A strange piece on Bardot at 75 purports to celebrate the actress as an "existentialist icon" and a feminist figure. Emblematic of a free new sexuality, an overtly sensual demeanor and an attitude of not giving a toss, Bardot, says Agnès Poirier, was a model for the new woman.

And yet, Bardot was, like Marilyn before her, first a sex symbol. She was someone who was defined by the gaze and perceptions and fantasies of others. Yes, she was gorgeous and naturally sexy. But the things people praise in this piece and in the accompanying video- her "typical Frenchness" and "joie de vivre" and "modern beauty" - are surface impressions, as facile as those of the men who adopted her as a sex symbol at the time. Says one scholar in the film, Bardot was "a vivid, standing, invitation to experience and inhabit and acknowledge ones one lust, the sexual side of one's nature, because she is an amalga, the sort of perfect shape of an attractive, erotic, desirable female."

They all talk about Bardot like she's dead. When in fact she's inconveniently alive. Since her retirement at 39, while it's certainly true that she doesn't seem to give a damn what people think, she hasn't always hewn to the roles of either "sex symbol" or "feminist icon," much as the author would have us believe she does.

She would only leave her home to protest about animal rights and make some ill-advised comments about immigration. She was once linked to Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front but has never been a member or even a sympathiser. In fact, to this day, she has never stopped being herself: plain-speaking and natural. She has never resorted to any cosmetic surgery, whereas so many of her contemporaries including Sophia Loren, who also turns 75 this week, put their hopes of immortal beauty in the surgeon's knife. Bardot has retained her authenticity. Her story is that of a refusal not only of hypocrisy and moral grudges, but also of caution, calculation and premeditation.

What? Bardot has been repeatedly charged with "inciting racial hatred" for making public statements against "foreign over-population" and, spurred by the ritual slaughter of sheep during Eid-al-Kabir,a letter to government officials in 2004 in which she described Muslims as "this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country." In a book, she wrote that "...my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims." And she may not have been a member of Le Pen's party? But she was married to one of his most active supporters. Don't try to toss that in with no plastic surgery as some kind of free-spirited foible.

I find it ironic that those so eager to claim her as an icon of liberated womanhood are so insistent on looking only at that image that was created to appeal to men, and on ignoring the actual woman she is. She was an "icon," it's true - but not for who she was, or even who she wanted to be. Bardot has been vocally critical of her own film work and of a youth devoted to men. But we won't talk about that: it's so much easier when we can just objectify women and make them what we want.

Happy birthday, Brigitte Bardot [Guardian]

Brigitte Bardot at 75: 'She Represents The Power Of Woman' [Guardian]
Is Brigitte Bardot Bashing Islam? [Time]

Says Hilary Swank, "Amelia Earhart is an iconic figure. She was so ahead of her time. I'm inspired by her. It's incredible this woman from Kansas who died so many years ago is still so talked about." And that abpout sums up how most people feel about Lady Lindy, even if the rest of us don't get the chance to play her. Amerlia Earhart is, without question, an icon: an independent, adventurous woman recognizable enough as both a face and an idea that she's inspired the Gap and Ms. magazine with equal ease. We know her as the first woman to fly the Atlantic, the second pilot to do so, and a mysterious figure cut down in her prime somewhere over the Pacific in 1937.

If you have read any of the major biographies of Earhart, it's true that even at the time, she was more complicated than we acknowledge: she was considered something of a show-boater, a fame-lover, whose PR and connections helped her eclipse the achievements of less glamorous and more dedicated female pilots, like Ruth Law, Louise Thaden or Gladys O'Donnell. Despite her well-known progressive stance, many have pointed out that the only jobs and commitments she really stuck with were those of fame - although an advocate for women's education, she never finished school, and gave up social work when she became famous. In short, she was a complicated person. As Judith Thurman, doubtless wary of a new, simplified canonization in the form of a new Hilary Swank vehicle, puts it, "Earhart was saintlike only as a martyr to her own ambition, who became an object of veneration and is periodically resurrected-her unvarnished glamour, like a holy man's body, still miraculously fresh."

But how much does that matter? Because there's still this.

When she lectured at colleges-as she did frequently, to promote careers for women, especially in aviation-she urged the coeds to focus on majors dominated by men, like engineering, and to postpone marriage until they had got a degree. On Earhart's own wedding day, in 1931, the thirty-three-year-old bride handed her forty-three-year-old groom, George Palmer Putnam, a remarkable letter, which read: 'You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means so much to me. . . . In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. . . . I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all the confinements of even an attractive cage.'

Thurman's point is that whatever Earhart was as a woman, an individual, she's been eclipsed by the myth. She's become an "icon" with all that implies - public property whose popular perception is more enduring than any reality. But I'd say that in this case, there's nothing wrong with that. Thurman writes,

Her flights were feats of courage and endurance, but compared with the achievements of the women in her scrapbook their significance was ephemeral. Her unique experience might have yielded a memoir that would still be read, yet she published only three slight books, one of them posthumous, which were rushed out, for commercial reasons, in weeks.

And yet, her legacy is so much greater than that. Whether she deserved to be canonized in the public mind - become the face of bold female courage in a male world - is almost besides the point. There is something to be said for the fact that Amy Adams in flyer helmet and slacks, even in a gratuitous sequel like Night at the Smithsonian, can automatically spell "courageous, brave, pioneering iconoclast" to a little girl. The important thing is that that icon existed, and continued to exist, and has inspired a lot more than biopics.

Missing Woman [New Yorker]
Hilary Swank On Dating Her Agent [Google News]
Ruth Law [Early Aviators]
Biography: Louise McPhetridge Thaden [Women in Aviation]
Gladys O'Donnell

Was Marilyn Monroe a plus-sized beauty? An average dame? A svelte sphinx who's been a posthumous victim of vanity size deflation? Like the Bible and the Nazis, she's become a rhetorical gambit that can seemingly be twisted to support any argument. The argument has been further confused by various celebrities' authoritative pronouncements. Liz Hurley made perhaps her most lasting contribution to the cultural lexicon when she notoriously declared to Allure, "I've always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I'd kill myself if I was that fat...I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. (laughter) She was very big." Roseanne, for her part, stated in '96 that, "I'm more sexy than Pamela Lee or whoever else they've got out there these days. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. That says it all."

Okay, first of all, when folks toss around the "Size 16" thing, yes, that's a British 16, by which they mean a U.S. Size 12. (Although it should be said that some have made the claim for the U.S. 16, too.) Then too, this doesn't even make a lot of sense, because most of Marilyn's clothes, and certainly her costumes, like those of any star of the era, would have been custom-made. And as anyone who's seen her films knows, her weight shifted a lot, so any "Marilyn Monroe was X size" statement is, stopped clock-style, probably going to be accurate at some point.

But if people demand numbers? They're certainly out there. According to measurements from Marilyn Monroe's dressmaker:
Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight: 118-140 pounds
Bust: 35-37 inches
Waist: 22-23 inches
Hips: 35-36 inches
Bra size: 36D

In other words, whatever her size, her figure was an unusually dramatic hour-glass, which makes it kind of strange for women to compare themselves to her anyway. When a collector displayed a bunch of her most famous costumes in London recently, "they had to get a special mold made for the corset and swimwear dummies in the exhibition because Monroe was such an extreme hourglass shape that no off-the-peg dummies existed in those measurements."

So, what size was she? Well, like most women, she wasn't one size everywhere. When British journalist Sara Buys had a chance to try on some of Marilyn's clothes earlier this year, she reported:

After all these years, mystery and conspiracy theories still surround her death, but when it comes to her physical attributes, I can put a few facts straight. Contrary to received wisdom, she was not a voluptuous size 16 – quite the opposite. While she was undeniably voluptuous – in possession of an ample bosom and a bottom that would look at home gyrating in a J-Lo video – for most of the early part of her career, she was a size 8 and even in her plumper stages, was no more than a 10. I can tell you this from experience because a few weeks ago, I tried to try on her clothes.

Okay, now we have to translate British sizes. (HuffPo, adding to the confusion, neglected to do this in their link headline from April.) Depending on the designer, a British 10 might translate as an 8, a 6, or even a 4. And vintage clothes of that era were cut slim, intended to be worn with serious girdles, so take this into account. The answer? There's no "exact" number. All we can know for sure is that Marilyn Monroe was a gorgeous, dramatically curvaceous woman with a physique heavier and curvier than that which is en vogue now.

The better question is, why do we care? To show the evolution of our aesthetic, certainly. And obviously, curvier women were the ideal - and whatever the verdict on Marilyn, stars like Jane Russell and Esther Williams were more voluptuous, larger-framed and more athletic than almost any we see on the screen today. But stars were always thin and urged by the studios to be thinner (see: Judy Garland.) Maybe part of the Marilyn fixation is what Buys gets at: with a figure so enigmatic, we want to pin down as many facts as we can. And what we're really talking about is not Marilyn Monroe's dress size: it's her sexiness. Marilyn Monroe was an icon, not of fashion, but of sexiness: a combination of her beauty, her obvious comfort with her physicality, her intelligence, and her vulnerability. Her dress size does not explain this, or give us a clue: she is iconic because she was unique, and no amount of arguing is going to change that.

It's not about proving whether Marilyn Monroe was "plus-sized" or not; obviously, plus-sized women can be beautiful and sexy, whether Marilyn belongs to the sorority or no. Can we make a resolution, please? Let's leave Marilyn Monroe out of the discussion from now on. She was a beautiful woman with an iconic body of work and a fanatical following, but her dress size - which fluctuated and had very little relation to the clothes and styles we wear today - has nothing to do with your size, my size, or that of anyone in Hollywood today. Comparing oneself to anyone is counterproductive, and in this case it's futile. Marilyn was someone who was comfortable with her body, and it's this that comes through. So let's follow her example - and leave the woman in peace.

Was Marilyn Monroe Really A Size 16? [Huffington Post]
Was Marilyn Monroe A Size 16? [London Times]
Downsizing Figures [Chicago Sun-Times]
With Respect to Roseanne [The New Yorker]
Marilyn Monroe Facts [Marilyn Monroe Pages]

Julie and Hillary first made headlines when they became one of the seven same-sex couples who filed a lawsuit, Goodridge v. the Massachusetts Dept. of Health, that ultimately led to Massachusetts' 2004 legalization of gay marriage. The two women became the public face of the landmark case and were one of the first to marry on the day same-sex marriages became legal.

The couple announced they were separating in 2006. The divorce case, filed last week in Suffolk Probate and Family Court, is characterized as "not unexpected." While they'll be one of the first same-sex marriages to take the divorce route, why all the press? Couples divorce all the time. After all, these women wanted to marry because they were like any other couple; they are divorcing for the same reason. Because a right has been hard-won does not confer a Responsibility to be Role Models forever. On the contrary, it should ultimately bring some sense of normalcy. And in a sense, perhaps in taking this most ordinary of sad steps, they're doing as much for their cause as ever. We wish both women and their daughter the best of good things.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29000211/">Couple Who Led Gay Marriage Fight To Divorce [MSNBC]
Mass. Couple Who Led Gay Marriage Fight To Divorce [AP]

Related: Weddings/Celebrations; Hillary Goodridge, Julie Goodridge [New York Times]

t's not its first: the seal has had seven redesigns in its life, and for a few years now has sported a loud red and blue 90's costume. Says graphic designer Louise Fili,'"The last one, that said everything about the ’90s. Nineties branding was the client breathing down your neck and saying, ‘Can you get the type bigger?’ You get the type bigger by having it burst out of the oval."' The new design, which the mag's editor describes as "a difficult design project, but a very juicy one” is clean and slightly retro - a more authoritative seal of approval for uncertain times. [NYT]

Starting in the 1940s, the South Carolina-born Kitt was a triple-threat sex symbol in a time when few women of color attracted mainstream success. Despite a famously soigne image, Kitt came from a hardscrabble background: the product of a black sharecropper mother and a white father whom she never knew, as a child Kitt worked in the fields, suffered abuse and later lived homeless in New York. She started as a dancer and quickly moved to a career as a cabaret singer and actress in movies and on TV. Dubbed “the most exciting woman alive” by a smitten Orson Welles, Kitt was known for an over-the-top, pragmatist persona in songs like "Monotonous," "Love For Sale," "C'est Si Bon" and "Santa Baby" - a persona reinforced by her numerous offstage love affairs. In the 60s, she played a memorable Catwoman on the Batman TV series.

Kitt was also known for being tough and outspoken. She caused a major scandal by telling First lady Ladybird Johnson, "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot,” - an utterance that led Kitt to work for the next few years in Europe. Later she courted more criticism by touring South Africa under apartheid (for integrated audiences.) Despite a diagnosis of colon cancer, Kitt continued to perform until last year, launching a smoking show at the Cafe Carlyle which, let me tell you, was something to see for a woman of any age. Kitt was a true original: a tough, independent lady riffing on a sex kitten image, playing with sexual dynamics on her own terms. Her contradictions and her talent will be missed.



Eartha Kitt, a Seducer of Audiences, Dies at 81 [NYT]
Eartha Kitt: A sex symbol born to confront the world. [Obit]

The receipts, which date from May of 1962, come from two markets near the star's New York apartment. Groceries listed include "artichokes, eggs, English muffins, cucumber, radishes, strawberry jam, cheddar cheese, corn-on-the-cob, strawberries, endive, steaks, milk, lamb chops and chicken."

In other words, a totally normal week's grocery list. Or is it? Says one analyst to the Telegraph, in a piece titled "Secrets of Marilyn Monroe's Hourglass Figure Revealed In Receipts,"

One substantial delivery was made two days before her big event of singing Happy Birthday to JFK. It's interesting to speculate why Monroe was buying so much food at this time, especially when she knew she had to be sewn into the gown she'd be wearing. Perhaps she was entertaining or maybe she just kept a well-stocked kitchen.

Adds a "nutrition expert," :"The deliveries show a diet of salads, fruit and meat, indicating plenty of protein, which is good. But she obviously allowed a few treats for herself, such as the English muffins and jam." Treats, eh?!

It should be pretty obvious from this that these receipts reveal absolutely nothing about a woman who's been given less posthumous peace than almost anyone in the history of the world, save that she ate a normal diet. In fact, it's probably the least humiliating shopping list we can conceive of! Any list of ours would be so much more damning — because hey, sometimes you're just craving Fruit Roll-Ups! And occasionally it's good to have Redi-Whip in the fridge! (And that baby food? Totally for my boyfriend.) It becomes clear, when you see this kind of thing, why people of prior centuries directed executors to burn all their personal effects, lest they fall prey to intrusive misinterpretation. But at the same time, when you think how people salivate over the smallest crumb of information — I mean, a grocery receipt! — and how little they actually glean, and how totally off these experts' guesses really are... well, maybe Marilyn's having the last laugh after all.

Secrets Of Marilyn Monroe's Hourglass Figure Revealed In Receipts [Telegraph]

The product of an abusive home, Page fled a bad marriage in her native Tennessee for New York where she fell in with a pair of siblings who ran a pornography ring. Between the years 1949 and 1957, Page was the subject of more than 20,000 pinup photos, many of them dealing with bondage subjects that are today regarded as an important gateway to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Page's photos developed a following in later years for their unique mixture of risqué subject matter and almost wholesome sexuality.

After becoming a Christian, Page gave up her modeling career. Her later years were marked by depression and mental, illness, but she lived to see herself become a pop-culture icon, a turn of events that baffled her even as it kept her solvent. "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."

Bettie Page Dies At 85; Pinup Queen Played A Key Role In The Sexual Revolution Of The 1960s And Later Became A Cult Figure [LA Times]

Bettie Page, Queen of Pinups, Dies At 85 [NY Times]

Much of the "side of Marilyn that no one has ever seen before" includes ordinary things like receipts, telegrams, bottles of Chanel No. 5, and checkbooks. Does this stuff just seem mundane in this day and age, because we live in a celebrity culture where we know all about Britney's meds, Lindsay's post-rehab life and Paris Hilton's Valtrex prescription? Marilyn Monroe was a star when a star actually meant "star": A sparkling, untouchable, heavenly body. So why is everyone so excited about bringing her down to earth?

Part of it is curiosity about how this Icon lived. She was so many women rolled into one. She had recipes! She had diamonds! She had fan mail! But there are also just so many secrets. (Were there love letters from President John F. Kennedy? Signs point to yes). Sam Kashner's story is epic, extremely long, but worth reading. The truth is, we will never know everything about Marilyn Monroe — and many of her papers were burned after her death. And honestly, much of this exposé seems a bit sad: Men grasping at remnants of paper a beautiful woman left behind. Some of it mundane, some extremely personal; all of it never meant to be seen by the public.

As for Mark Anderson's exquisite photographs of Marilyn Monroe's belongings: "You can tell a lot about a woman from the things she left behind," the VF subhead reads. And some of the most lovely images are not of her bookstore receipts or telegrams, but of her clothes and jewels: The trappings of a bona fide movie star. But maybe that's because these items seem to celebrate her in a way that elevates her, Instead of grounding her?

In Search of Marilyn, The Marilyn Files, The Things She Left Behind [Vanity Fair]

Phibbs thinks she is. But first off, what exactly constitutes a feminist icon? Surely, it's a title that is bestowed upon a person, rather than sought out. And it probably has less to do with what the icon has actually done, and more to do with what it meant for and how it affected the fan.

For me, Dolly Parton is totally a feminist icon. But not for "9 to 5." Instead, it was "Just Because I'm a Woman," a song about fighting sexual double standards that — released in 1968 — was far ahead of it's time.

I can see you’re disappointed
By the way you look at me
And I’m sorry that I’m not
The woman you thought I’d be
Yes, I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

So when you look at me
Don’t feel sorry for yourself
Just think of all the shame
You might have brought somebody else

Just let me tell you this
Then we’ll both know where we stand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

Now a man will take a good girl
And he’ll ruin her reputation
But when he wants to marry
Well, that’s a different situation

He’ll just walk off and leave her
To do the best she can
While he looks for an angel
To wear his wedding band

Now I know that I’m no angel
If that’s what you thought you’d found
I was just the victum of
A man that let me down

Yes, I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

No, my mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

Dolly Parton: Feminist Icon? [The Guardian]

What I find bizarre about all this is the implicit assumption that kids can't relate to a character who's not exactly like themselves. Strawberry Shortcake wasn't popular twenty years ago because we all wore bloomers and lolled around in a berry patch; it was cute and fun and the dolls smelled good. This kind of formulaic thinking presupposes a narcissism that, ironically, agendas like these seem to create. More importantly, if they "downplay" Apple Dumplin' I will be seriously displeased.

Beloved Characters as Reimagined for the 21st Century [New York Times]