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Hello and welcome back to Behind the Padder Podcast from Me Paul St. Victoria. So, today is one of those days where we're gonna talk about a person who was quite influential and really helped pave the way with queer kink, just female erotica, and very much um a stepping stone in teaching people that BDSM was here, women are powerful, and we certainly should not be afraid to show it. And so we're gonna be diving into the legacy of Betty Page, the woman with black hair with a fringe. If you see any of her beautiful modelling, especially when it comes to BDSM, you will see whichever side she's on because she has played submissive before and she's played mistress, she's usually smiling away. And she really did help shape the language of modern BDSM. And before Kink had a name in mainstream culture, before fetish imagery was legal, there was Betty.

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So we're just gonna talk about where she came from first.

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So Betty was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1923. So oh my god, literally over a hundred years ago. Oh, that is terrifying to think. Just quite a while ago. So she grew up in poverty and a deeply religious Baptist household. Like we're talking, um women are taught to be silent. We women can't um speak openly about certain things. Like the husband has to be like the breadwinner, and um women have to be modest and they can't look certain ways and they can't act certain ways. Sadly, her father harmed her physically, mentally, sexually, and was eventually forced out. Her mother worked constantly, leaving Betty to care for her younger siblings. Despite these hardships, she freaking excelled in school. She learned about acting and performance, and became obsessed with cinema and beauty. Dreamed of a bigger life than the one she had inherited. She earned a teaching certificate, I know, right? Crazy. Absolutely crazy that a sex worker, you know, has qualifications. But New York did feel like freedom. So she left to reinvent herself. Now I would like to say, like, I understand that I come from a traumatic background, and I understand that other sex workers can as well. Um, I wouldn't say not all of us do. I feel like there is like a massive issue. Um, I don't know, maybe it's like the trauma in me which makes me want to like say just like we're not all broken or uh little sprinkles of trauma. I think there's a bigger and deeper issue when it comes to misogyny, the patriarchy, and how we are as a society and how it has shaped us and you know, shaped our parents and grandparents, and it's absolutely horrible when people do have trauma, and when certain people do a certain job, they get blamed for doing a certain job, say sex work, mainly because they do have trauma or they, you know, they come from a broken family. Like it's a disgusting stereotype. When, say, for instance, myself and Betty, let's say, because we both come from broken homes. I don't think it's fair to shit on the person who has already gone through so much trauma from evil fucking people that we're the ones who are shat on and not the bullies, whoever that may be. But that's all I wanted to say. At the age of 26, Betty newly arrived in New York City with a teaching certificate, a suitcase, and a dream for something bigger. So at first she worked sectorial jobs at the beach, and that is rebirth, Coney Island summer of 1950. Bright sun, Atlantic wind, a bikini Betty stitched together by hand because she couldn't afford store-bought glamour. Amateur photographers noticed her confidence, and Betty couldn't be happier going in front of those cameras. But Betty became quite hyper-aware of one thing. She had a weakness. She didn't like her forehead. Something she'd been teased about since high school in the late 1930s. Magazines at that time idolized actresses with lower hairlines, foreheads hidden beneath curls and waves. So, what does Betty do? One night, in a tiny Manhattan rental, she picks up scissors and gives herself a fringe.

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And that was the start.

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It wasn't soft bangs but a sharp sculpted black curtain, a perfect arch framing her blue eyes. Within two years, her bangs are instantly recognizable across national men's magazines. Her face her fringe becomes a brand identity. Also, how crazy is this that when she did um move to New York, that the people who um started um to get her into modeling was actually a police officer with a passion for photography. Like how weird. And that's how she created her first portfolio of police officer of all people. She did originally want to go for acting, but yeah, she entered the field of modeling. And yeah, because she didn't like her forehead, she made that amazing iconic fringe which we all see today. So from the late 1951, um or early 1952 through to 1957, she posed for photographer Irving Claw for male order photographs with pin-up and BDSM themes, making her the first famous bondage model. Claw also used Paige in several short black and white eight millimeter and sixteen millimeter specialty films, which catered to specific requests from his clientele. These silent one reel featurettes showed women clad in lingerie and high heels, acting out fetish scenes of abduction, domination, slave training, bondage, spanking, elaborate leather costumes restraints were included periodically. Betty Page alternated between playing a stern dominatrix and a helpless victim bound hand and foot. And if I love the images, I really do, because like they just look fun. They really do. So in 1953, Betty Page took acting classes, which led to several roles on stage and television. She did appear on the United States Steel Hour and the Jackie Gleason show. Her off-Broadway productions included Time is a Fief and Sunday costs five pesos. Betty Page acted and danced in the feature-length burlesque review film Striparama. So she did do a good bit of acting and a few brief speaking roles as well. So in the New York Camera Club scene, Camera Club was basically an early underground version of amateur glamour photography groups long before modeling agencies like OnlyFans or Formal Porn Studios existed. It was basically small groups of mostly hobbyists, usually male photographers, who would rent a studio or meet in a rented hall. They would hire models to pose, share the costs of lights, films, props. And they also became part of BDSM history because they operated very privately. And with that, they could push boundaries that magazines couldn't. They could do bondage-themed images, women wrestling, playful domination scenes. They acted as a loophole in censorship law. If photos were for personal use only, they weren't usually prosecuted under the obscenity acts. And modeling for camera clubs gave women like Betty Page direct cash because it was basically all cash payments, and the ability to set their own boundaries. Like we love boundaries, let's be honest. And you could have the creative import in the poses and the themes, and you could practice performing power dynamics in front of a camera. So, in other words, this was where Betty really did lean into the erotic language of control that later made her basically the queen of bondage with Irving Claw. And of course, here, Betty learned to take charge of her erotic presence and honestly, it seemed like she became really confident in herself. So Betty Page first stepped into Irving and Paula Claw's studio in the late 1952. The studio itself was it wasn't glamorous, just a cramped space on 14th Street in New York. But inside something extraordinary was happening. The Claws were building the quiet foundations of American fetish media, a male order empire of photographs, silent films purchased directly by men who would never dare ask for such images in person. They specialized in what was officially called discipline photography, a coded way of saying spankage, bonding, and women wrestling with one another. These images travelled across the country rolled into envelopes labelled as figure studios or physical education tutorials. Everyone involved understood the euphemisms and delighted in the secret. Be thrived there almost immediately. Her acting instincts made her perfect for fantasy situations, the wicked nurse punishing a patient, the captured spy struggling against her ropes, the strong villainess wielding a whip. Sometimes she played the helpless submissive giggling through her predicament. Over time she became the attacker. Powerful, leather clad, confidence radiating from her every movement. Betty was not a woman who could be typed into one role. She was switch energy before the language existed to describe it. Betty Page was Miss January 1955, one of the earliest playmates of the month for Playboy magazine. So Paige did continue modelling up until 1957. When the camera turned off, the world did not suddenly grow kinda. Betty tried to rebuild her life in religion, becoming a born-again Christian, studying theology and volunteering in ministry. But unresolved trauma and years of public scandal collided inside her mind. As you can imagine, still to this day, when it comes to gossip, bullying, people trying to one-up each other and push other people down just to get ahead in life, it was still like that back in the day. So by the early 1970s, Betty began experiencing severe mental health symptoms. To this day, we don't know exactly what went on. But we do know in October 1978, she did move to Southern California hoping for a calmer life. She wanted to be very personal and she didn't really want any attention. She really did just want a quieter life. And I feel like it really does show that with the lack of information we have after she departed from modeling. She was admitted to Paterton State Hospital, a forensic psychiatric hospital in St. Bernardo, California, after being diagnosed with a severe mental illness. Now there is speculation that it was schizophrenia, but we don't really know. And again, several accounts, like I've tried to research this and like multiple things, say multiple different things. and it kind of it honestly kind of sucks because like she did want you can clearly see that she just was struggling and she wanted a quiet life.

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She didn't want to be disturbed by anybody or anything like that. Like there are there's there's so much unconfirmed and speculations.

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I don't really even want to speak about them because like we don't know if it's true. She literally hasn't stated anything about these. But what I can say is that she it seems like she was struggling. But while she was living trying to live quietly, I mean she is down in history forever. She will always be remembered. She was a very big part of the pin-up industry. You see it in burlesque performers, the way they style their hair, or in tattoo artists. Um I mean, queer women saw in her wrestling imagery a blueprint for desire that welcomed them home. Rockabilly fashion declared her the eternal queen of pin-up. A lot of people do. In the 1990s, licensing agreements finally brought her real income, recognition long overdue. She agreed to interviews, but only if no cameras were present. The voice was allowed to age, but the image not. She sadly died on December 11th, 2008, at 85 years old in Los Angeles from heart failure.

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She had not been seen publicly in over 50 years. But she was everywhere. May have not been her up-to-date self. But she was there and she will continue to live in the minds of people.

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So doing some research, I could literally could only find like one picture of Betty Page where she was her older self and she's smiling, and um she she's with Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson and it's crazy because like you can see that it is Betty Page.

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It's beautiful, but it it's horrible to know that like she just didn't like the way she looked to be able to want to see herself on camera.

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Um in in some of her last years, she did hire a law firm to help her recoup some of the profits being made with her likeness. And also randomly, I would like to point out that like Betty Page was only 5'5 in height, which is crazy because like we see like the high fashion models, especially the past few years, um, where you need to be so freaking tall, and it's crazy. Thankfully, in being a model these days, anybody can be a model, which is amazing. Um, she was also nine stone, around that's that size. And here we are at the end of the episode. Betty Page transformed the meaning of bondage, not just in American culture, but all over the world. She showed the world that restraint without fear is a love language. She demonstrated that submission performed with consent becomes a declaration of declaration of sovereignty. She treated pleasure as play and play as power. Her smile and bangs told us that being looked at does not have to hurt. I really, even though this is a short episode, I did really enjoy learning about Betty Page. And honestly, just I find it very interesting when it comes to people of importance where they have given us so much. It is quite interesting. And I hope you've enjoyed this short episode about who Betty Page is and a little bit into her life. This has been Paulson Victoria with Behind the Puttle Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode, then please leave a review on Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening. And I hope you have a good week.

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Bye!