Dita Von Teese is, undisputedly, the woman of the moment. Responsible for igniting the passion for burlesque that has swept through Britain and the States, and the muse behind fashion’s return to hourglass femininity, she confirmed her A-list status in December by marrying her rock star paramour, Marilyn Manson.
With every shiver of her marabou and shimmy of her tassels, Von Teese has found herself at the centre of debates concerning a host of F-words: not least, femininity, feminism and fetishism; burlesque, as it becomes clear, providing something of a crash course in psychology.
Burlesque was a ribald theatre that flourished in America between 1840 and 1960. In the Twenties, promoters introduced stripping to trump the newer media of film and radio. The “peelers” preserved a modicum of respectability by retaining their G-strings and “pasties” (nipple covers). Von Teese, a former ballerina, horrified by the vulgarity of the modern strip club, looks to this more glamorous age to add charm to her performances. Her most famous act sees her writhing around in a giant Martini glass. Others involve carousel horses, crescent moons and powder puffs. Throughout she has patented a camp vampery, kitsch and sophisticated in equal measure.
In the flesh — rather less flesh than she has revealed during her 14 years performing — Von Teese, 33, is a bashful presence. I have read articles that describe her as wisecracking, profanity-hurling, and can only imagine that this is some sort of showgirl fantasy on the writer’s part. “I could get up in front of 50,000 people and do my show and not be shy at all,” she confides, all hesitant, midWestern cadences. “But I would never be at a party, have a few drinks and be on the table dancing topless. Not in a million years. When I meet people I feel a little bumbling and funny, and don’t really know what to say.” Perhaps it is her diminutive stature (5ft 4in), perhaps it is her consumptive cough (stripping in a British winter has called for antibiotics), but she inspires protective instincts.
Where other people have nightmares about appearing naked in public, so Von Teese’s concern is public speaking. She addressed the Oxford Union earlier this week and is still quaking. “When I was a little girl I was the one at the back of the class praying that no one would look at me or talk to me.” But this reticent little girl concealed a flamboyant secret: a passion for lingerie.
In her new book, Burlesque the Art of the Teese/Fetish the Art of the Teese, she describes her disgruntlement on being presented with her first bra at the age of 13 and its lack of similarity to the outfits worn by her idols in her father’s glamour magazines. “I wanted to grow up and be a big girl so that I could wear those things. Not because I wanted to be sexual. I just thought it was the most feminine thing.”
The other formative episode recalled in the book concerns a moment where, like a fairytale in reverse, Von Teese overheard her two sisters being described as the pretty ones, she the ordinary one. It is a haunting anecdote that many women will identify with. “My heart broke,” she writes. “I had never considered, not for a moment, that I might not be pretty.”
Gamely, she resolved to be a “created beauty”. “I used make-up and hair and all these magical feminine tools to create something I wasn’t. I like the idea of artificial beauty. I always admired the women who had worn the same blue eye shadow since 1950 and you knew that that was the time when they thought that they were most beautiful. It’s a security thing. Dying my hair black and wearing make-up and high heels is a security thing for me. I feel completely strange when people try to take it away. There have been times when I’ve had to put my foot down and say: ‘This is what I do. This is what makes me me’.”
Less accommodating partners than her husband have begged her to “take it down three notches”. “Three notches!” she exclaims. “I wouldn’t be myself.” This Dita self she regards as a transition from the wholesome alter ego she grew up with in smalltown Michigan: Heather Sweet, a blonde. Von Teese was the moniker she adopted for her first Playboy appearance in 1994.
Manson, equally theatrical in his penchant for powder and paint, is the ideal pairing for a woman who lives to play with gender roles. Although she did steer him away from one stereotype, his rock star’s leather trousers. Von Teese likes to have two hours to make a ritual of her toilette; will settle for 60 minutes, but can be red-carpet-ready in ten. The downside of fabricating such a compelling image is a curious invisibility without it. “I can be in any crowd without my hair and make-up and my red lipstick and high heels and no one will notice me. No one.” In a powerful sense, she is her act; not the sequined and G-stringed creature of the night, but the glossed and powdered vision she enacts by day.
I put it to Von Teese that this chimes perfectly with post-modern feminist theory regarding gender as an artifice, a performance, and that her celebration of this makes her a feminist icon. Perhaps she is what psychologists might term a “female homovestite” — a woman who derives a thrill from dressing in women’s clothes? “Homovestite,” she chuckles. “I love that.” But feminism is a word that she is less comfortable with. In her book she offers her own playful definition: “To be as feminine as possible”; but she is uneasy about being co-opted into any cause. “There’s no big message behind my show. It’s just entertainment.” Nevertheless, she does concede that for women of our generation who grew up during feminism’s more puritanical, dungaree-wearing phase, the notion of enjoying one’s femininity can be a perverse liberation.
How does she react to criticism that she’s selling herself? “Oh, you’re selling yourself either way. How can you not be selling yourself in any profession? If you’re a singer, you’re selling your voice. What makes your body different?” And what about the notion that her act is disempowering? “How can it be disempowering when I’m up there for seven minutes and I’ve just made $20,000 (£11,000)? I feel pretty powerful.
“I don’t feel I’m all empowered as a woman when I’m up there, even though there is this element of being in control of your sexuality and showing people what you want. I like the way that I don’t have to take anything off if I don’t want to. I take it to the degree I want to take it.” Unlike her pin-up predecessor, Bettie Page, Von Teese has endeavoured to retain some control over ownership of her images.
She can also claim to have transformed the prevailing aesthetic. In her December 2002 Playboy cover, about which her eyes still sparkle, a corseted, alabaster-skinned vamp usurped Heff’s blonde, tanned girls-next-door. Last season’s catwalks would never have groaned with hour-glass confections had it not been for Von Teese’s blancmange curves.
“One of my favourite things is when I hear people say my name to describe a look,” she beams. She had wanted to be known by one name, like Madonna, but it was against Playboy etiquette. I tell her that she is. When people want to describe brunettes as pretty, they tell them they look “like Dita”. “Oh! That’s nice!” she cries, clutching both hands to her breast, her voice breathy as Monroe’s.
Her ability to model a corset is legendary. Kylie Minogue spawned tabloid frenzy when it was claimed (inaccurately) that she had laced down to 16 inches. Von Teese takes this in her stride. Corset-wearing in her twenties has shrunk her unrestrained waist to 22 inches. But she is less of an enthusiast of late. “I like to wear them in my shows because it’s like doing a Houdini trick to get yourself out of a corset in 15 seconds. But I don’t consider myself into body modification. Still, I’m glad that I was able to lace down to 16 inches for Playboy. Although people said the image was retouched, swimming and Pilates help to retain its svelteness. I was like: ‘I would have retouched it way smaller than that!’.”
Corseted or uncorseted, she argues that we’re all fetishists and half of her book is devoted to images and explications of the theme. “People think fetishism is taboo. It’s quite sweet, actually. I find it incredibly interesting to talk to people that have a fetish where they’d rather watch a woman smoking a cigarette than have sex with her. I feel so sorry for people who have a fetish that they can’t share with their wives. If my husband came to me and said ‘I love wearing your stockings’, I would love that. Fetishists are great because they’re so easy to please.” One senses that there are few individuals whom Von Teese would find difficult to please.
Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese (HarperCollins, £19.99) is available next month from Times Books First at £17.99, p&p is free. Call 0870 1608080 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy
