This is not beer related although after hearing this news I will probably have to go home and tip a few to one of my heros. Bettie Page has died at age 85. She apparently suffered a heart attack 9 days ago which left her in a coma which she never awoke from. It is sad she dies peacefully.

For me Bettie Page is and will always be one of a handful of people who pushed the way we as a society perceived morality and immorality. While Bettie Page is probably one of the most famous pinup queens ever in American history this feisty model and actress never intended to elicit the kind of change she was a catalyst she still deserves a ton of recognition.

Bettie Page never believed that nudity was a sin and has said that it was only after Adam and Eve sinned that they were made to wear clothes.

The world will miss you Bettie Page, but thanks to this wonderful digital world we live in you will not be forgotten! Just to do my part I posted a few of your notable quotes below for the whole world to see.

I don’t know what they mean by an icon. I never thought of myself as being that. It seems strange to me. I was just modeling, thinking of as many different poses as possible. I made more money modeling than being a secretary. I had a lot of free time. You could go back to work after an absence of a few months. I couldn’t do that as a secretary.

Paula was one of the nicest women I’ve ever known in my life-bar none. Only Paula was allowed to tie us up. She was very gentle, caring and considerate. She never tied any ropes too tight. She was very sweet.

It makes me feel wonderful that people still care for me… that I have so many fans among young people, who write to me and tell me I have been an inspiration.

I was not trying to be shocking, or to be a pioneer. I wasn’t trying to change society, or to be ahead of my time. I didn’t think of myself as liberated, and I don`t believe that I did anything important. I was just myself. I didn’t know any other way to be, or any other way to live.

(about her second husband) Six weeks into the marriage, on New Year’s Eve 1959, I wanted to go dancing with him at a nightclub. He said he’d rather get drunk with his brothers.

Well after this I think I will go home have a couple of tall ones and wait for Elton John to rewrite “Candle in the Wind”

On a side note I chose the picture of Bettie Page for this post because I actually have the same picture framed with Bettie Page’s very own John Hancock on it. She signed it at a charity event that benefited runaway children. It is probably my most prized possession.

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