I may grow to regret posting a link to my blog on my website, but hey, if you found me, chances are you'd want to read my blog. So here we go together. I've never been a fan of writing fiction. Even in my undergraduate English degree days, I was much more comfortable with technical writing and poetry. And now as I cheekily glance at my bookshelf, it doesn't surprise me that no fiction titles are winking back at me. Well, The Natural History of Love written in 1957 contains chivalry and courting rituals that I've never been the subject of, but I think that has more to do with time than anything else. So if you do choose to read my blog and you'd like some fiction, look elsewhere.
1957. The burlesque and pinup world owes a lot to the fifties. Many of us, myself included, don retro--vintage if we can get them--garments and false eyelashes on a regular basis. I have stockings that are so old they barely make it out of the packaging let alone make it past my dancer's feet. I cherish them and I have to ask myself why. When I was a child I hated being a girl.
Being a girl meant being fragile and looked after very closely. I was absolutely not the fragile flower that loved curls and lace that my mother wanted me to be. I was made to wear a dress in preschool on picture day. I was used to running around with the trouble-making little boys and they were quick to make fun of my poofy dress. I still enjoy looking at that picture because little Jimmy has a bandage on his chin from being pushed on the ground by yours truly and I'm quite certain that I was in mid-guffaw as the bulb flashed. I have since made my peace with poofy.
There's a drawer full of vintage stockings in my room. They've been delicately placed in sandwich bags. I have taken an uncharacteristic amount of care of these leg-shaped nylon tubes. Maybe I'd like to experience what those glamorous ladies in 1957 experienced. Did they realize how we'd be dreaming of a day where we'd have enough time to sit at our dressing tables and spritz expensive perfume on our freshly powdered bodies? Did they know their movie scenes of silk stockings and twirly skirts would be so deeply entrenched in our memories that they would define what it means to be deliciously vulnerable and superhuman at the same time? How did these visions come to mean "woman" to me when there are many more accurate definitions, including the one I see in the mirror every day?
(photo by Shoshana Portnoy, Dallaspinup.com)
