The legendary 1950s pin-up queen with the killer curves and coal-black bangs (where yah think Christina Aguilera gets it from?), died today of pneumonia at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2 (not on my birthday… NO!)

Bettie Page for those of who don’t know, was not only popular but she has inspired a movement and an undeniable influence in beauty, movies, and fashion. I mean who can forget her shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs? Bettie told playboy in 1998:

“I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It’s just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous.”

VANITY FAIR praised the playfully seductive Page as “our Uber-pin-up.” The NEW YORK TIMES has declared that today “her star shines more brightly than it did in her brief heyday from 1950 to 1957.” PLAYBOY immortalized Page as one of its inaugural centerfolds and recently named her “the model of the century, yet she remains one of its best kept secrets.”   In a recent TVGuide.com poll, Bettie Page was voted the “ultimate sex goddess,” outscoring others such as Marilyn Monroe.

Not only is she an extraordinary woman but she’s a survivor. I LOVE BETTIE PAGE… and here is why:

Born on April 22, 1923 in Nashville, Tennessee, Bettie (spelled “Betty” on her birth certificate) Mae Page was the second child of six born to a mother that didn’t want her and a father that molested her. Her parents divorced in 1933, but life didn’t get any easier for Bettie.

“All I ever wanted was a mother who paid attention to me,” Page recalled. “She didn’t want girls. She thought we were trouble. When I started menstruating at 13, I thought I was dying because she never taught me anything about that.”

She disappeared from public view in the late 1950s, turning to religion and battling mental illness. Bettie Page was married and divorced three times, bore no children but she was a religious woman in her later life.

In one of her last interviews with The Times in 2006 Bettie says,

“I want to be remembered,” she said, “as I was when I was young and in my golden times. . . . I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form.”

Check out the Bettie Page Boutique

Question 4 you: “If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

thanks @KnowMeLoveMe

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