|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Gar Lipow
|| >So under that dumb blonde exterior, Mae West knew her
|| classics! Ah, the
|| > irony of the paraphrase: Is that a gun in your pocket or are
|| you just
|| happy
|| > to see me?
||
|| Neither Mae West nor most of the characters she played had a
|| dumb blonde
|| exterior. More of a "smart" blonde exterior - tough, wise-cracking,
|| agressive. (...)
|| I've always thought that the character Mae West created was an
|| exception
|| in American sexual fantasy - a sexually agressive woman who was
|| neither a victim or a villain. I'll bet somewhere there is a really
|| good feminist analysis of Mae.
I agree of course, I was just being facetious. She was brilliant.
There's a book called Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp From Mae West To Madonna by Pamela Robertson. West also wrote 3 plays in 1926 - 28 called Sex, the Drag, and Pleasure Man.
Hakki