People Can be Trendy Too

Dita Von Teese is everywhere. One might say, in fact, that she's trendy. She's always in gossip magazines, endorsing large companies, and at awards shows. She was even in Vogue, for some reason. She's joined the ranks of the dubiously talented but very famous, but everyone seems to be convinced that Dita, unlike Nicole Richie or that girl from Laguna Beach, is special. People are always cooing that she's really classy and unique and bringing back classic silver screen glamour, and best of all, she rejects beauty standards! In a stylish way! How subversive!

To this I say: whatever. Has anyone else not noticed that Dita Von Teese looks more like a wax figure than Jessica Simpson? She has fake boobs, forced her waist into a million corsets in order to make it more hourglassy, clearly had a nose job or something, and wears a pound of makeup every day. Her burlesque "act" seems to mostly involve her wearing glitter and wiggling around. How is she subverting anything? Is it because she doesn't have a tan? She's just another version of every other plastic Hollywood starlet wearing designer clothes (50's style ones!) with a slightly different aesthetic. Just because she has a vague "retro" thing going on doesn't make her a pioneer. Being "sexy" is her only defining characteristic. She's famous for taking her clothes off and being in Playboy, not for being talented or interesting. And she's even named herself something as charmingly retro and kittenish as possible in order to constantly remind us that she's a total pin-up goddess, not a human being like the rest of us. We already have Bettie Page as some sort of rockabilly pin-up pseudo-feminist sex symbol (despite the fact that her only real contribution was the much beloved riot grrrl to post riot grrrl staple the baby bang), we don't need another, particularly one as lame as Dita Von Teese.