Pin-Up Wisdom

You get to a certain age and you can only hope that you accept the choices made during your lifetime.

It certainly sounded like Bettie did in "Bettie Page Reveals All," part of documentary week at the Criterion, and tonight's destination with Pru.

I know some people are all but obsessed with Bettie - I have a friend who for years sent me Bettie photos practically every week - but my interest was far more casual.

What fascinated me most was how she'd disappeared at the height of her pin-up career as the elusive perfect woman, part pretty girl-next-door and part sultry temptress.

The documentary wasn't as good as it could have been because there were far too many unimportant people talking about what Bettie meant to them or the culture and who really cares how many two-bit burlesque performers or tattooed millennials worship at her altar?

But it scored big time by having a voice-over by Bettie herself, done before she died in 2008.

In a voice that sounded like it had endured a lot of whiskey and cigarettes (which wasn't the case since she neither drank nor smoked), she laid out her life story in a voice that was direct, honest and at this point, worldly.

She matter of factly explained that her mother hadn't wanted a daughter and that her father had sex with anything he could, including chickens, cows and her sisters.

He paid her a dime to touch her "outside my clothes" and she used it to go to the movies.

That lemons to lemonade attitude colored her entire life.

Talking about leaving Tennessee to go to New York, she said her first apartment rented for $46.29 in 1947 and how much she loved to go dancing. Sounds like me at 23.

What I was surprised to learn was that she was terribly intelligent, graduating second in her class and that she made all her own lingerie and bikinis, the ones she posed in for posterity.

Not that she didn't have a perfect body (36-24-37) despite the Ford modeling agency telling her she was too hippy, but making her own modeling costumes explains why everything seemed to fit her so perfectly.

Maybe it was also her habits, for she espoused the value of daily "air baths" with the windows open which certainly seemed to work for her.

All the people who photographed her raved about how natural she was as a model, never uncomfortable with being nude or done up for fetish photos (a popular and lucrative way for her to earn money during the repressed post-war years).

The film showed endless photos of her because so many were taken and in all of them, she looks like she was genuinely having a good time in front of the camera, a fact she corroborates in her voice-over.

Interestingly, Hugh Hefner, sounding older than Moses, ended up being the one who put her in touch with lawyers and managers to handle the sale of her imagery after she'd fallen on hard times (during which her photographs had been used unlicensed to sell all kinds of things for decades).

She was humorous and honest when talking about her multiple marriages, my favorite quote on the subject being, "The only things we had in common were movies, sex and hamburgers."

As a fan of all three, I can see where a young woman could be fooled into thinking they were enough. Bettie and I both know they're not. At least now we do.

Like Bettie, I have no problem acknowledging my mistakes or questionable life choices.

Unlike Bettie, I won't be the subject of mass adoration for a half century.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for singular adoration and I'd happily take 50 years of that if I can find it.

Probably should have started taking air baths sooner.