Tura Satana

This is an era where there are no original famous women displaying truly empowered sexuality combined with camp-not one. We have these fast food fetish jokes calling themselves "empowered" and "quirky" when all they really are simply exploitative (or exploited) airheads spawned from Madonna. There is not one woman in the media today who could approach Tura Satana's persona, to say nothing of her stunning, all natural dancer's figure. Tura Satana also had one of the biggest hearts in the world and took the time to write her fans and give them advice.

Despite a severe beating and gang rape as a young child (for which the assailants were never prosecuted) she stayed true to herself and was brave enough to share her pain and her rage with the world. If you wrote to Tura on My Space she wrote you back. If you had a family member or friend serving in the military, Tura wrote them a lovely letter of her own volition, graciously thanking them for their sacrifices. When Tarantino mentioned casting "Eva Mendez" as Varla in a proposed remake of  "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Killl!" along with Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian, she wrote me stating that "none of them have the balls to play those parts."

And Tura was of course right.

For so many of us Tura fans, she personifies the early Indie/Camp film era and extreme pinup-the authentic incarnate. Today the majority of those rebranding and reselling Pin Up are followers simply along for the ride. Many just don't understand what the original vibe was all about-power and mystery. More and more as raunch and slut culture invades mainstream and Kustom Kulture with a pestilence similar to when skinheads ruined Punk, the standards that Tura, Bettie Page and others set are being abandoned. Thankfully, in the sea of  narrowly built Bettie Page clones and Confederate flag wearing silicone fetish airheads there will always be the true Amazon cult goddess Tura Satana. I don't dislike porn nor fetish, but porn and fetish culture belong on hard drives, behind closed doors far, far away from the mainstream and far away from children and teens.

Tura was a conservative at heart, one who clearly knew the difference between her cult persona and reality. When to be sexy and when to act with cautious decorum. From the emails we exchanged, I could see that it was saddening for her to watch so many pinups she inspired (whether they knew it or not) "give up the store" and act sleazy just to get some fleeting attention and a few bucks. Tura set a high standard to follow but most women who live alternative lives should try as hard to emulate her stability. She had values, class and grace.

A mint original, she will be forever missed yet also live forever on the silver screen, Tura Satana didn't beat clocks-she beat people.

The Feminine Chauvinist Mistake Part One: Leslie Bennetts

I've always felt that all women were simply feminist be definition, no matter where you fall politically, reproductive rights, wages, etc will effect you as a woman at some point in your life and you usually can't opt out. The majority of "politically active" feminists turned me off early on in college because they seemed to care more about pop culture critiques and materialism than the aforementioned basics. I was not that surprised when Naomi Wolf wrote an interesting book about beauty with glaring inaccuracies and then became a conservative mom flip flopping on abortion rights and opening an expensive charmschool for wealthy post grads...zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Glaring examples of what I loathe (and what we should all be aware of) can be summed up clearly by looking at two recent books causing the obligatory post-modern brouhaha in the media; Ariel Levy's "Feminist Chauvinist Pigs and Leslie Bennett's "The Feminine Mistake." Levy's book explores "The Girls Gone Wild epidemic" of women acting trashy and slutty while Bennett's implores stay at home moms to get out the house, get their kids into day care and garner career skills lest the bread winning hubby suddenly depart.


First things first, any woman (or man) employing a full-time childcare provider or domestic worker of any age, race or background to whom she is not paying a living wage, medical and dental benefits and sick days/paid vacation to has absolutely no right to call themselves a feminist-EVER. They should also reconsider calling themselves a Christian or a Buddhist etc either as religions teach us not to exploit others.
The career oriented lifestyle that Bennetts advocates for most women conveniently leaves out the other sector of millions of women (many of color) that will get screwed over in the process as women leave their children and go back into the work force and that's why her book is a horrendously awful read. She indirectly advocates that women step on other women-not a very ethical example to set for our children.

The upper middle class feminist elite realized early that like workers in sweatshops, the childcare provider is invisible and when they could no longer be aloof such as failed Clinton Attorney General nominee Zoe Baird's "nannygate" the elite fems still never spoke out and waited for it die down. These same women, who would scoff at the notion of a childcare provider getting healthcare or god forbid a 401K, think nothing of spending thousands of dollars a month on fresh flowers and cosmetics, they along with their husbands, rationalize being exploitive everday.

"OUR GAL FROM MEXICO GET'S 1.60 AN HOUR..."

It's actually the parents with less money who have not only tried to pay better wages but co-parent with their caregivers instead of viewing them as cogs in a machine to amass more money and security. Many single or working mom's have even started to hire only part-time childcare as a way to make it easier on everyone, agumenting caregivers with family members and starting babysitting COOPs with other parents but once again these are usually middle to lower class women willing to scarifice money for more time with their children and their own sense of decency towards others.
For various, historically entrenched reasons rich women depend on the class system and many of these women participate in female rights groups, new age religions and even charities! If you want proof just go to a wealthy part of town and you'll see the full-time nannies, usually non-English speaking immigrant women of color or a college student of any race raising, the children of the wealthy.

Leslie Bennetts claims she's simply posing a list of important data and not being judgemental as she issues a warning for stay home moms. She just wants them to know the potential pitfalls that can befall the unskilled (as if this was news to ANYONE) but she does not include any statistics on the growing epidemic of Autism and childhood violence all potentially connected to the reaction that children have when they are marginalized from birth into the realm of "quality time."
Nor does she recognize a very vocal and angry group of young men and boys who've come up in childcare and have propably spent more time downloading hardcore porn and playing multi-user internet games than getting to know themselves or their parents.

Bennetts is a People magazine/Vanity Fair writer who obviously wants a piece of the media action (like many of us do) in a debate that is so much more important than gaining your own blog on Huffington's site--a blog on which she refused to publish my feedback comments.
Like a kid waiting for a ride home from school it should have showed up by now.

COMING SOON! Part Two: The Real Raunch Culture Queen (Sorry Ariel but it isn't Paris Hilton...)