Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you It's Not Easy Being Beautiful, a fun and fashionable night of vintage films that highlight the endless steps of beauty women must take on a daily basis, from makeup to hair to fashion to diet. Our beauty regime begins with glamorous undergarments, as we can see in the Special Edition segment on Frederick's of Hollywood (1970s), replete with sexy teddies and padded panties sold to you by frumpy old women. From there, we must build the foundation, with a creamy liquid foundation, of course, as we learn what goes into the makeup we pile on our faces in Accent on Beauty (1930s). Then, it's time to get dressed and JC Penney's has a whole fabulous array of frocks and sweater-sets for three young ladies on a cross-country shopping spree in The Scenemakers (1960). Learn how to stay beautiful, even as a beach bum, including how keep your clothes clean, or at least off, in the sexy short Beachcombing Belle (1949). Learn how to keep a trim figure and your hubby's admiration in the antiquatedly offensive Battle of the Bulge (1950). Once you're all dolled up, it's time to fight off the wolves howling at your sexy gams, as seen in Tex Avery's sexy fairytale Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943). Beauty is not just for biological women, as the early and groundbreaking gender-bending portrait Behind Every Good Man (1965) demonstrates. And if you find you love spreading the beauty, you too can be like young Cindy and explore Beauty for a Career (1960s). With vintage cosmetics commercials, Tony Curtis hosting a poolside party for the winners of Miss Universe 1955, Jayne Mansfield knocking Mickey Rooney speechless at the 1958 Golden Globes and tons of other sexy surprises, it's bound to be one beautiful night for boys and girls alike!
Date: Thursday, October 4th, 2012 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
“The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her 'beauty.'"
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women
Featuring:
Frederick's Of Hollywood (Color, 1970s)
The appeal is sex. We see models prancing around in ridiculous lingerie, and extolling the miracle of padding in all of the right places, old ladies opening mail in the mail order department and couples trying selecting sexy underwear. The clothes are designed to please men; to put a man in their life and a little life in their man. Since women aren't born equal its Frederick's of Hollywood's job to make them more equal. Does Frederick's of Hollywood treat women like sex objects? Of course, that's the point.
Accent on Beauty (B+W, 1930s)
A beautiful young lady demonstrates her makeup routine, while the audience gets a behind the scenes look at how makeup is made, or rather, how it was made in the early '30s.
An unintentionally hilarious long-form commercial presented by Monsanto and J.C. Pennies. See America in style with Jan, Jill and Amy, three gals crossing the country, but always making sure to dress their best. The ladies take a ride on the Delta Queen river boat in their sporty twinsets. They tour a plantation in long evening gowns. One meets a gambler with an eye patch and plays blackjack. They change into short cocktail dresses and go to a nightclub in the French Quarter to listen to ragtime and jazz. They take a drive through Pikes Peak National Forest in a convertible and wear cowboy hats. They go to a beach in California, model their bathing suits, then build a bonfire in cable knit sweaters. They drive the convertible to San Francisco and stay at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. They ride a cable car in stylish daytime suits and dresses and go to the Japanese Tea garden, and drive down Lombard St. They fly home in style on an American Airlines jet, undoubtedly to buy more stylish clothes from Penney's.
Decades before RuPaul became a household name and before the Stonewall riots that launched the gay rights movement, this doc short features an African American drag queen pushing gender roles in a society barely out of the repressive 1950s. This very rare film (possibly one of the first documenting a black gay male) directed by Nikolai Ursin, then a film student at the University of California, Los Angeles records our subject’s meditations on love, gay life in the early 1960s, and gender transgression. The film and its subject avoid period cliches about homosexuality and point to hopeful possibilities. “I’d like to live a happy life, that’s for sure,” he says, and one not only wants him to, but believes that it really could happen.