Flashback Friday — Valentine Vixen: Cheryl Kubert, Miss February 1958

The bulk of this post originally appeared on February 5, 2010 at 9:04 am.

Photographed by Mario Casilli.

First up is the lovely and talented Cheryl Kubert. In going through my files to prep this entry, I realized I’d already saved several pictures from this shoot here and there for the last year, so I’m pretty pumped to share.

It’s not a cute or even particularly “themed” shoot at all, but Ms. Kubert has an almost accusing serenity that makes what would be standard shots if it were any other model seem more arresting and beyond ordinary than their composition would dictate.

It’s the eye contact, I reckon. She has deep eyes. The downward cast of her chin, the unparted lip, the steady gaze; she seems so solemn. It makes the shoot feel heavy, but in a beautiful, ruminating, kind of sad way. She has this kind of practical but somewhat unhappy sincerity to her expression and posture, an unvarnished and troubled vulnerability. It’s moody.

The written copy that accompanied this pictorial is absolute drivel. I mean, just pure shit. Its more pun-ridden and meaningless even than the b.s. that they printed up for Marlene Callahan, and that is saying something, believe me.

The strangest part about the article is that, besides being empty apple fritters and pretty nonsense, the endless stream of non sequitirs about Scandinavian idioms seemingly have almost nothing to do with the pictures.

The write-up, titled “Playmate on Skis,” describes skiing in great detail and alludes to its history in Scandinavia, which is well and good, but in the pictures Ms. Kubert is mainly not around snow whatsoever; furthermore, the article lays no claim to her being of Scandinavian descent. Just a poor job all around. Banana boats and baloney sauce, Playboy, I’m sorry. Thankfully the pictures are unique, sensitive, and artistic.

Okay, I just spent fifteen minutes hard-searching and I found the above missing link. ONE SHOT of her with skis in addition to the centerfold (which is generally shot separate from the rest of the pictorial spread). Pfft. And if that is not a fake scene outside the window, I’ll eat my hat. Total cheezits (I’m trying to swear less this year and I’ve found that food items make handy and amusing euphemisms).

(The nude Jayne Mansfield spread will come up again in several days, actually. Really interesting story, but we’re focused on Ms. Kubert right now. Keep your shirt on.)

I can only conjecture that Cheryl Kubert was a stage name, because there is pretty much nothing known about her prior to her centerfold appearance or what she did following, other than that she had appeared in a bit part in the film Pal Joey in 1957.

According to the Playmate Book, Ms. Kubert died April 25, 1989 of apparent suicide. Because Playboy did not keep data sheets prior to September of 1959, it is not known how old she was at the time of her appearance in the magazine or her death. It makes those deep eyes seem much sadder to know that. R.I.P.

edit: I was sitting here trying to think where I had just seen the name “Kubert” recently, and finally remembered that yesterday’s Daily Batman of Catwoman and Batman throwing plates at each other in the Super Dictionary (Warner, 1978) featured art work by the cartoonist Joe Kubert. Found his official website and have fired off a quick email using his “contact” form, inquiring if he is related to Cheryl Kubert or has heard anything about her before. It’s a longshot, but I’ll let you know what comes of it.

edit 11/2/12: In the original post, the following comment was left

John Hawksley Says:

Hello, I was Cheryl’s husband and we were married at the time of her death(may 28,1988) Cheryl Kubert was her real name. Born in Los Angeles, went to Fairfax High School. We had one child(Rachel). She was 50 at time of her death. She was a glamour lovlie in Ken Murry’s Blackouts and she did extensive modeling, traveled with U. S. O troupe and was a member of SAG and SEG. She had the heart and the looks of an angel. She could sing, play the piano and dance. If you need anymore information you can text me. John

Thank you for the further info, Mr. Hawksley.

edit 11/2/12, 2.0: The late Joe Kubert, comic legend, also corresponded with me briefly in regard to this post. He passed on in August, and I am not sharing because I believe death negates privacy, but merely because I never shared originally. As with Mr. Hawksley’s comment, I meant to go back and edit again, but the time gets away from you.

Dear E,

Thank you for your email and your interest. To my knowledge I am not related to a Cheri [sic] Kubert. She looks like someone I would not have minded knowing! Please continue to read, write, and care about comics. You may also share a link with your readers to The Kubert School.

Regards,
Joe

“The Kubert School, based in Dover, NJ offers students a high quality and challenging education in Cartooning and Graphic Art.” They also have correspondence courses.

This has been your Flashback Friday.

Daily Batman: Futbol americano and Sk8 or die, sort of, edition

Schulz had a long association with ice sports, and both figure skating and ice hockey featured prominently in his cartoons. In Santa Rosa, he was the owner of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which opened in 1969 and featured a snack bar called “The Warm Puppy”.

(the wiki).

Ice-skating is the only sport other than baseball at which I’ve ever instantly demonstrated amazing prowess on the first try. For this reason, I try to talk it up big to everyone I know, but, in a region of California that seldom ever sees temperatures dip below 25 degrees, fahrenheit, it’s an uphill battle.

Advice: Eff the ineffable and See you on the flip!

Still phoning it in. This post is originally from last year, but I took out the stuff about the Wonder Woman project (later aborted because when it comes to her I’ve got the attention span of a baby gnat). This year I’m needing to let go of my anxiety about a job with an amazing non-profit for which I interviewed last Friday and I Really, Really, Really want. So the advice still stands!

via.

“Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable, let’s prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

(Douglas Adams.)

Let go and get in that “jump!” frame of mind. Eff the ineffable, indeed, and don’t let all the shit that doesn’t matter get in the way of the shit that does.

Happy Fourth of July — ‘scuse me while I slap on my Wonder Woman wunderoos and conquer the world! Scheduling a Daily Batman, maybe a Girl of Summer and then I will catch you on the flip.

Winter of my discontent: Inaugural edition feat. Goethe throwback

Photographed by Ffion on the flickr.

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom?, but we hope it, we know it.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.)

Honestly, I could do, like, three more Goethe Months, and maybe someday I will, but for now, I hate January and I want to do something about it.

The Wonder Woman project helped me appreciate and understand her better; the William S. Burroughs project opened me up to new ideas and biographical facts I’d never known nor even heard of; and the NSFW November project — well, the NSFW November project had boobs.

Photographed by Eros Turannos on the flickr.

So this January I will be seeking out deep, positive messages about Winter along with photographs that show me more than bleak snow and the dull, same ol’-same ol’ that the cold weather serves up to me in my perception, and try to draw some conclusions about just why exactly I wake up on January 1st feeling particularly low and the mood does not lift until late February.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 47: Wunderoos and declaration

Over it. I’m done. I’ve reached the end of caring about this 69 Days of Wonder Woman thing. I started out not liking Wonder Woman, I like her okay now, I understand the things I don’t like about a woman being the strong-rescuer-type, and the attributes, conscious and subconscious, in myself which I dislike by disliking Wonder Woman. I know what to work on and what to try and stop being afraid of.

Now I just have all these pictures and links that I no longer consider relevant, but I also have, like, twenty-two days left in this project. We’ll see if I do any more. I’m calling this one, at least from the audit perspective. Stick a fork in it. It’s done.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 44, Medication time

via.

Click to enlarge, print, and color. Very soothing, color crayons.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 43, Maximum minimal

via.

“Basically it’s a distillation. It’s taking things about [Wonder Woman] that are great and the things that have made her an icon and discarding the things that are less important.”

(Joss Whedon. Interview, 2005.)

He was talking about his Wonder Woman film script. The project currently languishes in development hell.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 41, Wonder Woman is the “Secret Self” inside every woman

via bohemea on the tumblr.

Wonder Woman is the “Secret Self” inside every woman — the beautiful, unafraid, tenacious and powerful woman we know resides within us. She is the antithesis of “victim.” …

While I am forever identified with the role, Wonder Woman belongs to us all. She lives inside us. She’s the symbol of the extraordinary possibilities that inhabit us, hidden though they may be — that, I think, is the important gift Wonder Woman offers women.

(Lynda Carter. “Wonder Woman Can Save the World.” Introduction, Wonder Woman No. 600. DC Comics: August 2010.)

Due to Lynda’s introduction and the all-out anniversarydom of the issue, I bought Wonder Woman #600 in July in Couer d’Alene on vacation, specifically for this project. I plan way ahead … and then I procrastinate.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 39, Are you attracted to needy, damaged, or helpless people?

I hate myself for disliking Steve Trevor and thinking him weak when all he does is honestly need Wonder Woman’s help in this panel, and I hate myself for being left cold by the role-reversal, male-damsel-in-distress trope established by female-centric comic books, for which they are rightly lauded. The whole point of this project was to prod at my dislike of this exact scenario. So, as with anything we hate, we have to examine whether we are despising an aspect of ourselves in the object of our objection.

On my and Diana Prince’s Christmas wish list, yes?

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 38: Who the world needs me to be

All-Star Comics No. 8, featuring the first appearance of Wonder Woman, debuted in December, 1941. It hit the stands amidst the tumult following the Japanese strafing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th. After President Roosevelt’s Infamy Speech and declaration of war, patriotic fervor was wild. The response to the fortuitously back-storied and red-white-and-blue-attired Wonder Woman on the team of the Justice Society was overwhelming. The following month, January, she appeared in Sensation Comics No. 1, this time on the cover. Six months later, United States involvement in the second world war at full swing, Wonder Woman’s own title comic line debuted. It has not ceased publication since.

I’d like to later do a thing comparing Wonder Woman to all the Joan of Arc propoganda through the decades but I need to make dinner. Catch you on the flip.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 37: World AIDS Day

via Michael J. Faris.

World AIDS Day 2010. A day before heads-up. Try and raise awareness tomorrow.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 36, Muppet connections

Now this is the quickest way to my heart.

One-way ticket, express train. Complementary snacks and beverages.

Lynda Carter appeared on Episode 36 of The Muppet Show as herself, Lynda Carter. As with the Roger Moore “Bond” episode, where he appeared as himself, much to the consternation of the cast who were hoping for spy action, the Muppets’ running gag was to continually try to draw out Wonder Woman.

Appearing in a sketch as Wonder Pig, Miss Piggy asks Lynda if she regrets not bringing her costume along. All the Muppets take superhero lessons to impress Wonder Woman and Fozzie learns the value of bullet-deflecting bracelets.

Another Muppet venture, the Children’s Television Workshop, referred to the character of Wonder Woman in the recent Sesame Street “Preschool Musical” episode (a parody of High School Musical), when little Mariella up there sang about dress-up and how it made her in to someone else, someone that reflected the dreams and desires of who she wanted to be. Mariella spun until she changed in to the above outfit, and she remained in her superhero costume for the rest of the sketch.

Yesterday, Paolo was taking Corinnette back over to the coast for school, so I slid down to C-town to keep Miss D some company. We watched Muppets Take Manhattan on the television and folded laundry. “Sea Breeze Soap — Use it so you don’t stink.” It was truly wonderful. Besides the great writing and the actual entertainment value, I think that what makes the Muppets special for me is their relatability, their familiarity, and the comfort of their consistency. Maybe this is part of what has made Wonder Woman, too, an enduringly popular character, a standout hero in the genre, and a classic element of how we tell certain types of stories: if a girl is going to triumph, then she is Wonder Woman. “You’d have to be Wonder Woman to get all that done!” There is something special about that.

I need to give her credit for this: people love Wonder Woman, not only in comics but also in her pantheon of moving viewing material. They come back to her again and again and feel retro and nostalgic about it. I respect that, because I have things that I, too, love in that way.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Days 9 – 35

I was wayyyy too lazy about actually posting up my thoughts each day on the reading and research I was doing on Wonder Woman and I’m playing catch-up now. In order to make up for that lost time and have something properly worthwhile to represent the span of days lost, here’s a little drawing and expounding on the Amazonian from superfly amazing Adam Hughes, whose Catwoman work has been spotlighted here numerous times in the past.

Wonder Woman is the greatest comic-book superheroine of all time, and I can prove it with math. If you need proof of Wonder Woman’s stature as the greatest comic-book superheroine of all-time, then, PLEASE, go add up all the issues of any other female character and see if you come close to SIX HUNDRED.

No other female character has remained in print, consistently, since the Second World War. Think about that. Are there ANY? From ANY company? Nope. Sometimes, simple statistics speak volumes: Wonder Woman has been around, month-in-month-out, for almost 70 years. How many heroines (or heroes!) can boast such a feat? How many PUBLICATIONS have been in print since WWII?

She has inspired, intrigued, and entertained – NON-STOP – through 5 American wars, 13 U.S. presidential administrations, and she’s even outlasted regimes like the Soviet Union. Wonder Woman endures because she’s the best of the best, the baddest of the bad, the bluest of the blue.

(Hughes, Adam. Posted by Alex Segura via the DC Universe Blog.

Dang if that is not a convincing argument. Actually what I’ve found is that I am growing to like her the same as I do any of my regular favorites (perhaps with more respectful acknowledgement than, say, fervent love), and wonder why I didn’t before. Like it’s not even a big deal.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 8: Super Dictionary, “I am against the people who make trouble.”

It’s interesting how quickly, even before the infamous code descended and cut out some of the popular gory lines, comics became dominated by superhero/crimefighter stories, due of course to the mad success of Superman. Sure, there have always been pulp adventure and horror comics, but when most people even think of comic books, it’s the heroes with which they associate the genre. The writers are driven by the publishers, who are driven by sales, which are driven by readers — so the natural conclusion is that a story about a badass goodhearted hero who fights crime is what the audience wants to read.

Drawing by Anthony Tan via fyeahww on the tumblr.

Comics are such manifestly wish-fulfillment-meets-folktale, flimsy-and-touching paper myths, that I think there’s a beautiful lesson here: we want to read about the hero who fights crime, who is “against” troublemakers and waiting with her golden lasso to show them what real trouble is, because we, ourselves, wish to do that. We wish to have a secret identity and fight for those who have no voice, to put a stop to injustices against our fellow men. All these generations of readers have wished to make the world better, not just for accolades or girls but because it is the right thing to do. And that’s really a great and inspiring thing. It’s sweet and charming and kind of triumphant, isn’t it?

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 7: Why then, o brawling love, o loving hate, o anything of nothing first create?

(This was all news to me. So the theories advanced here are kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants.)

Wonder Woman’s archnemesis Cheetah was apparently introduced in No. 6.1 of the original, Marston-penned Wonder Woman line (1943). The original Cheetah was Priscilla Rich.

via the wiki, Cheetah’s first appearance, 1943. Cover art by Harry Peter.

Priscilla Rich was depicted as a young, insecure debutante who suffered from a split personality developed because of her inferiority complex. Following a benefit dinner, Ms. Rich’s alternate personality became dominant, triggered by an encounter with Wonder Woman, whose superiority to earth women activated Ms. Rich’s coping mechanism for her low self-esteem. This other self, Cheetah, continues to come out from time to time to try and kill Diana, foil her plans for good, etc.

I noted with interest in researching her that, in a lot of the panels I read, it seems that Ms. Rich’s alter ego, Cheetah, actually hates the Priscilla personality almost as much as she dislikes Wonder Woman.

Priscilla retreats to her room and collapses before her makeup mirror. There she sees an image of a woman dressed like a cheetah. “Horrors!” she cries, as she gazes at her evil inner-self for the first time.

(the wiki.)

“Don’t you know me?” replies the reflection. “I am the REAL you — the Cheetah — a treacherous, relentless huntress!” The image commands her to fashion a Cheetah costume. “From now on,” intones the reflection, “when I command you, you shall go forth dressed like your TRUE self and do as I command you…”

(Ibid.)

It is not terribly difficult to see metaphors here for female cattiness. I think it goes back to what I wrote about earlier, the empty need for women to best each other. Ms. Rich and Wonder Woman had no actual beef: why did Ms. Rich create one? Because she felt insecure.

And why does Cheetah hate herself almost as much as she hates Wonder Woman?

I think because she despises her own weakness, and, as Cheetah, she sees her Priscilla personality as hampering her goal to become the greatest woman alive.

So a) she makes something out of nothing because b) she feels badly about herself, doubly over. That’s crazy and yet so true and typical.

She does not want to, but she must. Why? It is so unnecessary, just as it is unnecessary for women to gang up on one another in real life, too. But they always do.

Final note: the IGN ranked Cheetah in 2009 as the 69th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time, which is great synchronicity for our 69-day project.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 6: Insight from beautiful and brilliant Australian performance artist Evelyn Hartogh

Brisbane-based performance artist Evelyn Hartogh photographed by misteriddles on the da.

‘Even Superheroes get the blues,’ Evelyn Hartogh, aka Wonder Woman, tells Graham Redfern.

For about 15 years, Evelyn Hartogh has been pulling on the iconic bulletproof bracelets … of her alter ego, the feminist superhero Wonder Woman.

… the Amazonian princess was the perfect fit for the performance artist’s humanist ideals.

Photographed by Alicia Lane, 2006.

But behind the comedic performances and the bright red boots, Hartogh’s affinity with Wonder Woman has taken an ironic twist.

“Everyone has to put on a strong face to the world and everyone has their own problems,” she says. “That’s maybe why Wonder Woman is so appealing, because we all feel the pressure to be more than we really are.”

(Redfern, Graham. “Fighting Personal Demons: Interview.” 5 Dec 2007. The Courier Mail. via Evelyn Hartogh‘s official website.)

“Mopping Bartleme Galleries” by Ian Wadley, 1993.

Extremely positive thing that I can admit I dig about Wonder Woman: her iconism — ladies like her and want to be her. I can appreciate that because I support anything that makes women want to stand up for themselves and acknowledge their potential might instead of being self-critical and predictably needy.

Added insight from Ms. Hartogh: ladies understand the tremendous pressure Wonder Woman is under to achieve and to be the topmost and the Bestest in the Westest because they themselves are trying constantly to score Outstanding in every category while juggling all their responsibilities; they recognize that she, like them, is a champion with a plight.

Photographed by Alicia Lane, 2005.

Taking it one step further: when we read Wonder Woman and all the odds are against her but she pulls it out of the bag at the end because, hello, she is Wonder Woman — we can reassure ourselves that we, too, will pull it out of the bag at the end, because, hello, we are wonderful.

I can totally hang with that.

Please do check out Ms. Hartogh’s official website, hit her up on the myspace (from whence most of these pictures hail), and take her live performance videos on the youtube for a spin. She is thought-provoking, playful, deep and awesome!

Flashback Friday — Self-audit (finally starting it up again) and Advice: FROM me ABOUT Zooey Deschanel, totally SFW!

This post originally appeared on Dec 2, 2009, at 9:57 PM.

Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.

via zooeydeschanel.us

On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source

We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.

via zooeydeschanel.net

No babies were slapped in the writing of this self-audit.

edit: So this is the promised Flashback Friday post that picks up the thread of thought in the 69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 5 post. It’s all about rejecting the modern standard of cattiness and pointless avarice and trading them for cooperation and admiration. I mean, Jesus Christ, we are playing right in to the hands of the machine with this bullshit behavior, ladies. If you’re all bound up in bitching each other out, then you’re not paying attention to what’s going on around you, which means you’re not trying to change anything, which means everything can stay its shitty same self, which means the machine wins. Do you see? Revolution! — won’t you please help me do it up right?

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 5: Fruitlessly turned against each other instead of joined in force

It seems to me that despite all our claims of girl power and sisterhood women are still our own worst enemies, and I do not have to ponder or prod at the why of that: it is manifestly so much easier to lay the blame for a situational upset or emotional turmoil at some other chick’s feet than to examine your own self.

Scanned by yours truly.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly, Pogo creator, comic legend). You know?

And so we fruitlessly turn against each other instead of joining forces and really making new and great things happen, and the more often we do that, the less is ever truly resolved, and women end up with all these doubts and neuroses that we’ve unfairly placed on ourselves. We are all doing ourselves a bad turn. Like, why, on meeting someone equal to you in strength, would you need to best them instead of teaming up and being friends? Wouldn’t they understand you better than anyone else you’ve ever dealt with, and wouldn’t you better benefit from mutual friendship than from facing off? What a horrible instinct, to destroy what’s like you in order to be sure you are still alone and “The Best.”

Wait, I feel like I’ve written something about this before … I want to say it involved a picture of Zooey Deschanel looking twee with a pink ribbon.

(three or so minutes later)

Okay, found it. It’ll be today’s Flashback Friday, and it’ll be posted directly following this WW Day 5, inspired by and related to this post. And actually it works great because that was about my first parent-teacher conference for kidlet last year, and I just went to her first parent-teacher conference for this year yesterday.

Synchronicity: still for dinner.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 4: Tools of the trade

“Wonder Woman is actually a dramatized symbol of her sex. She’s true to life — true to the universal characteristics of women everywhere. Her magic lasso is merely a symbol of feminine charm, allure, ‘oomph,’ attraction. Every woman uses that power on people of both sexes whom she wants to influence or control in any way. Instead of tossing a rope, the average woman tosses words, glances, gestures, laughter, and vivacious behavior. If her aim is accurate, she snares the attention of her would-be victim, man or woman, and proceeds to bind him or her with her charm.”

“Lasso of Truth” by Samurai Pet.

“Woman’s charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic, common sense, or counterattack. The fact that many women fail to make strong enough lassos for themselves doesn’t deprive the lasso material of its native magic. The only thing is, you have to use enough charm to overcome your captive’s resistance.”

(William Moulton Marston, creator, qtd. in girlfriend Olive Richard’s Family Circle article “Our Women Are Our Future,” August 14, 1942.)

Michael Turner.

Disagree. Dislike. First of all, if I think someone is not as in to me as I am to them, I soundly give up: I really never expected them to be reciprocally interested in me to begin with and I hate admitting to having feelings, let alone letting those feelings make a fool of me. Nothing I hate more. I am supposed to be impervious and deflect all attention. Upping my game and maybe getting shot down again is the absolute last thing I would ever do. So the idea that I need to re-aim and throw my lasso again is round bullshit to me. No way am I going to tip my hand like that and risk that people know I Feel Ways About Things.

But, my sad and complicated shit aside, secondly and more widely applied, I also dislike the idea of telling chicks that you have all the charm you need, you just need to work harder because it sets up false expectations in women, who probably have enough going already without further blaming themselves for what they perceive to be failures in romance, and redoubling an effort that may be toward a pointless cause to boot. I believe the expression is “He’s just not that in to you,” yes? So what? Glance down the bar and see if someone is looking at you and quickly looks away. Oh, no, his collar isn’t popped and he does not know the cool jam on the jukebox? Talk to him anyway. You will be surprised.

“Old School Wonder Woman” by Lauren Montgomery.

I also don’t like the idea that I got to use some elusive yam-fried set of feminine tricks to get my way. What’s wrong with walking up and honestly asking for what I want from a man or woman? Why does it have to be couched in some charmy little game where I snare someone with an invisible rope? Why can’t I be like a man and straightforwardly address my needs in business and in social settings?

By quasilucid, via fyeahww.

Now how about this: “Woman’s charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic.” Whoa, so even if my idea, the thing for which I’m campaigning and slinging my golden wily lasso, is crazy and illogical and against “common sense,” as long as I’m feminine enough, it’ll still work because by god and the grace of my “charm” I’ve roped that guy? Hell, no. No. Why would I a) want to do something illogical; b) decide to dishonestly employ a feminine wile instead of forthrightly putting a plan in motion; and b) use this imaginary “power” for evil, in a dishonest way that does wrong by some poor dude and the laws of logic? I don’t like any of that. I highly resist and even resent that.

The weird thing is, I don’t think, from the comics I’ve read, that Wonder Woman is like that at all. Marston says she’s the dramatized symbol of this binding feminine charm that he perceives, but I think he’s wrong. She’s straight-up, in the main, and an almost always equal player on a male-dominated planet. Wonder Woman is not walking around this world with a water bra and a bunch of batty-lashy tricks up her sleeve. And if by some shady necessity she is going about her business sidewise or in disguise, she is a bit by the seat of her pants and obviously unaccustomed to artifice. And the Lasso of Truth seems to run counter to the tricky charm lasso to which Marston analogizes non-wonder-women’s apparent powers. Truth, not some murky invisible binding charm that stickily works despite logic and sense. So, no. I realize that Marston was Wonder Woman’s creator, but it doesn’t make him right in my eyes. He said a lot of bullshit: why should I accept his interpretation of anything?

Seems I’m in the surprising position of defending Wonder Woman, from her own father.

Done for today.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Inaugural Edition featuring Stella Stevens, Miss January 1960

Welcome to the Inaugural Edition of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside!”

The lovely and talented Stella Stevens made a great name for herself in movies and on television after posing as Playboy‘s Miss January 1960.

Photographed by Don Ornitz and Frank Schallwig.

Stella Stevens, an eye-filling inhabitant of Southern California, was summoned thence from Tennessee to test for the lead in a film about Jean Harlow, but the movie never came off and bella Stella had to content herself with so-so assignments in Say One for Me and The Blue Angel, films in which she appeared fleetingly and rather out of focus in the B.G., which is script talk for background, not Benny Goodman.

(“Dogpatch Playmate.” Playboy. January, 1960.)

While the Playboy lensman was snapping away, the phone rang, and on the other end was great and giddy news for Miss Stevens — she had plucked one of the acting plums of the year, in the film version of the hit musical, Li’l Abner, playing Appassionata von Climax, the role created on Broadway by Tina Louise.

(Ibid.)

I have no idea why the Dane is there in that shot, nor why the article is titled “Dogpatch Playmate,” but I want a Great Dane so badly. Or an English mastiff. Or a Newfoundland. Maybe a horse or a big gorilla. Something bigger than my boyfriend.

Just kidding. I don’t have a boyfriend. But I desperately want one. It’s actually really bumming me out. My husband says I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but what does he know.*

*Entirely a humorous bit with no truth in it. Except for the stuff about the dogs. I don’t just “want” the biggest dog possible, it’s like I have to have it. This is not a joke: I spent at least an hour and a half on the internet last night looking for bombass adoptable giant dogs. I don’t know where this is coming from.

Stella’s turn as Appassionata in Li’l Abner was followed by roles in films such as The Battle of Cable Hogue, The Nutty Professor, and The Poseidon Adventure. Ms. Stevens also did an incredible amount of television, appearing in Bonanaza, Riverboat, and Ben Casey, among many super-famous vintage television series —

— including, germane to the last post, Wonder Woman. Ms. Stevens portrayed Agent M./Marcia in “The New Original Wonder Woman,” the made-for-TV-film that would become the pilot episode of The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, which aired November 7, 1975.

Marcia is the secretary to Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman’s rescuer and a Navy pilot during WWII, following the comic plotline. Marcia is (gasp!) a double agent for the Nazis and tries to get Diana killed by sneakily having someone else attempt to machine gun her to death while she is onstage doing her “act.”

Those kinds of shenanigans will simply not be stood for. That Marcia totally needs tied up.

Ms. Stevens did not appear in subsequent television movies or the final series that was spun out of them, but she was probably too busy to notice. She is a true working actress, the kind of performer with at least one or three credits for every year they are active.

As the 60’s, 70’s, and beyond progressed, Ms. Stevens continued to act, appearing in popular television series like Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Highway to Heaven, and Magnum, P.I. in the 1980s. Nineties credits include The Commish, Highlander (helllll yeah — cue Queen’s “Princes of the Universe”), and Nash Bridges.

Through the years, Ms. Stevens may’ve stayed beautifully built but it is almost definitely her wacky sense of humor which saved her from landing at the bottom of the “pretty girl” bit-part scrapheap. She ably held her own opposite comedic talents like Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, and Slim Pickens. That picture above is an outtake that appeared in The First 15 Years, which wonderfully captures Stella’s sense of the absurd even in a serious, nerve-wracking situation. Love it.

And she has not slowed down. Last year, she lent her voice to the documentary Dante’s Inferno: Abandon All Hope, performing the role of Speaker for the Thieves in the 8th Circle of Hell. The 8th Circle is described in Bolgia 7, Canticles XXIV and XXV; the thieves are pursued by reptiles whose bites cause nasty transformations in them, which not only hurt but prevent the thieves from ever knowing the comfort of a steady, protective and genuine identity, a state of flux and anxiety which is the perfect punishment for the security they stole from their victims in life — identity theft, basically: Sr. Alighieri was ahead of his time, as usual.

You can look for Stella Stevens next in 2011 or ’12 as Jill in The Human Factor, an in-development film project to which Michael Madsen, Danny Trejo, and Charisma Carpenter are also tentatively attached. Get it, girl!

edit: Looking closely, I’m not so sure that picture with the dog is even Stella Stevens. Someone want to help out?

edit 2.0: Astute superfly Gridley says the article is titled “Dogpatch Playmate” because Dogpatch is the name of the fictional town in which Li’l Abner takes place. Thanks!