8
The rise of modern glamour heroines demonstrates the persistence and reinvention of heroic iconography for women that was connected to their status and objectification. As women gained considerable ground in fighting their way to equality with men, demanding to be treated as persons in their own right, the age-old factor of visible appearance remained important. The prominence of glamour heroines through the 20th century signalled the challenged, yet enduring, importance of women’s image over their substance. Lois Banner argued that changing constructions of beauty represented changes in society.1 In agreement, Martine Delvaux summarised glamour in the second half of the 20th century as consisting of a sameness that was:
white and thin. It bears a standard of sizeable breasts, a small waist, a flat stomach, shapely long legs, and long straight blond hair. This western standard is given as universal form, to which all other women around the globe (whoever they are, whatever the colour of their skin, whether they are cis or trans) end up being compared to.2
Increasingly, modern capitalism and consumer culture replaced religion as the motivation for iconography. At the end of the century Susan Faludi critiqued glamour as ‘an expression not of inherent femininity but of femininity’s merchandised façade.’3 She also argued that constructions of masculinity were increasingly tied-up with consumption. More generally, Naomi Wolf’s influential The Beauty Myth critiqued the commodification of beauty. Wolf argued that a beauty myth ‘has grown stronger to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, no longer can manage.’4 Wolf attempted to explain the ongoing desire for constructions of traditional femininity, such as white weddings, as tapping into a longing for ancient feminine rituals.5
Where situated as icons, heroines in history have usually involved visual allure. As the antecedents of modern glamour heroines, regal heroines’ adornment with jewels and riches was an age-old way of commanding respect and impressing subjects. For example, with dazzling effect, Cleopatra’s glamour survives after 2000 years through material representations of her robes, jewellery and makeup. The colourful silk clothes of Chinese princesses and bedazzling African Queens commanded respect. And even in death, Elizabeth I sparkled as Gloriana, with her funeral procession involving a life-like effigy of the Queen dressed in lavish Parliamentary robes with an opulent imperial crown, orb and sceptre.6 On the cusp of modern history, Catherine the Great’s luxurious coronation gown enchanted her people, reaching out and drawing them in to follow her command. These wealthy heroines were icons because of their powerful heredity status. They were to be admired and obeyed.
Glamour as a term has a specifically modern history. Linked to Scottish origins, it evolved from ‘grammar’ and the old word ‘gramarye’ meaning occult learning, magic, necromancy. It moved into English popular usage during the 1830s as ‘a delusive or alluring charm.’7 These meanings provide insight into glamour’s roots in age-old and transcultural iconography. For example, Walter Scott’s historical bestsellers promoted an idealised vision of a wild, pre-modern Gaelic culture full of heroism, the supernatural, and the picturesque.8 Réka Buckley has argued that in Paris during the Second Empire of Napoleon III ‘hedonism, extravagance, exterior display, glitter and dazzle, wealth, leisure, beauty, consumption and the feminine’ merged to ‘create an intoxicating exciting cocktail.’ Indicatively, modern glamour was led by a new moneyed class ‘intent on replicating the exterior grandeur of the pre-revolutionary aristocracy.’9 Buckley and Gundle argue for the potency of glamour because it ‘does not have any precise meaning; rather it conveys an idea, in this case as an approximate notion of wealth, excitement, beauty, sexuality and fame.’10 Judith Brown captures glamour as ‘both a formal category and an experiential site of consumer desire, fantasy, sexuality, class, and racial identity; it thus uniquely frames the pleasures that drive the art and culture of modernism.’11
An important part of modernity for heroines in history was that as glamour, consumption and celebrity collided, so too did their identity as icons and role models. The historical power of glamour was that it was constructed as ‘untouchable,’ of high status and inimitable. On the contrary, as Elizabeth Wilson argues, celebrity was ‘all about touch.’12 Thanks to the celebrity embracing popular culture, glamour heroines could be portrayed as ‘real’ and ‘everyday’ women and role model was added to their iconic status. This shift happened in tandem with the early 20th-century emergence of a modern system of North American celebrity that grew into a ‘global hierarchy, entwining itself into huge spheres of the social world.’ Charles Kurzman et al. argue that by the end of the century, ‘members of the high-status group had come to expect obsequious deference, exact significant financial tribute, and lay claim to legal privilege.’ These privileges were similar to those of the aristocratic and caste elites of earlier centuries. ‘But the new status system was different. It was born out of western capitalism and mass media, and its dynamics reflected the conditions of the modern era.’13
Importantly, the concept of religious and elite heroines as icons did not disappear but transformed into heroines as modern accessible celebrities. And, uncomfortably for feminists, glamour heroines became role models in the production of women’s status in society. For feminists, the currency system they promoted could be complicit in violence and pornography.14 Significantly, along with the importance of consumption, modern accessible celebrity continually collided with glamour. By the end of the 20th century, along with their iconic status, glamour heroines also carved out positions as celebrity role models. They emphasised their work and achievement, making ‘reality’ television, and being influencers.15
Fuelled by technological advances that saw photography, mass printing techniques, film, television and then the advent of a digital age bring the visual to prominence, a modern paradox emerged: As women developed lives of substance, rejecting biological determinism and with increasing choice over their life courses, a focus on image reiterated the objectification of their bodies. Instead of society focusing on heroines with radical lifestyles and new careers, as this chapter demonstrates, for glamour heroines, image led substance. Few heroines were immune from the constructed importance of glamour that was inextricably tied to race and consumption. Indeed, Liz Willis-Tropea argues for glamour as the ‘single most powerful ideology for women in the twentieth-century United States.’16 That ideology was then exported around the world, reforming with local notions of glamour.
While second-wave feminists critiqued glamour as part of the structural objectification of women, glamour heroines, however, did not uniformly hold back women’s status. On the contrary, they involved feminist intentions and, sometimes, outcomes. In particular, glamour became an important part of intersectional resistance that could model and advance social change. Disco, gay rights parades and anti-racist artistic expressions flared up as important tactics. Camille Paglia could be unpopular, but she heralded in a ‘third wave’ of feminism that contained a strong aesthetic and performative component.
Glamour heroines of a golden age
Glamour’s 20th-century course was largely set during its interwar ‘golden age.’ Liz Willis-Tropea has documented the emergence of a new ‘overtly sexual feminine beauty’ that by the end of the 1930s saw glamour move from being an alternative and subversive femininity to ‘a requirement for American beauty and femininity.’17 The beauty myth for women was no longer confined to ‘Continental imports Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.’ The number of Hollywood beauties grew and a ‘formerly elusive, magical concept’ became a ‘consumable, attainable, all-American mode of white femininity.’18 Founded in 1939, popular magazine Glamour was evidence of glamour’s new everyday currency.19 As Carol Dyhouse puts it ‘the incontrovertible legacy of Hollywood glamour in the 1930s was that it demonstrated new ways of looking, being and living as a woman.’20 As Dyhouse neatly summarises,
The booming American film industry built up a new type of heroine, or anti-heroine: the glamorous woman on the make. Its costumiers dressed her in a fashion heavy with sexual imagery, which showed up well in black and white: glitter (especially the sparkle of diamonds), thick, lustrous furs, slinky dresses over curvaceous but slim figures, exotic flowers, and stark red lips. Combined with a witty, risqué, devil-may-care confidence, these elements codified glamour, and coincided with an explosion in the use of the word ‘glamour’ in popular literature, women’s magazines and fashion journals.21
Being strongly connected to entertainment, interwar glamour came into service offering escapism from economic depression. In stark contrast to dishevelled poverty, glamour heroines were ‘made up’ in the opulence of jewels, fur, feathers and perfume. Breaking through previous class boundaries where heredity status had dictated life course, they were newly self-made heroines. They reigned as celebrities enjoying attention previously reserved for royalty.
The interwar years were a time when eugenic ideas of hierarchies of race and white supremacy were in high currency. While promoting whiteness was the norm, such dominant racist constructions of glamour did make the few exceptional ‘others’ allowed stand out and thrive. In that context glamour heroine dancer and singer Josephine Baker made it as one of few ‘race beauties’ in the first half of the 20th century.22 Baker captured the magic and enchantment of the era. Baker had a difficult childhood as a live-in servant in St Louis. In 1921, aged 15, she married Willie Baker, divorcing him shortly after to pursue her singing and dancing dream. Early performance work took her on tour to Paris, to where she moved in 1925 and became an incredibly popular erotic dancer, also starring in two movies.
As heroines in history staged their presence, such as Elizabeth I as the lavish and attractive ‘Gloriana,’ modern glamour heroines also constantly choreographed their image. Elizabeth’s renaissance literary representation as the Faerie Queene, and images of Gloriana, with elaborate costume including ruffled collar, both contributed to making her an icon that associated her with other great Queens and Goddesses in the past. In photography, Anne Annelin Cheng argues that for Baker it was ‘electroplated light’ with ‘its tonality and texture harder’ that added to her allure.23 Playing to audiences who viewed her as exotic, her iconic costumes included a G-string skirt made of bananas.24 Cheng argues for Baker’s nakedness as her ‘second skin.’ Her ‘costume changes’ included adapting the colour of her skin to suit the context of her performance.25
FIGURE 8.1 Josephine Baker, 1 January 1948.
Credit: Alamy stock photo Image ID PMC06K: https://www.alamy.com/josephine-baker-circa-1948-file-reference-33480-775tha-image219081147.html
Separating a self from iconography was an important theme for glamour heroines through the 20th century. While glamour heroines frequently possessed characteristics of substance and talent, glamour was the essential component in their heroic status. Performing, for example, was not Baker’s only career. During the German occupation of France she worked for the Red Cross and the Resistance. She was even awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour with the rosette of the Resistance.26 Then during the 1950s Baker supported the American Civil Rights Movement. She wrote about the discrimination that she experienced, such as being refused services at 36 different New York hotels when visiting from Paris with her husband Jo Bouillon. Baker supported Black education and refused to perform for segregated audiences. A considerable leader in the Civil Rights Movement, she was beside Martin Luther King Jr at the 1963 March on Washington and was the only official female speaker. She also adopted 12 children.27 Yet it was Baker’s glamorous acts that underscored her heroic status. She was nostalgically reliving her Paris performance debut 50 years on when she died from a brain aneurism.
Demonstrating the importance of local context as well as global connections, in China, Louise Edwards argues that the Golden Age of Shanghai cinema in the 1930s ‘borrowed the grammar of Hollywood stardom.’28 She writes that the local ‘Hollywood star system was more than merely a process of replacing American faces with Chinese ones – it produced an entirely new moral space.’29 Cosmopolitan ‘Shanghai stars’ were patriotic, but also chaste and vulnerable. In contrast to the ‘strong and tall’ Marlene Dietrich, modern Chinese stars were ‘delicate and small.’ They were often ‘presented as coy and naive and any sexual allure is premised on the presumed male activation of the virginal innocent.’30
Glamorous technology and heroism
So ever-present was the pursuit and display of glamour that it was unavoidable even for heroines who did not seek its judgement. Glamour impacted heroines who set out to directly challenge women’s traditional place in society, seeking reward for their substantial achievements, rather than their image. For example, despite all of their aviation record-breaking, if Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnston, Jean Batten or Li Xiaqing had lacked glamour, they would not have made it as heroines. Overtly, Xiaqing was also an actress. As biographer Doris L Rich has suggested, audiences flocked to hear Amelia talk because they wanted to see her rather than necessarily listen to what she had to say.31 In Sisters of Heaven, Patty Gully shows how exotic glamour was an integral part of the appeal of Chinese aviatrices such as Li Xiaqing and Jessie Zheng Hanying. The bottom line was that aviatrices’ success depended upon their appearance that potently combined with their adventurous feats to produce useful glamorous celebrity status.32
As Justine Lloyd and Liz Millward have argued, the actions of aviators symbolically represented equality and freedom for women. Women aviators were making a new androgynous space for women and taking up a pursuit previously reserved for men.33 Yet they were also constantly glamorised. Fur was added to feminise their androgynous flying suits. Furthermore, there was a strong element of sideshow entertainment and celebrity during the interwar years that was paired with the development of consumerism. Seeking to boost sales, fledgling commercial airlines were starting to associate glamorous sex objects with new technology.
Significantly, when publicist George Putnam spotted Amelia Earhart, it wasn’t her substantial skills as an aviator that attracted him. On the contrary, he was drawn to her because of her resemblance to the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh who had crossed the Atlantic in 1927. Together Putman and Amelia planned her solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1932, with Earhart flying both ways so as to set a new record. Images of Earhart mimicked Lindbergh in his leather flying suit.34 Earhart is an example of the importance of being photogenic and having an excellent promoter. She met Putnam ‘the master of promotion’ just as her career was taking off in 1928. With his extensive networks he was able to offer Earhart manifold opportunities.
Putnam wanted influence over Earhart’s private life too. Being already married and 12 years older than Earhart, her mother disagreed with his intentions. In 1929 he divorced his wife and over the next two years proceeded to propose to Earhart six times. The pair were married on 7 February 1931.35 Flying was expensive and in an era when women lacked men’s capacity to earn money, the marriage can be considered at least partly a strategic move for Earhart akin to patronage. As she vulnerably roamed through the skies, it provided her with patriarchal respectability and protection. That is, her ‘independence’ could come through marriage to one man who doubled as agent and husband. Heterosexual marriage also dampened Earhart’s public androgynous appearance and private rumours of LGBTQ+ behaviour. A week after their marriage Putnam bought Earhart an autogiro.36
Did Earhart manage to separate a self from her image? Along with Hollywood film icons, such as Marlene Dietrich, she played a part in the everyday acceptance of women wearing trousers.37 This was in line with her feminist calling discussed in Chapter 4, fostered from an early age by her mother. Trousers allowed women to move around more freely, symbolic of emancipation. Earhart was also a role model for women leading lives of adventure beyond domesticity, reaching high and going far and daring to lead full and satisfying lives. She displayed bravery and valour and among her many heroic qualities, probably the most dominant was courage. Her poem ‘Courage’38 captured the sentiment that life was empty and dull without taking on challenging situations. Mixing with high society, as was common for aviatrices, Earhart visited the Roosevelts in the White House and Eleanor Roosevelt became a close friend. Highlighting the human rather than Earhart’s commodification and image, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote tellingly in a column that she was glad Earhart had reached Africa safely and that ‘She thinks about her as a person than as a recordbreaking pilot.’39 Upon marriage to Putnam, Earhart did not want to change her name and became known as Amelia Earhart-Putnam. This name-keeping symbolised seeking to remain herself. She also declared that if the marriage didn’t work after a year’s trial she wanted it to end.40 But in order to enact her feminism and advance women’s equality with men, Earhart had to fundamentally engage with an overbearing context of glamour and celebrity for heroines. The tide went out for first-wave feminism as glamour came into fashion. As Chapter 6 has discussed, it was a fashion that could push too far and be deadly.
Courtship and suitors
Amidst global depression, aviation heroine Jean Batten injected glamour into interwar lives. Dubbing her ‘The Garbo of the Skies,’ biographer Ian Mackersey writes that ‘during the Depression, the public needed adventurous heroes, preferably female and beautiful, as an antidote to the gloom and doom of the times.’41 In common with other aviatrices of that time, Batten was mock royalty, part of a modern sideshow providing thrills to the masses who gathered to celebrate her feats. She was also an intrepid adventurer and explorer and a hugely successful record-breaker. From 1933 to 1937 Batten made six principal record-breaking flights. Solo return flights from England to Australia and New Zealand were her forte, although she also set a person world record for flying from England to Brazil. She held both the England–Australia and Australia–England person solo records flying in her Percival Gull Monoplane. Other records included in 1934–5 being the first woman to make a solo return flight from England to Australia, the first woman to fly from England to South America and the first woman to fly across the South Atlantic and Tasman Sea alone.42 Batten’s England to Australia record stood for 44 years until Judith Chisholm halved her time.43 For her feats she received ten decorations from countries including France, Britain and Brazil.44
Yet unlike the lady travellers who had downplayed their sexuality and appeared at home as fusty old maids, by Batten’s time glamour had become an essential component for female heroic success. When dealing with the media aviatrices made sure to emphasise some embodied feminine attributes. For example, Batten commented on applying makeup before landing. She told women journalists that she had a strictly trained bladder when in reality she had a secret in-flight toilet.45 The belief that women were unfit to fly during their period went unmentioned.46
Batten sought out sponsors to fund her expensive flying pursuits. Known as ‘charming,’ she received funding from a series of men. While she became officially and unofficially engaged, unlike Earhart, Batten did not marry. She did receive her funding from a series of wealthy men. Batten’s behaviour tapped into notions of courtly love whereby men fought over and displayed their charms for women, and of Elizabeth I’s bevvy of suitors who, according to the rules of courtship, she ‘led on’ in hopes of ‘engagement.’ For example, Fred Truman gave Batten his entire RAF gratuity in the belief she would marry him. Victor Doree drew upon his family’s money to help launch Batten’s career.47 Lord Wakefield, connected to successful world sporting events, flew her back to England after she crashed in India during an attempt to fly to Australia. He then paid for a new plane. At the time, Batten was part of society that saw her as a glamorous adornment for the planes she flew, and her value, as for women in general, resided in her marriageability. On the other hand, men considered that they were wooing her by supporting her career and would subsequently engage her in marriage.
Batten was engaged to the Englishman Edward Walter, but decided to end their relationship while she was in Australia. Humiliatingly, unaware of her change of heart, Walter had spoken to the press and as Batten told the story, about to return to England she noticed a newspaper board’s content of ‘Will Jean Batten marry?’ She wrote that,
Quite dazed, I stopped the car and purchased a paper. There were all the details of my recent engagement laid bare in black and white. It appeared that a rumour had been circulated that I was flying back to England to be married. Before leaving England I had become engaged, but on arrival in Australia realised that I should have to choose between matrimony and my career.
Her fiancé had been interviewed a few days before he received her letter suggesting that they call off the engagement had reached him. As a career woman Jean wrote that she did not expect to be able to marry and had decided that her passion for flying trumped matrimony. She wrote that she would have liked to have married, but couldn’t do so without sacrificing her career.
I really felt that if I married at this stage I could not devote myself so wholeheartedly to the programme that I had planned for the next few years … In short, I suppose ambition claimed me, and I considered no sacrifice too great to achieve the task I had set myself.48
Edward Walter sent her a bill for all of the money he claimed Jean owed him.49 Batten’s subsequent relationship with Australian pilot Beverley Shepherd ended tragically when he died in a plane crash in 1937.50
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, in early 1939 Batten toured around Scandinavia and the Balkan States representing the British Council. She gave lectures on the British Empire and ‘its potential influence as a power for world peace.’51 She was a political messenger, linked to gendered notions of women and peace. China’s Jessie Zheng Hanying took on a diplomatic role for China in Canada, working at the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver, representing her country’s military and appearing in her air force uniform.52 Heroines using their celebrity status for propaganda and influence, especially as humanitarian ambassadors, would grow in numbers in the second half of the century. Often, they spoke out on matters for which they had no formal training, but because of their glamorous iconic status, they were powerful messengers.
Ironically, during World War II the record-breaker who had achieved so much in the sky was deemed to have eyesight too weak for the Women’s Auxiliary Services. Instead, Batten drove ambulances in the United Kingdom. And then her celebrity life over, she disappeared from public view. Although she had symbolically ended a phase of her life in 1938 through writing her autobiographical My Life, Batten lived until 1982. Wealthy through endorsements and prizes, she lived a ‘jet set’ lifestyle, spending time in Jamaica and Majorca, with the occasional visit ‘home’ to New Zealand.
Unlike Amelia Earhart, forever young and glamorous due to her legendary disappearance, or Jessie Hanying Zheng who died in 1943 from tuberculosis, when Batten did reappear it was essential that she retained her glamourous persona. In the 1960s she appeared in public in a mini skirt and with dyed jet black hair ‘not looking a day over 40.’53 Her youthful appearance was likely due to plastic surgery.54 Batten’s goal was to retain her image as a youthful interwar successful aviator. A product of her times, one person who met her in the 1970s recalled that she looked immaculate and was very well-spoken. It was also noted that she thought very highly of herself, as if she were royalty.55
According to Ronald L Davis, after a 1920s golden heyday of Hollywood its allure faded and it became seedy. Davis argues that by the 1950s ‘Soon the gods and goddesses of the old studios had become museum pieces, relics of a bygone age when life was simpler and unquestioning audiences trusted in heroes, dreams and magic.’56 Makeup increased its part in creating a glamorous look. Cosmetics went from ‘paint’ worn by prostitutes and stage performers to acceptable, and then increasingly essential. Kathy Peiss argues that women played a key role in the early years of the cosmetic industry. Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubenstein and Madam C J Walker were all cosmetics pioneers.57
The sex goddess
Marilyn Monroe epitomises the post-war white, western, 20th-century glamour heroine. Iconography for her was most directly created through film and photography. It was extensive and only grew in the decades following her 1962 untimely death discussed in Chapter 6. Images centred around consumption and popular culture. Films were fleeting, but glamour photographs were ‘tangible fetish items’ that ‘introduced a new paradigm of Western femininity – overly sensual, sexual glamour – which persists in our culture today.’58 In that context, Monroe was a ‘Venus in blue jeans,’59 representing proof of the American Dream that you could be self-made. Through the 20th century, her image continued to sell mass-produced products around the globe, from calendars to t-shirts.
How is Monroe’s massive impact explained? Transcending her time and place, she was a potent ‘icon of femininity.’60 S Paige Baty argues for Monroe as a symbol of the ‘eternal feminine’ and a mediatrix – like the Virgin Mary. In these contexts, representations of Monroe were ‘cultural incarnations she assumes the traces of the decades in which she is reproduced, and her body is made over into a product of the times.’61 In particular, she was cast as the ‘quintessential blond.’62 Marina Warner has written about the place of the blonde in iconography through time as good, innocent and childlike.63 As Martine Delveaux points out ‘It is also well known that blondness is politically charged.’64 In Monroe’s case, her blonde image, as most directly captured in film and photography, was one that emphasised her ‘childlike femininity, their vulnerable tenderness and availability.’65 Put bluntly, Monroe was a sex object. A nude photo of her in a 1949 Playboy calendar helped the first issue of the magazine to sell 54,000 copies, which was more than usual.66 Yet, elevating Monroe above other sex objects and contributing to her legendary status was her image as a ‘sex goddess.’67 And one for whom reproduction was the measure of a feminine attraction. Her fertility goddess appeal connected her to a deep-flowing archetypal maternal heroine theme discussed in Chapter 2. As Gloria Steinem comments, it was the fertility symbols of breasts and hips that came to define Monroe.68 Indicative of the extent to which her body measurements defined her, Monroe supposedly once told a reporter that she would like her epitaph to say ‘Here lies Marilyn Monroe, 38–23–36.’69
Critiquing society’s objectification of women, Steinem dedicates her work on Marilyn to the ‘real Marilyn’ and also ‘to the reality in us all.’70 Rather than endow Monroe with the strength usually accorded to goddesses, Steinem wrote of Monroe’s ‘lifetime combination’ as ‘Two parts talent, one part victim and one part joke.’71 In some ways, Monroe was vulnerable and childlike. She also had a strong sense of her position in society. As she wrote,
I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen. Wives have a tendency to go off like burglar alarms when they see their husbands talking to me. Even young and pretty Hollywood “Maidens” greet me with more sneer than smile.72
As Steinem put it ‘She personified many of the secret hopes of men and many secret fears of women.’73 Steinem ponders if ‘Now that more women are declaring our full humanity – now that we are more likely to be valued for our heads and hearts, not just the bodies that house them – we also wonder: Could we have helped Marilyn survive?’74
Teenaged Steinem walked out of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ‘in embarrassment at seeing this whispering, simpering, big-breasted child-woman who was simply hoping her way into total vulnerability. How dare she be just as vulnerable and unconfident as I felt?’75 Monroe played on Steinem’s conscience, and the necessary complex consciousness of women’s lives, versus their selfless objectification and image that was a far call from reality. For Steinem, Monroe had a ‘terrible openness’ that ‘made a connection with strangers.’76 This was the power of celebrity, to be relatable.
The real Marilyn’s life story was one of adversity. She had a difficult childhood, being looked after by her aunt while her mother was in a mental institution. Three weeks after her 16th birthday she was ‘married off’ to Jim Dougherty.77 Norman Mailer considered Monroe unsuitable for life as a domestic goddess, as all she cooked for Dougherty were peas and carrots. When Dougherty went off to war Monroe stayed with his family and went to work with her mother-in-law in a munitions factory. Spotted there by an army photographer taking pictures for Yank magazine, he made her an appointment at a model agency.78 A hairdresser instructed by the modelling agency to dye her hair blonde recalled that Marilyn was worried it would look too artificial and different from the ‘real’ her.79
Fame arrived quickly for Monroe. At 19 years she divorced Dougherty and moved to Hollywood. At the age of 21 she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, beginning her hardworking professional life that involved making 29 films.80 Inventing a persona set in at Hollywood; Monroe recalled that the 20th Century Fox casting director ‘suggested I think up some more glamorous name than Norma Dougherty.’81 Monroe was her mother’s maiden name and a man at the studio suggested Marilyn.82 She also underwent plastic surgery to reduce her nose and had her teeth straightened by an orthodontist.83 Steinem considers a dual identity whereby ‘Norma Jeane remained the frightened child of the past. And Marilyn remained the unthreatening half-person that sex goddesses are supposed to be.’84
Monroe’s stellar professional life was in contrast to a private life that included a lot of adversity and sadness. Two further marriages also had their challenges. Husband baseball star Joe DiMaggio is said to have struggled with Monroe’s non-traditional career. The iconic image of Monroe standing on a wind blower in the subway grating in The Seven Year Itch is said to have been the final straw.85 She then married Arthur Miller, playwright, but they later divorced. Ironically, in contrast to her fecund image, Monroe suffered ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage.86 Her body was considered public property and subject to sexual assault.87
In the last interview before her untimely death, as discussed in Chapter 6 a death that would launch her legendary status, Monroe spoke of kinship for the world saying ‘We are all brothers’ and akin to other glamour heroines, she sought a life beyond her image that included moving into a humanitarian ambassador role. She said ‘Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe.’88 At 35, past her glamour prime her film studio had let her go.
Was there room for local innovation amidst American glamour imperialism? Réka Buckley examined post-war Italian cinema female stars including Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren to see if their glamour was Italian or American influenced. She argues that in those years ‘older narrower ideas of stardom were being displaced by a more open-ended notion of celebrity, which was promoted by a highly competitive popular press.’89 She concludes that Italian actresses created their own image by combining elements of Hollywood with ‘formerly aristocratic traits’ and Italian culture of ‘earthly naturalness.’ Clothing and makeup were central in ‘fashioning an image’ and urban settings for films were preferable.90
Bollywood glamour
A contemporary of Monroe, Madhubala (1933–69) occupies a similar claim to fame with an enduring position as ‘a screen goddess like none other, loved by millions and hugely successful star of her generation.’91 Born Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi in Mumbai, India, her Pashtun family had moved to the city and nearby to the ‘Bombay Talkies’ studios. At that time, ‘Bollywood,’ the film industry centred in Mumbai, became a ‘global cultural juggernaut.’92 During the 1950s and 1960s Madhubala was the ever-strengthening industry’s biggest female star.
Madhubala was variously described as ‘Dream girl,’ ‘Madonna,’ ‘The Venus of the Indian screen’ and ‘beauty queen.’ Khatija Akbar considers that ‘Unalloyed and pure, her beauty belongs to every age. Its only parallel in the film world can perhaps be found in Marilyn Monroe.’93 Her contemporaries referred to her as ‘ecstatically, exasperatingly beautiful’ and ‘this apparition, this angel in human shape.’94 Comparing her to Monroe, Akbar writes that ‘There was a remarkable similarity in the soft vulnerability of their faces, the dreamy eyes, and the perfect teeth. The same abandon to their laughter, head thrown back, that same incandescent glow.’95 Akbar writes that both were hardworking and that ‘both were under-rated and neither got her due.’ Both were sensitive and intelligent, ‘generous, loyal, loving, honest and easily hurt.’96 Both also died aged 36.97 Like Monroe, Mumtaz Jehan changed her name to invent her image. She became Madhubala meaning ‘sweet as honey.’98 A huge screen presence, she made 66 films between 1947 and 1964.99 In 1952 she came to Hollywood’s attention, but her father wouldn’t let her go.100 Unlike Monroe, Madhubala had a dependant and protective family around her, including an ‘unpopular and dominating father.’101 This likely contained Madhubala’s image as sex symbol.
Like Monroe, there was a childlike innocence and vulnerability surrounding Madhubala. Director Ray Khosla described her as ‘Warm, gentle, very honest and very affectionate.’102 Madhubala was constructed as selfless and altruistic. She said that ‘I have always lived my life with my heart.’103 Being born on St Valentine’s Day set a romantic theme. Like Monroe, Madhubala enjoyed popular appeal and was described as both ‘Goddess’ and down to earth. And like Monroe, Madhubala’s private life contained a lack of fulfilment and a measure of tragedy. Co-star Dilip Kumar is portrayed as Madhubala’s true love. They had an affair for nine years, but her father thwarted plans to marry, if not by directly denying the marriage, by his domineering presence. Kumar likely feared that Madhubala’s father’s production company would control them both.104 It came down to Madhubala choosing between her father and Kumar.105 Dependent upon her income, Manju Gupta writes of her father Ataullah Khan ‘it never occurred to him that she was entitled to a life of her own at some stage.’106 With the men in her life fighting to control her, she eventually married actor Kishore Kumar, widely considered an unwise choice.107
From virgin to vixen: everyday royalty
According to Graeme Turner, Diana Princess of Wales’s untimely death, discussed in Chapter 6, was a ‘flashpoint’ in popular culture.108 It was a moment where icon and role model collided. Diana was both an elite and everyday celebrity. While her image was manufactured by spin-doctors, people considered that they knew her. Rather than being on a pedestal, she was thoroughly ‘in touch’ with the public. Diana benefitted from being perceived as downgraded from her aristocratic status and being of the people. Possessing a maternal ‘common touch,’ reaching out to hug the most ostracised and vulnerable members of society made her hugely relatable and popular. What also made Diana so potent as a heroine in the last years of the 20th century was that many people related to her life course experiences, in particular, narratives of a child of divorced parents, somebody who was painfully shy and struggled to find her way in life, a woman who suffered an unhappy marriage, adultery and subsequent divorce, and struggles with her in-laws.
As a result, the British monarchy needed to reinvent itself and move away from rendered historical notions of aloof rulers to be honoured and obeyed. Tied into such change, glamorous allure likewise shifted. As Elizabeth Wilson argues Diana, Princess of Wales,
precipitated the final transformation of glamour into celebrity. She appeared at the start of the 1980s as the very spirit of distant glamour, while at the same time representing the conspicuous consumption of that decade, when the rich grew richer and the poor more desperate.109
In 1997 Sandra Coney captured the relationship between glamour, celebrity and consumption with her comments upon Diana’s death that ‘Diana was a commodity in her lifetime and will remain so as long as it is possible to exploit her for dollars.’110 Coney considered that Diana was ‘as valuable, perhaps more valuable, dead than alive’ and aware of women’s decreasing glamour as they aged, that she ‘has been subjected to the discipline of the market and truly the market has won, because she will remain a saleable product for all time. Her star will never be dimmed by ageing.’ Coney compared Marilyn Monroe ‘frozen for eternity as the ultimate sex queen’ to Diana, who ‘will be the tragic princess for ever.’ Coney considered that for Diana ‘It was her feminine vulnerability, her beauty, her thinness, her clotheshorse figure, her wealth, her sexuality and her glamour that were exploited by the media.’ She argues that Diana’s struggles with depression, bulimia and an adulterous husband made her real and accessible. Coney saw Diana as caught up in societal structures that demanded women be glamorous. She warned that ‘Her destiny was to be destroyed by the very image-making she embraced.’ The suggestion is that heroines who attempt to rise and craft selves out of their image and objectification will be judged on those terms and be unable to seek liberation from sexist society. This was a key argument of second-wave feminism that often sought alternative heroines in history, rather than those of popular culture.
Model icons
With consumption to the fore, by the late 20th century it was ‘models’ who also reigned as glamour icons. There was much continuity with historical heroines idolised for their appearance, rather than their achievements. In modern times, models were celebrities judged for their visual appearance. Their career was as advertising props for fashion commerce. Second-wave feminists considered models as the height of feminine sex objects and sexist society and as the antithesis of what feminism advanced. Models promoted a beauty myth that Naomi Wolf effectively exposed as a part of society’s problem, not its solution. Normalising women as alluring, available sex objects could lead to violence against women and children. Hence, their crossover from walking mannequins to ‘role models’ offended feminists who promoted lives of substance over image.
Rachel Hunter became one of New Zealand’s most famous end of century international celebrities, and an icon of modern femininity. Hunter was born in Auckland and enjoyed a sporty childhood. Nationally, she became a homegrown ‘natural product’ and a model New Zealand citizen. For example, in the 1980s she started modelling mainly natural, wholesome New Zealand dairy and wool products such as ice cream and knitting patterns. In continuity with other glamour heroines, her image as a ‘down to earth Kiwi girl’ was manufactured. For example, as Rosemary du Plessis point out, her naturally curly auburn hair was dyed blonde and straightened.111
Hunter was discovered when she won a competition called ‘the face of the 80s.’ Her prize was a trip to New York and a contract with the Ford Modelling Agency. She displayed resilience and did well in New York. Amidst a 1980s fitness craze and parallel thin body image for women, Hunter appeared fit and sporty and modelled swimsuits, including a famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover edition. In New Zealand she advertised affordable makeup and hair products, including shampoo. As du Plessis argues, Hunter’s beauty regime was constructed as both natural and achievable to all.112
Hunter’s international celebrity status grew exponentially when aged 21 on 15 December 1990 she married the more famous and 24 years her senior, Scottish rock star Rod Stewart. Living in Los Angeles, she tried to pursue a career in television, both acting in and hosting shows, including a position as a reporter for celebrity-spotting Entertainment Tonight. Meanwhile, in New Zealand she herself became iconic, with women’s magazines reporting her every move and she frequently featured in the coveted cover images often reserved for royalty.
While in Europe and the United Kingdom, Hunter was known as the wife of Rod Stewart, within New Zealand magazines centred her importance, highlighting roles as wife and mother. Unconventionally for a model, at a young age, Hunter became a mother. Glamour heroines were traditionally considered finished after pregnancy, their bodies considered ruined and their starlet status rendered matronly. On the contrary, Hunter’s fan club at the time saw her as a pathbreaking mother-figure of two. In an age of eating disorders, her healthy body image was also impressed. However, those who critiqued her celebrity status and did not think that she should be a role model viewed her as a backlash against the advances that had been made for women. They were pushing for women’s careers that were unaffected by their appearance and whose status did not come from their husbands. Hunter was viewed as the antithesis to women’s liberation because she used her appearance to succeed and was ultimately at the control of the market.
In 1999 Hunter separated from Rod Stewart and quickly reinvented herself. She went from being a shy, quiet and natural Kiwi girl to posing suggestively and issuing raunchy words that hopefully positioned her as a sex goddess in New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times and British Hello magazine.113 Having signed a pre-nuptial agreement, according to Rosemary du Plessis, her 2006 divorce settlement enabled an elite decision that was not a good model for everyday women.114 After her divorce, Hunter was subsequently associated with Robbie Williams, Kevin Costner, Liam Gallagher, Tommy Lee, Sean Avery and Jarret Stoll, who called off their engagement shortly before they were due to be married.
Akin to other glamour heroines, Hunter has tried hard to separate a self from the sexual costume that made her a celebrity. To this end, she persevered in her attempt to craft an acting and presenting career on the screen. She participated in Dancing with the Stars in the USA, coming second, and Britain’s Strictly Come Dancing. She was a judge on the ABC reality programme Are You Hot? that was cancelled after one season and NBC’s Celebrity Circus. In the UK she appeared on The Vicar of Dibley Christmas special and hosted Make Me a Super Model. Channelling feminine goddess energy and goodness, her latest invention is to embrace alternative health and spirituality, including ‘natural’ beauty remedies that take her back full circle to her teenage image.
Paris Hilton
At the end of the 20th century celebrity, glamour and iconography were self-consciously invented by heiress, socialite, model, actress, author, recording actress and fashion designer Paris Hilton. Born a decade on from Hunter, Hilton brashly invented herself as the latest iconic blonde goddess in history, comparing herself with the legendary Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe. Far from being self-made, like so many heroines in history, Hilton was from an elite background. As Graeme Turner reminds us,
fame is a very curious culture site in which to look for evidence of ‘democratization,’ given that, no matter how much it appears to expand, celebrity will always be a ‘hierarchical and exclusive phenomenon,’ no matter how much it appears to proliferate.115
Significantly, Hilton’s power and status emanated from her hereditary wealth as part of the Hilton Hotel chain empire. She had enjoyed a privileged upbringing that included residing in an exclusive hotel suite in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. Like so many heroines in history, Hilton had the money and connections to follow her dreams.
Beginning a career as a model, Hilton managed to find work with the most prominent agencies around the western world, including Donald Trump’s Agency, the Ford Agency in New York, where Rachel Hunter had started her international career, and London agencies too. Her modelling was for conspicuous consumption items including alcohol, clothes and perfume and included the renowned brands Guess, Tommy Hilfiger and Christian Dior. By 2001 Hilton had a reputation as ‘New York’s leading it girl.’ She signified a time when modern media enabled the invention of role models who were termed ‘influencers.’ Taking on a feminist rhetoric of self-confidence, Hilton focused on glamorous wealth. Already rich, she managed to earn new millions on her own. Paris Hilton self-consciously promoted herself as a glamour icon, with wealth and dazzling opulence in abundance. She was also a serious businesswoman promoting her image. She developed her own brand, marketing her own products that included jewellery, perfume and hair extensions. With her dog Tinkerbell she popularised the ‘accessory dog’ trend.
Seeking a career beyond image, Hilton turned to acting and had cameo roles in movies, including The Cat in the Hat and Zoolander. Reviews were uncomplimentary, but Hilton capitalised on her sniggering critics and became a household name by heralding in an era of cringing reality television. With Nicole Richie, another affluent heiress, she starred in the successful The Simple Life that ran for six seasons. Hilton kept on diversifying, starting her own record label, Heiress Records, and in 2006 releasing her album Paris. Next, she co-authored Confessions of an Heiress, A Tongue-in-Chic Peek behind the Pose.
Hilton operated on a platform of ‘girl power,’ self-actualisation and took being gloriously selfish to new heights. She began to express opinions on matters of substance, including promoting vegetarianism, opposing global warming and wearing fur. As other glamour heroines had done before her, she moved towards an ambassadorial role. The intention was to become heroic through making a difference in political work enabled by celebrity status and glamorous allure. Following in the footsteps of many 20th century heroines’ humanitarian work, glamorous celebrities such as Angelina Jolie increasingly became UN ambassadors.
Hilton’s life appeared to spiral out of control when she was arrested for drink driving and speeding. Rebelling against a driving ban, she was twice caught driving without a licence. Then in May 2007 after violating probation she was sentenced to 45 days jail. Amidst massive media attention, her lawyer argued that she was being treated harshly because she was a celebrity. Her every move broadcast by the media, Hilton dramatically attended the MTV Music Awards and then went to jail. She only lasted there for four days, apparently breaking down, before being given home detention. Vulnerability, however, made glamour heroines real and everyday. For example, in 2015 Nigella Lawson, ‘London-born TV cook, food writer and self-proclaimed “domestic goddess” of British culinary culture’116 was involved in scandal over drug use, but garnered much sympathetic public opinion and recovered her reputation.
Hilton was not alone in channelling past glamour heroines in fashioning identity. Singer Madonna drew upon that ‘collective cultural heritage.’117 Rosemary J Coombe points out that Madonna ‘appropriates the likenesses of earlier screen goddesses, religious symbolism, feminist rhetoric, and sadomasochistic fantasy to speak to contemporary sexual aspirations and anxieties.’118 Indeed, in a feminist third wave, empowerment could be found in the pursuit of glamour. Glamour could help to resist racism, appropriate makeup and body adornment for empowerment, subversion and social change. Glamour was part of the performance of alternative gender identities, such as androgyny and cross-dressing.
Fact and fiction, image and reality have always been blurred for heroines. Glamour, argued by Stephen Gundle is an illusion that can only ever be partially fulfilled, aligns well with heroines in history.119 Importantly, for third-wave feminists, image and reality were often conflated. Recognising its potency, Virginia Postrel argues that ‘By embodying the promise of a different and better self in different and better circumstances, glamour stokes ambition and nurtures hope, even as it fosters sometimes-dangerous illusions.’120 There was a danger that the messages of women as glamorous sex objects, promoted through Paris Hilton’s media imagery could promote violence against women and increase vulnerability to crime.
In embracing glamour, however, all manner of modern heroines remained judged by it. For example, being attractive was still a factor in jobs of substance. At the beginning of the 21st century American women television news anchors and reporters were still judged by their age and appearance. Most respondents to a 2005 survey of women television news presenters in western Michigan ‘agreed or strongly agreed that too much emphasis is placed on their appearance.’121
There were extreme examples taken by fans to emulate their glamour heroines. In Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, Virginia L Blum argues that a boom in cosmetic surgery is due to a trend towards celebrity.122 The MTV programme ‘I want a famous face’ showed the extent of people maiming themselves in order to look like their heroine.123 Maddy Cox and Maria Garner explore the rise in plastic surgery and evidence that young women increasingly view glamour modelling and lap and pole dancing as attractive career options, embedded in the discourse of empowerment.124 Focusing on the commercialisation and economy of glamour, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and Allen J Scott argue that in the 21st century there is ‘The commodification of celebrity and its trappings, and the democratization of celebrity across the globe.’ They believe it is most prevalent ‘in major world centers of contemporary capitalism.’125 In contrast, Larissa Rudova argues that the word ‘glamur’ (glamour) only came into use in Russia recently. In 2006 journalist Viktoriia Shokhina named ‘glamour’ as the most fashionable word in the Russian vocabulary. It was also critiqued for its association with money, human rights neglect and a lack of concern for the poor.126
Conclusion
As this chapter argues, through the 20th century glamour came to play an enormous part in the representations of heroines. In some ways, a focus on iconography was about continuity with the past, and icons as opulent, revered figureheads who were placed on pedestals. Yet, for modern heroines, glamour served to contain those who sought to be role models based on their skills and achievements. It judged them by their image and appearance, often valuing a narrow set of characteristics that privileged western whiteness and women’s value as coming from their attraction as sex objects and marriageability. Iconography became part of modern consumption, whereby glamour heroines’ value came in their ability to sell products from planes to t-shirts to calendars. For these reasons, glamour heroines sat uncomfortably with a modern feminist movement. Furthermore, even if they caused structural harm through some of the messages involved, awkwardly for second-wave feminism, glamour heroines could advance women’s power and social change. They demanded the choice to perform as sex objects, but then to also craft independent selves of substance. In short, it was possible to recognise some heroines as icons while rejecting them as role models.
Importantly, Graeme Turner argues that in the early 21st century celebrities commonly emerged from the sports and entertainment sectors. Modern glamour heroines definitely emerged as part of entertainment.127 But sport, a bastion of embodied masculinity and fierce competition, was slow to produce heroines. Gendered femininity continued its influence in selecting which sorts of stars shone the brightest.128
Notes
1 Lois Banner, American Beauty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
2 Martine Delvaux, transl Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood, Serial Girls: From Barbie to Pussy Riot (Toronto: Between The Lines Press, Toronto, 2016), 2.
3 Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999), 599.
4 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (Toronto: Vintage, 1990), 11.
5 Wolf, The Beauty Myth, 10–11.
6 Jennifer Woodward, ‘Images of a Dead Queen’ in History Today, Vol. 47, No. 11 (1997), 18–23.
7 Réka Buckley and Stephen Gundle, ‘Flash Trash: Gianna Versace and the Theory and Practice of Glamour’ in Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 331–48, 332–3.
8 Elizabeth Wilson, ‘A Note on Glamour,’ The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Vol. 11 (2007), 95–108, 96.
9 Réka Buckley, ‘Glamour and the Italian Female Film Stars of the 1950s,’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2008), 267–89.
10 Buckley and Gundle, ‘Flash Trash,’ 331.
11 Judith Brown, Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 1.
12 Wilson, ‘A Note on Glamour,’ 101.
13 Charles Kurzman, et al, ‘Celebrity Status.’ Sociological Theory, Vol. 25 (2007), 347–67, 347.
14 See Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977) and Susan Griffin Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature (London: The Women’s Press, 1981).
15 Liz Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour: Sex, power, and photography, 1925–1939.’ PhD Thesis. University of Southern California, 2008, vii.
16 Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour,’ viii, 261.
17 Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour,’ vii.
18 Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour,’ 261.
19 Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour,’ viii.
20 Carol Dyhouse, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism (London: Zed Books, 2011), 29–30, 47.
21 Dyhouse, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism, 29–30.
22 Anne Anlin Cheng, ‘Shine: On Race, Glamour, and the Modern,’ PMLA, Vol. 126 (2011), 1022–41.
23 Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 114.
24 Cheng, Second Skin, 48.
25 Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Life and Art: The Icon and the Image (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 66.
26 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine-Baker (Date last accessed 14 January 2021).
27 https://info.umkc.edu/womenc/2018/02/26/the-activism-of-josephine-baker/ (Date last accessed 14 January 2021).
28 Louise Edwards, ‘Localising the Hollywood Star System in 1930s China: Linglong Magazine and New Moral Spaces,’ Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2015), 13–37, 13.
29 Edwards, ‘Localising the Hollywood Star System in 1930s China,’ 33.
30 Edwards, ‘Localising the Hollywood Star System in 1930s China,’ 26.
31 Doris L Rich, Amelia Earhart: A Biography (New York: Laurel Trade Paperback, 1989), 81.
32 See Patti Gully, Sisters of Heaven: China’s Barnstorming Aviatrixes (San Francisco: Long River Press, 2007).
33 Justine Lloyd, ‘The Impossible Aviatrix,’ Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 15, No. 32 (2000), 137–52, 138–9, Liz Millward, Women in British Imperial Airspace, 1922–1937 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2008), 12.
34 ‘First Woman to Fly the Atlantic Ocean,’ Daily Mirror, 19 June 1928, 1, refers to the resemblance and Earhart’s name as ‘the girl Lindy.’
35 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 111.
36 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 119.
37 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 212.
38 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 49.
39 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 259.
40 Rich, Amelia Earhart, 111.
41 Ian Mackersey, Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies (Auckland: Macdonald Publishers, 1990), 2.
42 Jean Batten, Alone in the Sky (England: Airlife Publishing, 1938/1979), foreword.
43 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 369.
44 Jean Batten, Alone in the Sky, 189–90.
45 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 120.
46 Millward, Women in British Imperial Airspace, 63–71.
47 Makersey, Jean Batten, 181.
48 Jean Batten, Alone in the Sky, 92–3.
49 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 193.
50 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 261.
51 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 289.
52 Gully, Sisters of Heaven, 265, 269, 276.
53 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 5.
54 Mackersey, Jean Batten, 354.
55 Pers com Vincent Orange, 1990s.
56 Ronald L Davis, The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993), 338.
57 Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 62.
58 Liz Willis-Tropea, ‘Hollywood glamour,’ 271.
59 S Paige Baty, American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995), 58.
60 Baty, American Monroe, 20.
61 Baty, American Monroe, 58.
62 Delvaux, Serial Girls, 119.
63 Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairy Tales and their Tellers (London: Vintage, 1995).
64 Delvaux, Serial Girls, 118.
65 Cheng, Second Skin, 112.
66 Delvaux, Serial Girls, 119.
67 Gloria Steinem, photographs by George Barris, Marilyn: Norma Jeane (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1992), 25.
68 Steinem, Marilyn, 24.
69 Baty, American Monroe, 144.
70 Gloria Steinem, Marilyn, 3.
71 Steinem, Marilyn, 21.
72 Marilyn Monroe, My Story (New York: Stein and Day, 1976), 102.
73 Steinem, Marilyn, 22.
74 Steinem, Marilyn, 218.
75 Steinem, Marilyn, 11.
76 Steinem, Marilyn, 14.
77 Norman Mailer, Marilyn: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
78 Mailer, Marilyn, 47.
79 Steinem, Marilyn, 203.
80 Monroe, My Story, 31.
81 Monroe, My Story, 53.
82 Monroe, My Story, 54.
83 Mailer, Marilyn, 84.
84 Steinem, Marilyn, 218.
85 Mailer, Marilyn, 124.
86 Steinem, Marilyn, 90.
87 Steinem, Marilyn, 28, 179.
88 Steinem, Marilyn, 32, Conkling, Ms. Gloria Steinem, 227.
89 Buckley, ‘Glamour and the Italian Female Film Stars of the 1950s,’ 267.
90 Buckley, ‘Glamour and the Italian Female Film Stars of the 1950s,’ 268.
91 Hindustan Times, 14 February 2019. https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/madhubala-a-screen-goddess-who-was-unlucky-in-matters-of-the-heart/story-SvuqR30Tg7kmjhEJ9JePcP.html (Date last accessed 24 January 2021).
92 Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Unruly Cinema: History, Politics, and Bollywood (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020).
93 Khatija Akbar, I Want to Live: The Story of Madubala (New Delhi: Hay House India, 1997, 2015), 28.
94 Manju Gupta, Madhubala: Her Real Life Story (New Delhi: General Press, 2018), 29.
95 Akbar, I Want to Live, 82.
96 Akbar, I Want to Live, 83.
97 Akbar, I Want to Live, 84.
98 Gupta, Madhubala, 17.
99 Gupta Madhubala, 28.
100 Gupta, Madhubala, 23.
101 Akbar, I Want to Live, 85, also Gupta, Madhubala, 90.
102 Akbar, I Want to Live, 33.
103 Akbar, I Want to Live, 191.
104 Gupta, Madhubala, 70.
105 Gupta, Madhubala, 56.
106 Gupta, Madhubala, 56.
107 Akbar I Want to Live, 217.
108 Graeme Turner, Understanding Celebrity 2nd ed (London: Sage, 2014), 100.
109 Wilson, ‘A Note on Glamour,’ 102.
110 Sandra Coney, ‘The beatification begins,’ Sunday Star Times, 7 September 1997, C6.
111 Rosemary Du Plessis, ‘Reading Rachel: Dorothy Smith meets Rachel Hunter,’ Sites, Vol. 24 (1992), 1–8.
112 Du Plessis, ‘Reading Rachel,’ 4–5.
113 Hello!, No. 558, 4 May (1999), 46–68.
114 Du Plessis, ‘Reading Rachel,’ 6.
115 Turner, Understanding Celebrity, 78.
116 Lorna Stevens, Benedetta Cappellini and Gilly Smith. ‘Nigellissima: A Study of Glamour, Performativity and Embodiment,’ Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 31 (2015), 577–98.
117 Rosemary J Coombe, ‘The Celebrity Image and Cultural Identity: Publicity Rights and the Subaltern Politics of Gender,’ Discourse, Vol. 14 (1992), 59–88, 64.
118 Coombe, ‘The Celebrity Image and Cultural Identity,’ 63–4.
119 See Stephen Gundle, Glamour: A History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
120 Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013).
121 Dottie M. Barnes, ‘Are Female Television News Anchors Still Judged by Their Appearance: A Study of Gender Bias in Relation to Female Television News Anchors and their Perception of Age and Appearance,’ unpublished MSc thesis, Grand Valley State University, Michigan, 2005. See also Sanghvi, Minita, and Nancy Hodges, ‘Marketing the female politician: an exploration of gender and appearance,’ Journal of Marketing Management Vol. 31 (2015), 1676–94.
122 Virginia L Blum, Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (Oakland: University of California Press, 2003).
123 Virginia L Blum, ‘Objects of Love: I Want a Famous Face and the Illusions of Star Culture,’ Configurations, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2007), 33–53.
124 Maddy Coy and Maria Garner, ‘Glamour modelling and the marketing of self- sexualization: Critical reflections,’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 13 (2010), 657–75.
125 Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth and Allen J. Scott, ‘The geography of celebrity and glamour: Reflections on Economy, Culture, and Desire in the City,’ City, Culture and Society, Vol. 4 (2011), 2–11.
126 Larissa Rudova, ‘Russian Glamour Culture And The Extraordinary World Of Oksana Robski,’ The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 44 (2011), 1102–19.
127 Turner, Understanding Celebrity, 3.
128 Australia is perhaps the biggest exception here with heroines such as swimmer Dawn Fraser, tennis player Evonne Goolagong and runner Cathy Freeman.