Lost an icon.

We lost the best pinup girl who was ever pinned up, yesterday.

Bettie Page's appeal, to me at least, was not in her portrayal as a dominatrix or such. It was the fact that she genuinely appeared to be having fun. Nothing is sexier, to my simple mind, than a lady having fun. Whether or not people judge her for the rather pedestrian act of taking her clothes off before a camera, it's indisputable that the most stable point in her life was when she was employed to do just that.

Some might have a chicken/egg quandry as to whether that period drove her later unsettled life or if her troubles drove her to posing. I wouldn't bother. In a time when models were already attempting to melt cameras with sultry glares, Bettie was smiling. You get the feeling that you would have liked this person.