Dita Von Teese is known for her pinup girl look and has made a career out of doing burlesque and always looking sexy. She wrote an essay about how women need to be sexy and sensual at different ages. Just because she’s 44 and getting older doesn’t mean that she’s going to stop what she’s doing because you should be sexy at all stages of your life.
Von Teese says that she likes to spend time with older women that feel sexy and glamorous. She recently had lunch with Mamie Van Doren, an actress and pinup from the 50’s. She’s now 86 and is still the sensual woman she was when she was 19. Von Teese began her career and 19 and she grew up in a farming town in Michigan and believe it or not, she was blond!
Her first experience with burlesque happened when she visited a strip club, she noticed that the girls didn’t take anything off and were dancing in bikinis. She got a job there and started performing and developing her burlesque show. “The theatrics of clothing can change your demeanor and stance and how you walk and carry yourself,” she says in an essay for InStyle. “I would use eccentricity as a weapon, wearing red lipstick, heels, hats, leather gloves, and extreme clothes—kind of like a femme fatale or a villain.”
Her career took off and she went global, appearing in her burlesque show all over the U.S. and Europe and even appearing on the cover of Playboy. People loved her and wanted to be her because she was different, she was sexy in her own way. “I could never relate to mainstream notions of beauty and sensuality, like the models in the Victoria’s Secret catalog,” she says. Her cup of tea was always ultra-feminization. “I was always really into ultra-feminization—it gave me glamour and the feeling that when I walked into a room, people wanted to know who I was; and they still do now that I’m 44.”
She is proud of her age and to be doing what she loves for over 25 years. “I remember doing an interview with a German journalist when I was in my mid-30s, and she asked me, ‘What will you do when you get old and you lose your beauty and are not interesting anymore?’ That question struck a nerve. Maybe it was lost in translation, but still. Then I thought about how the concepts of perfect beauty and talent were—and still are—uninteresting to me.”Embed from Getty Images
Von Teese has the same insecurities about growing old that anybody else does. But, she looks up to other women that are older than her and that are doing what they love and who have no time for critics. “Anytime I question myself, like, ‘Should I really be on tour, doing my burlesque show again in my 40s?’ I recall Mamie and her wonderful spirit. Or I’ll see a video of J. Lo doing backflips in a G-string onstage in Vegas and think about how she’s a few years older than me and up there in lingerie, looking amazing. I truly do believe that we need to see and experience beauty and sensuality at all phases of life.”
“I hate it when people say, ‘You look good for your age.’ It should be, ‘You look good.’ Period. Getting older is a good thing.”