites from the more than 25,000 photos on her Web site for a two-sided volume that features burlesque or fetish shots, depending which side of the book you open. "When I was a child, I had a two-sided book - one cover was 'Good Morning' and the other 'Good Night,'" Von Teese explains. "This book just seemed like a two-sided book to me - a lot of women have two sides, and this is a good-girl, bad-girl kind of book." It's that duality, perhaps - brazen sexuality behind coyness, innocence covering lustiness - that explains the burlesque's growing appeal.
And it - and its influence - is growing. Von Teese was lately seen strutting down some serious runways at the Paris shows. And while "The Notorious Bettie Page" premieres in just a few weeks, Web sites like SuicideGirls.com, which is dedicated to the modern-day pinup and features over 1,000 models, have become so successful that members have started a touring burlesque show. "The show was born the same way that the photo sets were," says SuicideGirls.com founder Missy Suicide. "The photos are modern takes on pinup photos and the burlesque show is a modern take on the classic burlesque." The Suicide Girls tour imbues traditional burlesque - which is all about "embracing the body and having fun with the tease," Missy says - with a punk rock ethos. There's the sexy hula hoop girl, a belly dancer, whipped cream and girls who breath fire.
Not surprisingly, many of the girls featured on the site, whether they be Goth, rockabilly, rock, punk, or Chola, are heavily inspired by the original Bettie Page - girl rockabillies are even called "Betties." "I first remember hearing about Bettie Page in the mid-1990s when I was going to punk shows, as Bettie Page-style bangs became popular with girls," says Suicide Girl Bettina, who is also inspired by modern-day pinups like Von Teese and Bernie Dexter. "I was taken with Page's beauty and style."
"I can't think of a single more prominent icon in the modern burlesque era," says Suicide Girl Ravenisis. "And you can definitely see her influence in more mainstream areas of fashion rather than it being relegated to the realm of fetish." The irrepressible appeal of Bettie Page to both men and women may be attributable to her bold awareness, at the time, of her own sexuality. "If you look back through traditional modeling pictures, the girls are always coy and never looked into the camera lens," Missy says. "Bettie Page looked into the camera - with a coy smile - and she let you know she was the one in control. Sexuality was not being put on her - she felt sexy about herself."This neo-feminist take on hyper-femininity may be controversial, but it's still omnipresent in pop cultural icons - from Von Teese to the Pussycat Dolls, and, well, celebrities like Paris Hilton, who's constantly vamping and preening for the cameras."And what's sexier than a girl feeling sexy about herself?" Missy says.
