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whileiamdying · 2 years

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Raquel Welch, Actress and ’60s Sex Symbol, Is Dead at 82

Beginning with a doeskin bikini in “One Million Years B.C.,” she built a celebrated show business career around sex appeal and, sometimes, a comic touch.

When Playboy in 1998 named the 100 sexiest female stars of the 20th century, Raquel Welch came in third, after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Credit... Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty Images

By Anita Gates

Feb. 15, 2023

Raquel Welch, the voluptuous movie actress who became the 1960s’ first major American sex symbol and maintained that image for a half-century in show business, died on Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 82.

Her death was confirmed by her son, Damon Welch. No cause was given.

Ms. Welch’s Hollywood success began as much with a poster as with the film it publicized. Starring in “One Million Years B.C.” (1966) as a Pleistocene-era cave woman, she posed in a rocky prehistoric landscape, wearing a tattered doeskin bikini, and grabbed the spotlight by the throat with her defiant, alert-to-everything, take-no-prisoners stance and her dancer’s body. She was 26. It had been four years since Marilyn Monroe’s death, and the industry needed a goddess.

Camille Paglia, the feminist critic, described the poster photograph as “the indelible image of a woman as queen of nature.” Ms. Welch, she went on, was “a lioness — fierce, passionate and dangerously physical.”

When Playboy in 1998 named the 100 sexiest female stars of the 20th century, Ms. Welch came in third — right after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Brigitte Bardot was fourth.

The critics were often unkind. Throughout her career, Ms. Welch was publicly admired more for her anatomy than for her dramatic abilities. She even called her 2010 book, a memoir and self-help guide, “Beyond the Cleavage.”

But when she had a chance to show off her comic abilities, they were kinder. Ms. Welch won a Golden Globe for her role in Richard Lester’s 1973 adaptation of “The Three Musketeers”; her character was a hopelessly klutzy 17th-century Frenchwoman, torn between two lives — as a landlord’s wife and the queen’s seamstress.

Despite a career based largely on sex appeal, Ms. Welch repeatedly refused to appear nude onscreen. “Personally, I always hated feeling so exposed and vulnerable” in love scenes, she wrote in her memoir, noting that even when she appeared in a prestigious Merchant Ivory film (“The Wild Party,” 1975), the filmmakers, those acclaimed arbiters of art-house taste, pressured her to do a nude bedroom scene, to no avail.

“I’ve definitely used my body and sex appeal to advantage in my work, but always within limits,” she said. But, she added, “I reserve some things for my private life, and they are not for sale.”

Jo-Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago on Sept. 5, 1940, the oldest of three children of Armando Carlos Tejada, a Bolivian-born aeronautical engineer, and Josephine Sarah (Hall) Tejada, an American of English descent. They had met as students at the University of Illinois.

When Raquel was 2, the family moved to Southern California for her father’s work in the war effort. At 7, encouraged by her mother, she enrolled at San Diego Junior Theater, where her only early disappointment was being cast in her first play as a boy. She began ballet classes the same year and continued to study dance for a decade.

After graduating from La Jolla High School in San Diego, where her nickname was Rocky, she received a scholarship — thanks to success in local beauty pageants — to study theater at San Diego State College. But she dropped out at 19 to marry her high school boyfriend, James Wesley Welch. Because of her local celebrity, she landed a job as the “weather girl” on KFMB, a San Diego television station.

The birth of her two children complicated her career plans, but she soon left her husband — “the most painful decision of my entire life,” she called it — and moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. (They divorced in 1964.)

She had hoped to move to New York instead, she recalled. But the trip would have been prohibitively expensive, and, anyway, she didn’t own a winter coat.

It was not long before she had a contract with a major studio, 20th Century Fox. She had early hopes of making her big-screen debut in a James Bond movie; the producer Albert R. Broccoli wanted her for “Thunderball.” But that dream was quashed when she was cast in “Fantastic Voyage” (1966), a science fiction film about scientists reduced to microscopic size to travel inside a diseased human body. Then came “One Million Years B.C.,” and that did it.

“There’s a certain thing about that white-hot moment of first fame that is just pure pain,” Ms. Welch said in an interview with Cigar Aficionado magazine in 2001. “It’s just not comfortable. I felt like I was supposed to be perfect. And because everybody was looking at me so hard, I felt there was so much to prove.”

She appeared in some two dozen films over the next decade, perhaps most notably “Myra Breckinridge” (1970), based on Gore Vidal’s campy novel, in which she played a glamorous transgender woman, and “The Last of Sheila” (1973), a semi-campy murder mystery with a luxury-yacht setting and a script by Stephen Sondheim.

Some of her most memorable roles were small ones. In “Bedazzled” (1967), Stanley Donen’s Faustian fantasy with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, she played Lust, one of the Seven Deadly Sins; in “The Magic Christian” (1969), with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, her character’s name was Mistress of the Whip.

Ms. Welch had love scenes with the former football star Jim Brown in “100 Rifles” (1969), a western set in Mexico. She followed “The Three Musketeers” with its 1974 sequel, but those films never led to the sophisticated comedy opportunities she had hoped for. (She did, however, have a memorable chance to display her comedic side years later, when she played herself in a 1997 episode of “Seinfeld.”)

After “Mother, Jugs and Speed” (1976), a farce about ambulance drivers (which also starred Bill Cosby and Harvey Keitel), her screen acting was limited mostly to television guest appearances.

But she had already discovered the joys of stage work. Inspired after seeing Frank Sinatra’s nightclub act, Ms. Welch made her club debut, singing and dancing, at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1973. Eight years later she made her Broadway debut, hired as a two-week vacation replacement for Lauren Bacall in the hit musical “Woman of the Year.” Her reviews were so admiring (Mel Gussow’s in The New York Times ended by writing, “One hopes that Miss Welch will soon find a musical of her own”) that she returned the next year for a six-month stint in the role.

“The first minute I stepped out on that stage and the people began applauding,” she told The Times later, “I just knew I’d beaten every bad rap that people had hung on me.” She returned to Broadway in 1997, replacing Julie Andrews for seven weeks in “Victor/Victoria.”

In 1987, Ms. Welch published “The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program,” which included exercises based on the principles of hatha yoga. She released a companion video with the same title.

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.

A correction was made on Feb. 15, 2023: An earlier version of this obituary misstated how much time elapsed between Marilyn Monroe’s death and the release of the movie “One Million Years B.C.” It was four years, not three.

#Raquel Welch #Raquel Tejadas #Obituary #New York Times

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rebeleden · 1 year

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Watch "The Tragic End of a Hollywood Bombshell: The Untold Story of Jayne Mansfield's Fatal Car Crash" on YouTube

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whitepolaris · 2 years

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Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Visitors to Los Angeles are disappointed if they go back home without a single celebrity-spotting to brag about. Imagine the disgrace of traveling all the way from Chippewa Falls, only to remain shamefully silent when your next-door neighbor asks if you rubbed elbows with anyone famous. Now you can travel to the City of Angels in confidence, explorer from the east. There are places in L.A., where you can’t swing a dead cat without running across dozens of Tinseltown’s famous and infamous. Hollywood Forever Cemetery is one such place.

Hollywood Forever was originally named Hollywood Memorial Park and was opened to the dying public in 1899 by two Isaacs (Lankershim and Van Nuys). It slowly became the place to spend eternity. But by the 1980s and ‘90s, mismanagement and skulduggery on the part owner Jules Roth had turned the place into a horror. The property was in a sorry state when it went on the block in 1998. Some families had actually paid to have their loved ones removed from crypts and graves. Tyler Cassity took over the facility and invested “millions” (according to the press release) in improvements and renovations.

Cassity saved the famous old burial grounds and renamed it Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Here you can hobnob with luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks, Peter Lorree, Tyrone Power, Fay Wray, and everyone’s favorite Jewish mob boss, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Siegal’s crypt marker sits just above eye level and it shaped like an open book; there is a Star of David above his name and an inscription that reads IN LOVING MEMORY FROM THE FAMILY. One can’t help but wonder if this written send-off was from Bugsy’s family or Bugsy family. (Get it?)

Fans of the Little Rascals and Our Gang comedies will be happy to know that Darla Hood and Alfalfa are eternally united, at least in burial-plot real estate if not in each other’s hearts. Darla in entombed in the Eternal Life mausoleum, while her silver screen sweetheart was laid to rest in the lawn a few hundred feet away.

Alfalfa’s headstone bears the name Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer and has an engraved image of a dog that many believe to be Petey, the pooch in the series. Others maintain that it is Switzer’s own pet dog and not the motion picture pup. As it turns around, Alfalfa had dabbled in professional dog breeding and the dog on his marker is most likely a reference to that. Carl was shot dead on January 21, 1959, at the age of thirty-two, in what was deemed a “justified homicide.” The shooting was the result of a heated argument between Switzer and a friend over fifty dollars and a lost hunting dog. It seems that dogs played a big part in Alfalfa’s death-and death.

Death by misadventure is also represented in the elaborate monument for Jayne Mansfield (who is actually buried in Pennsylvania), star and famous devotee of Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan. Mansfield died in an auto wreck that spared her three children but also killed her dog and driver. Rumors still swirl about a curse put on Mansfield by the goateed LaVay.

David White, who played Larry Tate, Darren’s wishy-washy boos on television’s Bewitched, is buried here too. At least we hope he is dead and not the everlasting victim of Endora’s dark witchcraft. Look for yourself. The bronze bust of the actor is so eerily lifelike that one can’t help wondering if White stumbled across Samantha’s secret-and in order to keep her silence, the comedic coven secretly entombed him here. It only sounds farfetched if you haven’t seen it. . . . Believe us, it’s freaky. The bust, which was modeled after White at age fifty-three, was actually a prop from a 1969 Bewitched episode.

Fan of the punk rock genre? None did it harder or better than the Ramones. Both bassist Dee Dee (Douglas Clovin) and guitarist Johnny (John Commings) are buried here. Dee Dee is in the more conventional grave of the two. The Ramones’ presidential seal logo is emblazoned atop his tombstone along with the tongue-in-cheek phrase, “OK. . . . I gotta go now.” The nearby ground is littered with tributes from Ramones fans: candles, Bic lighters, and guitar picks.

But Dee Dee’s memorial is positively conventional in comparison to that of Johnny, who planned ahead for his decidedly unpunkish marker. He rises from a granite block in pure bronze, trapped at mid-thigh and clutching a guitar from which he is surely coaxing the first chords of “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” Inscribed around the polished stone are tributes from friends such as Vincent Gallo and John Frusciante (the latter, the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Leaning back in the quintessential rock god-axe man pose, the statue of Johnny Ramone is far and away the most visually jarring image in the park. Sitting directly in front of the serene duck pond and framed by the swaying palm trees, the grave is a loud rock shout in this otherwise somber field of memorials, but that was most likely by Johnny’s design.

Not had your fill of the rich, famous, and dead? How about the man of a thousand voices? Mel Blanc, who breathed life into such classic cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Barney Rubble, is buried beneath this hallowed bedrock. His headstone says THAT’S ALL FOLKS.

If this isn’t enough reason to visit Forever, and we think it ought to be, there are also the occasional outdoor screenings of well-known movies projected on the walls of the mausoleums. Sometimes the movies fit the spooky graveyard atmosphere, i.e., The Exorcist. Other times they’re simply Hollywood standards, like Some Like It Hot. It makes for a great date. For the past three years, the L.A. film-lovers group Cinespia has been projecting classic films on the wall of the Cathedral Mausoleum in the southeast corner of the park. Up to three thousand viewers arrive early for the shows, carting chairs, blankets, and picnic meals. Often stars represented in the films are actually interred in the cemetery or mausoleum itself. A few families have complained about disrespect for their lost loved ones, but owner Cassity maintains it helps to raise money for upkeep of the cemetery grounds. “Donations” for admission are $10.

Hollywood Forever will sell you a map showing the grave sites of the famous. So the next time you return from a visit to the West Coast, you can hold you head up high. You’ll have enough celebrity sightings to become a star in your own right at the next block party or ice-cream social.

#weird california #type read

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mamapriest · 4 years

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JAYNE MANSFIELD AND HER 5 BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN 💕

Mansfield has 5 children, and gave birth to her first child when she was only 17. Many of her kids are in show business, including Law and Order SVU Emmy Winner Mariska Hargitay.

Regardless of what has been claimed about Jayne over the years, most people agree that Jayne was a good mother. Jayne's five children were 16-1 at the time of her death.

Jayne Marie Mansfield – November 8, 1950

Jayne Marie is Jayne’s first child, fathered by Jayne’s first husband, Paul Mansfield.

Jayne Marie claimed that she was writing a biography on her mother but it has never materialized. July 1976 saw Jayne Marie’s debut in Playboy, making her the first daughter of a centerfold to also pose for Playboy in the magazine’s history. Jayne has been featured in several documentaries on her mother and is quite candid about their relationship.

Miklos (Mickey) Hargitay Jr. – December 21, 1958

Mickey is Jayne’s second child.

Zoltan Hargitay – August 1, 1960

Zoltan surviving being attacked by a lion is one of Hollywood’s most tragic accidents. Luckily Zoltan survived and is active on Facebook. He regularly posts pictures of his mother and is active in the Jayne community.

Mariska Hargitay – January 23, 1964

Jayne’s second daughter, Mariska Hargitay is most known for appearing as Olivia Benson on Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit. She is the only one of Jayne’s children to focus exclusively on acting. For Mariska’s fourth birthday, former gossip columnist and friend to Jayne, May Mann, held a party to celebrate Mariska’s first birthday without her mother. Mariska reportedly heartbreakingly repeated how she wished her mother was present.

Tony Cimber – October 18, 1965

Tony is probably the least followed of Jayne’s children. He went on to work behind the scenes in shows such as GLOW and House of Mystery. He reportedly lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Source: classicblondes.com

💕💕💕

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bitter69uk · 26 days

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Recently watched: It Happened in Athens (1962). Tagline: “When Jayne decides to rival Helen of Troy … it’s a madcap marathon for Olympic Heroes and Grecian Glory!” I am an obsessive Jayne Mansfield completist and somehow this one had hitherto bypassed me (just discovered there’s a decent print on YouTube). It’s an inconsequential comedy about humble shepherd Spiridon (Trax Colton, resembling a Lil’ Abner cartoon come to life), who aspires to compete as a marathon runner in the 1896 Olympics Games in Athens. As Jayne’s biographer Eve Golden concludes, “It Happened in Athens is a picturesque film – lots of lovely location scenery and Greek dancing – but not terribly interesting.” Certainly, it’s mostly as wholesome and innocuous as a children’s film. Having said that, it’s a lush big budget venture, filmed on location in Athens in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Colour and looks spectacular. Despite her top billing Mansfield is essentially a special guest star. Her memorable “boudoir scene” sashaying around in a tightly cinched corset (pictured) is a highlight. And watch for the sequence where Spiridon ventures into a sleazy tavern. One of the belly dancers in the background (a “local hire”) boasts bushy natural unshaven armpits, something rarely glimpsed in a Hollywood film of the period. Mainly Athens is a “star vehicle” to introduce the buff square-jawed charms of leading man Colton - a male starlet from the stable of Henry Willson (the savvy gay agent who discovered and renamed the likes of Rock Hudson, Guy Madison, Tab Hunter and Troy Donahue) - to the world. Except Colton was immediately dropped by 20th Century Fox afterwards and never made another movie. Jayne’s character vows to marry whichever athlete wins the marathon, which prompts two funny lines. When told Hungary is in the lead, she recoils in distaste (she was still married to Hungarian Mickey Hargitay at this point). When someone enquires “How’s your French?”, she purrs, “I’ve never had any complaints!” anticipating the Elvira joke “How’s your head?” “I’ve never had any complaints.”

#it happened in athens #jayne mansfield #trax colton #lobotomy room #henry willson #old showbiz #old hollywood #athens #greece #olympics #kitsch #bad movies for bad people #sex kitten gone berserk #bad movies we love #cinemascope #deluxe colour #twentieth century fox #platinum blonde #sex goddess

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perfectlymarilynmonroe · 3 years

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Marilyn Monroe in her incognito look in New York City c. 1960/1961. Throughout most of the 1950s and 1960s, whenever Marilyn wanted privacy or to avoid the press knowing her whereabouts or activities, she often went by several alias’ and undercover looks. She admitted to several reporters that if she really, really, didn’t want to be recognized, she put on a black wig. Marilyn sometimes said she was Sheree North or Jayne Mansfield if someone asked her if she was Marilyn Monroe, only when she was in a hurry, she assured a news reporter. In 1955 she told Bob Thomas, “I have a few disguises that work pretty well. I won't tell you what they are, because that would give me away. People often recognize me in museums, but they seem to leave me alone there. They don't come up to me, unless their children.” To David Garroway, she said that “in a way” she missed her anonymity. “However, I’m terribly grateful for everything that’s happened because I remember when things weren’t like this at all. But you do miss, sometimes, being able to be completely yourself in some place and people just know you as another human being.” Names she often used were Zelda Zonk, Mrs. Norman, Faye Miller, Mona Monroe - for her nude modeling session in 1949.

#marilyn monroe #vintage #1960s #old hollywood #celebs #icons

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astrognossienne · 2 years

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scandalous beauty: bettie page - an analysis

“I was never the girl next door.” - Bettie Page

The life of those with Cancer energy is often a strange and quietly revolutionary one. She had the most perfect body ever photographed. At least one historian has ranked her popularity as a pin-up just behind Marilyn Monroe and, arguably, Jayne Mansfield, but her career followed a very different path. From an impoverished Tennessee girl to an iconic 1950s model, Bettie Page was a legendary pinup girl whose photographs in the nude, in bondage and in naughty-but-nice poses appeared in many (privately stashed) men's magazines. Page’s introduction to the limelight was unusual. She went from a Homecoming Queen to an aspiring Hollywood starlet, but her one and only screen-test was an utter bust as she boldly rejected the producer’s advances to meet her after hours. She turned to pinup modeling, and her fate was sealed. Her way of posing was instictive (Tarurus sun) and intutitive (Cancer moon); I got the sense that there was a passion play unfolding in her mind. What some see as a bad-girl image was in fact a certain sensual freedom and play-acting - it was part of the fun of being a woman. Most people that saw her photos were enchanted. A cult figure, Page was famous for the estimated 20,000 black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957.

Some, however were not as enchanted with Miss Page; these pictures wound up drawing the attention of an ambitious United States senator who launched an investigation on pornography’s impact on youth. The investigation uncovered a scandal that marred Page’s career and she shortly thereafter vanished from the New York City scene for good. Decades later, those images inspired biographies, comic books, fan clubs, websites, commercial products -- Bettie Page playing cards, dress-up magnet sets, action figures, Zippo lighters, shot glasses -- and, in 2005, a film about her life and times, The Notorious Bettie Page. Though Bettie was the most famous postwar pinup girl in American history, her later life proved to be far less glamorous. By the end of ’50s, the most photographed model of the 20th century had become a total recluse. As with Monroe and Mansfield, the sadness of her life was found in the space between. Nonetheless, Bettie left behind a formidable legacy: she helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, inspired legions of artists, and remains an icon of feminine power and sexual expression.

Bettie Mae Page, according to astrotheme, was a Taurus sun and Cancer moon. She was born in Nashville, the oldest girl among Roy and Edna Page’s six children. Her father, an auto mechanic, molested her and her other two sisters. Her parents divorced in 1933, but life didn’t get any easier for Bettie. Shortly after the divorce, when Page was 10, she and her two sisters were sent to an orphanage for a year. Her mother neglected her, not wanting to have any girls. She thought they were trouble. Despite her troubles at home, Bettie excelled at in high school; she became Homecoming Queen and garnered a scholarship to George Peabody College. Graduating in 1943, she married her high school sweetheart Billy Neal and moved to San Francisco. After high school, Page earned a teaching credential. But her career in the classroom was short-lived, since she couldn’t control her students. She tried secretarial work and modeled on the side. But by 1948 she had divorced a violent husband and fled to New York City, where she enrolled in acting classes. She was noticed on the beach at Coney Island by New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to nude camera clubs. She soon made it into the pages of magazines like Wink and Flirt. Her most professional photographs were taken in 1955 by fashion photographer Bunny Yeager, but her 1955 Playboy centerfold brought her career to the next level. Page quickly became a sought-after model, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake and bondage poses. For Senator Estes Kefauver, Page and photographers like Klaw were “a bad influence and degrading.” Kefauver formed a sub-committee on juvenile delinquency to investigate just how bad of an influence they were and found the case of a Florida man named Clarence Grimm who said his son’s suicide was influenced by Page. Grimm testified that his dead son Kenneth was found hanging by his knees and neck. The committee’s special counsel Vincent Gaughan led him to confirm that this position was wholly inspired by Klaw’s BDSM photos of Page, with the photographer left in ruins as a result — and Page leaving town.

At 35, Page walked away from it all. She quit modeling and moved to Florida, where an experience at a multiracial Baptist church on New Year’s Eve 1957 saw her born again. It was also where she married a much younger man whose passions, she later learned, were watching television and eating hamburgers. Page immersed herself in Bible studies and served as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade. In 1967, she married for a third time to Harry Lear. After that marriage ended in divorce 11 years later, Page plunged into a depression marked by violent mood swings. With uncontrollable bursts of anger, Page ran through a Boca Raton ministry retreat with a .22-caliber pistol in January 1972. In April, she forced her husband and his children at knife-point to pray to Jesus. She argued with her landlady and attacked her with a knife, but after twice assaulting elderly women with whom she was boarding, she was charged with attempted murder. A judge found her innocent by reason of insanity but sentenced her to 10 years in a California mental institution. She was released in 1992 from Patton State to find that she had unwittingly become a pop-culture icon. In Bettie’s absence, the public grew increasingly curious about her. So much so, in fact, that Penthouse magazine offered anyone who could prove she was dead or alive $1,000. With the help of admirers, including Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Page finally began receiving a respectable income for her work. She spent most of her final years in a one-bedroom apartment, reading the Bible, listening to Christian and country tunes, watching westerns on television, catching up on diet and exercise regimens or sometimes perusing secondhand clothing stores. After years of living on Social Security benefits and royalties, Page ultimately died of a heart attack at the age of 85 on Dec. 11, 2008, after being hospitalized with pneumonia days earlier.

Next, I will focus on another Taurus, a dashing and swashbuckling leading man whose untimely death made him an early legend: Tyrone Power.

STATS

birthdate: April 22, 1923

major planets:

Sun: Taurus

Moon: Cancer

Rising: Scorpio

Mercury: Taurus

Venus: Pisces

Mars: Gemini

Midheaven: Leo

Jupiter: Scorpio

Saturn: Libra

Uranus: Pisces

Neptune: Leo

Pluto: Cancer

Overall personality snapshot: Whatever she did – be it in business, catering, the caring professions or indeed at home – she was undoubtedly one of the great ‘mothers’ of the world. She had a strongly protective, sensitive and nurturing approach to all that she did. She had the potential to become the ideal parent, teacher and friend. Immensely sympathetic, understanding and supportive, she was able to encourage and bring out the best in those people and organizations she cared for and with whom she came into contact. Her strong sense of the value of things gave her an excellent business and economic sense, enabling her to spot a bargain and to conserve and build up her financial resources. This was assisted by her capacity for getting others to feel protective towards her. Whilst she tended to lack the more dynamic get-up-and-go self-confidence of the classic entrepreneur, she had nonetheless a quiet determination which got her wherever she wanted to go. Her home, and no doubt her evergreen garden, would have been especially important to her and she made her ‘nest’ both secure and comfortable. She was a naturally good neighbour, and although she tended to be a rather quiet, private and indeed even secretive person, she did feel a sense of responsibility for those around her. This meant that she was the child who ended up looking after her parents when her brothers and sisters are off doing their own thing.

She was strongly sensual and tended to be rather allergic to ideas and theories. She thought best in pictures and symbols and by simply doing and experiencing things, and getting the feel of how they work. She was naturally creative and artistic with a strongly lyrical, musical and poetic bent. She could get swept away on a soaring melody, or by a particular nuance of colour, scent or texture. She used her body as a barometer, for it tended to reflect faithfully her inner moods and emotions. Childhood was, and probably still is, enormously important to her. In an often threatening world, she may well have sought to retreat into the secure and familiar. This may have led her to seek out a steady, routine occupation which offered long-term security rather than something that could feed her rich imagination. When these two sides of her were working in creative tandem, this was an immensely caring combination. It is an ideal mix for anyone in the caring, counselling or nursing professions or indeed in any kind of work where the care and nourishment of others is the central preoccupation, such as infant-school teaching, catering and hotel work.

She had dark, brooding looks with thick, abundant hair and strongly marked eyebrows that framed the most important feature of her face, her eyes. Her eyes had a piercing, penetrating quality. Overall, she gave the impression of quietly contained power. Her movements were controlled, and her clothes were chosen for their dramatic value. With her commanding personality, she was able to instill fear and apprehension if she wished. She held a lot of hidden rage and passion within her, which had to be released. She was practical, steady and patient, but she could be inflexible in her views. One thing she did have was plenty of common sense and good powers of concentration, although she tended to think that purely abstract thought was a waste of time. Her thought processes weren’t as quick as others, but her decisions were made with a lot of thought behind them. She was ambitious without being ruthless. She became deeply involved in her work, wanting to work at the highest level. Work and leisure may have been (and was) indivisible, especially with her work being artistic or creative. She was well suited to her career as a pinup model, since it promised and delivered publicity as well as a scope for showing off. She could be an intensely emotional person with extremely strong physical desires. She tended to see herself as a desirable person to the opposite sex. She needed to be loved, but she could also be extremely suspicious of other people and their motives. Her perseverance was strong, but she also needed to learn moderation and not to over-rate her abilities or capacity for doing things. She believed that fair play, justice, tact and diplomacy were all extremely important. Her reasonable outlook and kind and pleasant character endeared her to others. She liked to encourage social contacts that enhanced her image. She was meant to learn a lot from relationships in her life through the way she handled them, and through issues of compromise. As long as she felt secure within herself, a partnership brought her much happiness, stability and contentment.

She belonged to a generation gifted with original and unusual artistic talents, highly imaginative, secretive and visionary. She personified the Piscean Uranus generation in the sense that she felt uncomfortable facing reality, finding the world a difficult place to survive in. She relied on negative escapism as a preferred way of escaping the harsh reality of the world around her. The unknown and the taboo appealed to her, because she wanted to have the freedom to explore and think for herself. She was part of a very artistically talented and creative generation that wanted to escape from the demands of the world around them into a world of excitement and glamour. Members of this generation love the theater and the cinema, in fact, any sort of creative self-expression. They also believed in the rights of any individual to express themselves. This generation was both idealistic and romantic, selfish and individualistic. Page embodied all of these Leo Neptunian ideals. Also, as a member of the Leo Neptune generation, she experienced and fully embraced changes in sexual mores and attitudes, changing the way people approach the whole issue of romantic relationships. Changes were also experienced in the relationships between parents and children, with the ties becoming looser. Page was part of a generation known for its devastating social upheavals concerning home and family. The whole general pattern of family life experienced enormous changes and upheavals; as a Cancer Plutonian, this aspect is highlighted with Page’s father molesting her and her mother wanting boys instead of her and her sisters, as well as her stint in an orphanage.

Love/sex life: She was an extremely alluring and sensual Gemini Martian lover whose sexuality was an uneven blend of craftiness and innocence. She was very rational about sex and approached it with great clarity of purpose but even at her most calculating moment, deep emotional needs and feelings of vulnerability clouded her judgments. This made her one of the most unpredictable and irrational lovers of this type—a partner who could be cool and clinging, distant and irresistible all at the same time. At her worst, she was a compulsive charmer who won everyone’s love and no one’s confidence. At her best, she was the sexiest and most empathetic lover of this type. She was supremely sensitive to the needs of her partner and well-informed enough to answer all of them. There was an element of shyness and passivity about her sexuality. She needed to feel safe and protected in order to explore the full range of her sexual curiosity but, once she was sure of her ground, there was no holding her back. Page overcame her shyness and became the iconic sexy pin-up girl of the 1950s, posing sometimes as the sexy girl-next-door and sometimes as a leopard-skin clad dominatrix. After she was threatened by federal investigators incensed by the “pornographic” images of her body, Page abruptly quit modeling, turned to Jesus, and ended up in an insane asylum.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Virgo

Lilith: Taurus

Vertex: Virgo

Fortune: Capricorn

East Point: Pisces

Her North Node in Virgo that her tendency to dream and be disorganized needed to be tempered by developing more practical and down-to-earth attitudes. Her Lilith in Taurus ensured that she was an unabashed sensualist. She was earthy, smutty, and totally without apology for her perfectly natural needs. Her gut instincts were impeccable, her libido formidable. Her sexual life-forces operated above and beyond petty morality. Her Vertex in Virgo, 7th house dictated that she wanted a union which would take one to ultimate salvation or spiritual initiation, based on a shared ideal of dedication and service. There was a fantasy of joining with someone who had unique psychic and/or healing powers and the focus is on the practical work which will make everything all right. She was always in a partnership of one kind or another (if only in her head), desperately seeking one, or have decided that it wasn’t worth the risk since his expectations would never be met. There was a sense that she wasn’t really complete unless she was intimately involved with someone. On some levels there was an irrational fear of ending up alone. The dark side was that she could get highly self-righteous about acceptable modes of behaviour in interacting with others and thereby alienate the very people she longed for. Her parental role model was less than secure in her subconscious perceptions, though it may have seemed fine on an external level.

Her Part of Fortune in Capricorn and Part of Spirit in Cancer dictated that her destiny lay in creating practical and long-lasting achievements. Success came through hard work, determination, responsibility and perseverance. Fulfillment came from observing her progress through life and seeing it take a form and structure that will outlive her. Her soul’s purpose guided her towards building security in her life, both emotional and material. She felt spiritual connections and the spark of the divine within her home and family. East Point in Pisces more of her identity was tied to idealism and the search for mystic oneness. This generally led to high standards for herself. (“I should be perfect.” Or, “I already am perfect and the world should recognize it.”) The three major roles through which individuals express the idealism of Pisces are: artist, saviour and victim. As such, the choice was hers whether she sought the connection to the Infinite through creating more beauty in the world, through making a more perfect world, or by running away to her own imagined world.

elemental dominance:

water

fire

She had high sensitivity and elevation through feelings. Her heart and her emotions were her driving forces, and she couldn’t do anything on earth if she didn’t feel a strong effective charge. She needed to love in order to understand, and to feel in order to take action, which caused a certain vulnerability which she should (and often did) fight against. She was dynamic and passionate, with strong leadership ability. She generated enormous warmth and vibrancy. She was exciting to be around, because she was genuinely enthusiastic and usually friendly. However, she could either be harnessed into helpful energy or flame up and cause destruction. Ultimately, she chose the latter. Confident and opinionated, she was fond of declarative statements such as “I will do this” or “It’s this way.” When out of control—usually because she was bored, or hadn’t been acknowledged—she was be bossy, demanding, and even tyrannical. But at her best, her confidence and vision inspired others to conquer new territory in the world, in society, and in themselves.

modality dominance:

mutable

She wasn’t particularly interested in spearheading new ventures or dealing with the day-to-day challenges of organization and management. She excelled at performing tasks and producing outcomes. She was flexible and liked to finish things. Was also likely undependable, lacking in initiative, and disorganized. Had an itchy restlessness and an unwillingness to buckle down to the task at hand. Probably had a chronic inability to commit—to a job, a relationship, or even to a set of values.

house dominants:

1st

4th

2nd

Her personality, disposition and temperament was highlighted in her life. The manner in which she expressed herself and the way she approached other people is also highlighted. The way she approached new situations and circumstances contributed to show how she set about her life’s goals. Early childhood experiences also factored in her life as well. The domestic arena and the home were emphasized in her life. By extension, the influence of the family she was born into, and the parents that raised her, in particular her father, as well as her personal and private life was of paramount importance to her. The material side of life, including money and finances, income and expenditure, and worldly goods, was emphasized in her life. Also, the areas of innate resources, such as her self-worth, feelings and emotions, were paramount in her life. What she considered her personal security and what she desired was also paramount.

planet dominants:

Uranus

Neptune

Jupiter

She was unique and protected her individuality. She had disruptions appear in her life that brought unpleasant and unexpected surprises and she immersed herself in areas of her life in which these disruptions occur. Change galvanized her. She was inventive, creative, and original. She was of a contemplative nature, particularly receptive to ambiances, places, and people. She gladly cultivated the art of letting go, and allowed the natural unfolding of events to construct her world. She followed her inspirations, for better or for worse. She had luck, and believed in expansion, integration, and growth. She could also be excessive and lazy. She reached out beyond herself and expanded her consciousness. She loved travel, was fairly religious, and liked to integrate herself into the larger social order—church or religion, community, and corporation. She had intellectual and spiritual interests in the most.

sign dominants:

Pisces

Cancer

Taurus

She needed to explore her world through her emotions. She felt things so deeply that quite often she became a kind of psychic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around her. As such, she gravitated toward the arts, in general, to theater and film specifically. She could be ambivalent and indecisive simply because she was so impressionable. She also tended to be moody because she felt the very height of joy and the utter depths of despair. Love and romance were essential for her. These fulfilled her emotionally, and she generally flourished within stable relationships. At first meeting, she seemed enigmatic, elusive. She needed roots, a place or even a state of mind that she could call her own. She needed a safe harbor, a refuge in which to retreat for solitude. She was generally gentle and kind, unless he was hurt. Then she could become vindictive and sharp-spoken. She was affectionate, passionate, and even possessive at times. She was intuitive and was perhaps even psychic. Experience flowed through her emotionally. She was often moody and always changeable; her interests and social circles shifted constantly. She was emotion distilled into its purest form. Her stubbornness and determination kept her around for the long haul on any project or endeavour. She was incredibly patient, singular in her pursuit of goals, and determined to attain what she wanted. Although she lacked versatility, she compensated for it by enduring whatever she had to in order to get what she wanted. She enjoyed being surrounded by nice things. She liked fine art and music, and may have had considerable musical ability. She also had a talent for working with her hands.

Read more about her under the cut.

Bettie Page's life was filled with cult myth, mystery and sadness. Her image captured the imagination of a generation with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality, during an era of strong sexual repression. She was the quintessential pin-up, tacked up on walls in military barracks and garages; five decades later, some feminists still hail her as a pioneer of women's liberation. It has been estimated that over 20,000 photographs of Bettie were taken, and new generations of fans still buy copies by the thousands. Born in Nashville, Tennessee to a part-Cherokee mother, she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings." The family included three boys and three girls, and Page later said her father molested most of the girls. He eventually stole a police car for a cross-country trip, was caught and sent to prison, and for a time Bettie resided in an orphanage. Her parents divorced when she was 10 years old. In her teens, Bettie acted in high school plays and was a straight-A student. She graduated from the Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville on a Daughters of the American Revolution scholarship in 1944, and went on to study drama in New York City. Her notorious career began one day in October 1950, while on a break from her job as a secretary in a New York office. On a walk along the beach at Coney Island, an amateur photographer admired the 27-year-old's curvaceous body and asked her to pose. Nudity didn't bother her, she said, likening it to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Her modeling career took off, and she was the centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine. In 1951, Bettie fell under the influence of Irving Klaw, a photographer. He cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her trademark, and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She also appeared as a performer in over 50 burlesque films. Her photos and films were publicly denounced by civic and religious leaders as "perversion", and Klaw was later arrested for "conspiracy to distribute obscene material" through the United States mail. Bettie was called to testify in a private session. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, her home state, even launched a congressional investigation against her. Believing that her days as a pin-up were over, Bettie retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents. Her early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce; she moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, but that marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian. After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry. However, a move to Southern California in 1979 brought her more troubles. She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady. Doctors diagnosed her as suffering from acute schizophrenia, and she spent 20 months in Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino and she was subsequently placed under state supervision for eight years. Her mysterious disappearance from the public eye only fueled the public's fascination. In fact, for two decades no one was sure where she was or even if she was still alive. She resurfaced in the 1990s after being tracked down for a documentary. She occasionally granted interviews and sold autographs, but refused to allow her picture to be taken in her old age. In a 1993 telephone interview, she told a reporter that she was "penniless and infamous." She later hired a law firm to help her recoup some of the profits being made with her likeness. She spent her final years residing in Los Angeles with her brother. After a three-week battle with pneumonia, Bettie Page suffered a deadly heart attack at age 85 on December 11, 2008. (x)

#bettie page #astrology #long ass post #taurus #scandalous stars #star analyses #mine

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

Text

National Examiner, March 29

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: The Jayne Mansfield only her daughter Mariska Hargitay knew

Page 2: They're Aging Like Fine Wine -- celebs reflect on the wonders of getting older -- Candice Bergen, Anthony Hopkins, Halle Berry, Diane Keaton, Jennifer Lopez, Sandra Bullock, Bette Davis, Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field

Page 3: Helen Mirren, Jamie Lee Curtis, Madonna, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, Jennifer Aniston, Goldie Hawn, Diane Lane

Page 4: Warren Beatty's roles and costumes

Page 6: Since her 2016 split from Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie has had to keep calm and carry on with six growing kids to think about and she admits the past few years have been pretty hard and she's been focusing on healing her family -- the six kids she shares with Brad, who range in age from 12 to 19, have been looking out for her too -- the 45-year-old is looking forward to her 50s and she feels that she's going to hit her stride in her 50s

Page 7: Canine Cuisine -- simple home-cooked fare for Fido

Page 9: Reach for at-home antibiotics

Page 10: When a Texas grocery store lost power during the devastating recent storm, they did something unimaginably generous -- they allowed all the customers to leave with whatever was in the shopping carts without paying for anything -- the shoppers at an H-E-B supermarket in Leander didn't even have to cough up a dime as they proceeded through the checkout lanes, even if they had hundreds of dollars' worth of food and supplies weighing down their wagons

Page 11: Your Health -- crying is healthy

* If you suffer from insomnia, try wearing socks to bed

Page 12: Hollywood Cemetery Shockers -- Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston, John Wayne

Page 13: James Brown, Michael Todd, Princess Diana, Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Steve Irwin

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- the secret of life is so simple and attainable -- Tony predicts movie and TV star Robin Wright's move to being a director will be very successful and there will be many more films to come

Page 15: A Florida man just received the biggest surprise of his long life at the party to celebrate his 100th birthday -- someone had found and returned his wedding ring that he lost five years earlier while shopping at an Aldi's in Minnesota

Page 16: Kathie Lee Gifford: It's never too late to go after your dreams

Page 18: Happy Days mom Marion Ross is 92 now, but she still holds a memory about the legendary Cary Grant close to her heart -- back in 1959, when she was married to Freeman Meskimen, the actress was working on a film with the handsome star when she discovered she might be pregnant but she wasn't absolutely sure and so she didn't share her suspicions with anyone until one day, when a scene called for her to do something she wasn't sure a possibly pregnant woman should be doing, she revealed her secret to Cary Grant -- he sat down next to her, put his arm around her and said sweetly You're pregnant! and when she looked up at him, he had tears in his eyes; he was so excited for her and they had this marvelous moment together -- Marion said her husband was less than thrilled when her pregnancy was confirmed and they divorced a few years later

Page 19: An Indiana middle-school principal made the cut when he helped a kid out of a hairy situation -- when an eighth-grader at Stonybrook in Warren Township confided in Jason Smith he couldn't take his hat off because he was embarrassed about his uneven haircut, Jason offered to really straighten things out if he promised to return to class -- Jason has been cutting hair most of his life and he played college basketball and cut his teammates' hair before games, and he's been cutting his son's hair for 17 years and he had professional clippers and edgers at home, so he said if he went home and got his clippers and lined the student up, would he go back to class? and the student said yes, so Jason gave the kid a buzz and the happy student went back to class -- Jason says he knows a bad haircut may sound like a small thing, but to a boy that age, grappling with peer pressure, a bad 'do is a real don't

Page 20: Cover Story -- My mom Jayne Mansfield -- Mariska Hargitay reveals bombshell truths about the beloved sex symbol

Page 22: Use your noodle -- pool toy swims to the rescue

Page 24: Back when Calvin Tyler was in college in the early 1960s, he had such a hard time scraping together tuition money that he had to drop out before finishing his senior year and take a job as a UPS driver -- fast-forward a few decades: Calvin has just donated $20 million to Morgan State University in Baltimore, his alma mater

Page 25: A wounded veteran in Temecula, California, got the surprise of his life when he received a mortgage-free home courtesy of the Gary Sinise Foundation -- Josue Barron, who had joined the Marines at age 17, lost both his left leg and his left eye while serving in Afghanistan in 2010

Page 26: Dreamy hunk Patrick Swayze fell for one of his co-stars while filming the romantic movie Ghost, but the object of his affection wasn't on-screen love Demi Moore; it was Whoopi Goldberg

Page 28: 20 things you didn't know about James Bond actor Daniel Craig

Page 30: Spunky Hayley Arceneaux won a battle with bone cancer when she was 10 years old, and grew up to become a physician assistant in child oncology at St. Jude's Children's Hospital, where she was treated and if that wasn't enough, Hayley is going to blast off on a space flight -- the super survivor, who's now 29, was selected by the St. Jude's staff from hundreds of other employees to represent the famous hospital on the first-ever civilian spaceflight, arranged by the company SpaceX, to take place at the closing of 2021

Page 40: It's crystal clear -- the healing starts here -- crystals are very effective when it comes to healing, especially with one's emotion and they have special energies in different ways

Page 42: How to lower your COVID risk -- with new variants of the virus documented in the U.S., it's important to stay vigilant

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Rebecca Holden of Knight Rider (picture), Lou Diamond Phillips of Prodigal Son in NYC (picture), Katharine McPhee admitted she was concerned with what people would think early on during her romance with 71-year-old David Foster, the daughter of John Travolta and Kelly Preston named Ella Blue Travolta is following in the footsteps of her actor parents by starring in Get Lost which is a modern-day retelling of Alice in Wonderland, Sarah Silverman recently apologized for mocking Paris Hilton at the 2007 MTV Awards, Nicolas Cage has tied the knot for the fifth time to Riko Shibata, Metallica have donated $75,000 to Feeding America via their All Within My Hands nonprofit and the funds are earmarked to aid folks in Texas who were affected by deadly winter storms

Page 45: Orlando Bloom running on the beach while vacationing in Hawaii (picture), Antonio Banderas (picture), Tom Jones takes the stage in the U.K. (picture), Robin Roberts near ABC's NYC studio (picture), Aaron Carter and fiancee Melanie Martin say they have a baby on the way nearly 10 months after she'd suffered a miscarriage, Dustin Diamond was never married to his galpal Jennifer Misner according to his death certificate, Liam Neeson attended a NYC screening of his new movie to thank viewers for coming to the theater on the first day Big Apple cinemas reopened after being shuttered by COVID-19 last year

Page 46: A single mom of three was struggling to do everything on her own, but there was one problem she lacked the skills and money to handle -- her house in Sudbury, Massachusetts was falling apart and that's when some kindly Good Samaritans stepped in with their toolbelts and performed the extensive home repairs she need at no charge

Page 47: Parenting Advice From the Stars -- Reese Witherspoon, Busy Philipps, Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner

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5lazarus · 3 years

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Hey Laz! I'm very curious a about Fire in the Empire and Josephine, Leliana, the panties 👀🔥

And also Hilda if you feel like it because I love the name ❤️

hey!! thanks for the ask :) Fire in the Empire is the next chapter of Fen’Harel’s Teeth, based off this song. I like it because I think it describes every character’s state of mind as they tear through the Exalted Plains--Briala, Lavellan, Hawen, Solas, Blackwall, and Iron Bull. Especially Solas, Blackwall, and Iron Bull. here’s a snippet. I’ve always been fascinated with how you find the Soul Canto in the trenches, so I opened the chapter with it:

The girl is bleeding out all over the table, but under her is a leatherbound book that remains dry. Imladris tugs it out from under her, gently pushing the still-warm corpse aside. She can see the girl’s eyes through the grill of her armor. “What was she reading?” Iron Bull asks. Imladris examines the title. “The Tome of Koslun. Is she viddathari?” “Nah,” Bull says. “We moved all our spies out when the demons came.” The book is battered and the pages are thin and cracker-hard; it’s been left out in the rain before, and carefully dried. Carefully Imladris turns the pages, staining them with the grime and blood of her gloves. She reads aloud, “You have seen the greatest kings build monuments to their glory, only to have them crumble and fade. How much greater is the world than their glory? The purpose of the world renews itself with each season. Each change only marks a part of the greater whole. The sea and the sky themselves: nothing special. Only pieces.” She snaps it shut, thinking-not-thinking where she has heard it before, a Qunari woman in prison once, intoning those four words like a prayer to an atheist god, nothing special only pieces nothing special only pieces. The sounds of the fighting stops abruptly, and Blackwall comes crashing into the barracks. “That’s the last of them,” he says, panting. “The last of the demons. And the fucking Orlesians. Are you alright?” Imladris glances at the corpse, who turns its sightlesss eyes to gape at her. She blasts it with fire, leaping back towards the stairs as Iron Bull cleaves it with his huge greataxe. When they are done the girl is eviscerated, but whatever took her has returned in tatters to the Fade. They leave the room behind, but Imladris takes the Soul Canto with her.

For the Josephine/Leliana story, I signed up for Sapphic Solstice and my girlfriend ended up getting assigned me. This is the story she’s not writing, because I decided I wanted to do it. I decided I wanted to write more femslash in DA after she told me it accounts for less than 10% of fanfic, and why not them? I have only one line: “The food was bad and the shoes were worse.” Hilda, though, is a short story I’m working on, loosely based off my own grandmother. It’s about a whole host of things--how Eastern Europeans assimilated into USA whiteness & thus respectability, the rage of older women who have cut themselves into pieces for an ideal that has always lied to them, the sex work of bad marriages. I’ll put the rest under a cut. My original work tends to be very, very intense, though I've written some sillier stuff ("Nice Try, FBI" is the fucking funniest thing I've ever written, and I'm very proud of it). This one, though, is very much serious. Probably one of the nastier things I've written about, though I hope the fact that I'm writing it with compassion comes through. (but that's another conversation--I don't believe in writing with dislike!)

My grandmother was a Czech and Russian Jewish woman whose first language was not English, who told everyone she was Irish Catholic like her first husband, my grandfather, who died when my mother was a child. She kept having children to try and get that boy, put kept pushing out daughters, even as the family fell more and more into poverty. They’d move every month to avoid avoid getting evicted by the landlord when the rent was due, for example. And then my grandfather died, and my grandmother put herself to work as a secretary to explicitly seduce and marry her bosses, and netted three of them. She once told my mother, “Some women are meant to be secretaries. Others are meant to be married. I’m meant to be married.” That was the only two options she presented, and the only two options she still considers acceptable.

So it’s about those angry, hateful old women who never had any chance to be anything besides a helpmate for a man, who refused any chance to be anything besides a wife, who actively sabotaged her daughters and granddaughters who tried to be anything besides wives. There’s been this tendency in recent family epics I’ve seen from other white Americans writing about their ancestors’ “immigrant & assimilation experience” in very romantic terms, though the Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna pushes back against that for the Italian-American experience, and was what made me think that maybe it’s time to tell these stories that before, only get whispered after a few drinks while the women are cleaning up after Easter dinner in the kitchen. It’s experimental, and I suppose it's a very USA story! I want it to be fully drenched in its time--a small town half an hour outside of New York City, from the perspective of a woman who was born a bastard in 1938, raised by drunks and who married drunks. I’m writing it in the 2nd person and in stream-of-consciousness, and I took a break before I get to the climax. Here’s a snippet, content warning for the protagonist’s memory of antisemitism:

You do the dishes and run the water too hot, and you think about how you want a new kitchen, with enamel finishings, and little hens to pretend you have the comfort of a country life. Your mother was from the country, in the old country, and she hated New York. Too dirty, too loud, too prying. The neighbors would listen when she cried, and the whole neighborhood knew about the traveling salesman, and that he was a Jew, too. She’d cry over your curls; she herself was a perfect blonde, just like Jayne Mansfield, with the swoop of hair and a birthmark too. You hated it, you hated your hair, and so did your mother and she burned you and the kitchen too when you were a girl, trying to iron it out. The fire department all came and they laughed and they were rude to your mother, and the neighbors heard, and all the girls at school did too, and even after the birth of your third daughter, the women would smirk when you’d go by. You’re angry, you’re angry that you bleached your hair and you’re losing it, you’re angry that Shirley Temple had those curls and she never straightened them, everyone loved them and you had the same exact curls and nobody loved you, did they? Except those men. They loved something. At least you kept them away from your girls. Better than your mother, that’s the truth.

#ask #writing #wip #inquisitoracorn

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