... We'll miss you.

By today's standards of sexuality, Bettie Page was practically a Disney starlet.

And yet, even though her nudes never went explicitly hardcore, she never appeared repressed in any of her modeling work.

Aside from her obvious physical charms - perfect porcelain skin, bright blue eyes, the bangs on that liquid black hair, and those curves - what made Bettie Page so fetching was her persona, which was probably partly premeditated, partly accidental and partly genuine.

Bettie Page represented a near-ideal balance between the Good Girl and the Bad Girl - naughty enough to strip, play kinky dress-up games and do bondage, but nice enough to seem sweet and innocent even as she did those things - and this duality carried through a lot of her work.

Bettie Page was beyond the virgin/whore dichotomy, because she made even her raciest layouts look like harmless mischief, and even when she was posed as a submissive, she never came across as subjugated or degraded.

Indeed, the one word that I'd use to describe the sexuality that she demonstrated would be "playful," and this becomes significant when you realize that both conservative Puritans and liberal activists have arguably lost sight of the sheer FUN of sex, because each side, in its own way, has done its part to sell sex as a deeply depressing, painful affair.

With Bettie Page, you got the idea that sex could be silly, surprising, exciting and carefree.

It's a shame that her real life was a lot less pleasant than the diverse lives that her alter egos seemed to lead in her photos, but in serving as such a fun, playful and arguably positive image of female sexuality, one can hope that Bettie Page has helped any number of other women feel more comfortable embracing their own joyously sexual sides.

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