Tease Queen - Dita Von Teese

by Kastle
A giant martini glass is hoisted up on stage, sparkling under a lavender spotlight. Soon a porcelain-skinned beauty with a shock of jet black hair and ruby red lips makes her way across stage. Dressed in elaborate rhinestone corsetry, her waist cinched into a petite hourglass, she gives the audience a sly smile with a face reminiscent of 1950s pinup, and proceeds to remove gloves, high heels, stockings, corset, bra�until she is down to a G-string and pasties. She steps up onto a chair and slips into the martini glass for an intoxicating dip, to the delight of her audience.

Welcome to the world of Dita Von Teese -theatrically sexy outfits, fanciful props, and over-the-top glamour. The pinup model and stage performer has become the most recognizable face of the new burlesque revival.

The 30-year-old glamour queen says she always had a love for 1940s pinup art and aspired to bring of bit of that charm into her own image when she began working as a dancer in L.A. nightclubs during her teenage years. "I worked in a bikini club and I always wore corsets and stockings and really dressed up. I took my time to go out and take my clothes off instead of just walking out in a bikini like everybody else. Eventually, I wanted to develop bigger shows and make more of it," she says.

Dita's career as a dancer led her to modeling, frequently posing in fetish magazines and labeled a modern Bettie Page. It's a comparison she sees as a huge compliment. "If people like what I do because it reminds them of what she's remembered for, then that is all I would ever want," she says.

But as she became a known face in underground nightclubs and magazines, Dita says she was offered a lot of "bad advice" when she aspired to take her career to the next level. "People told me I would never make it in this business the way I look. They wanted me to be the typical Playboy girl. Then in the fetish scene I kept hearing about how I would never crossover to mainstream appeal."

However, her persistence paid off, to a degree that even she never expected, when she appeared on the cover of the December 2002 issue of Playboy. "A big part of me wants to say: 'Look I did it! '" she exclaims. Dita says the Playboy photo shoot was a testament to the strict standards she holds on her image. "I really had to stand my ground to make sure it was photographed the way I wanted-wearing the things I wanted." Her pictorial and cover shots feature Dita and full whip-crackin' fetish gear under the title "The Return of Fetish, " which Dita herself giggles at the thought of. "That is so funny because fetish never went away!"

One person who clearly understands her edgy style is her boyfriend of the last three years, rocker Marilyn Manson. It seems the press can't resist the beauty-and-the-beast coupling as images and rumors of their relationship have circulated in the media relentlessly. However Dita isn't always comfortable with such notoriety. "There's good and there's bad," she says. "The good is that we're totally in love and I can't imagine being with anybody else. The bad is that people don't know anything about us so all they can do is speculate what we are about by looking at us. You have to learn to shrug it off."

In the meantime, she continues to work the rounds as the reigning queen of neo-classic striptease. So what goes through her mind when she takes it all off? "I'm really concentrating on the technical aspects, what kind of face I'm making and being in positions that are flattering for my body," she says. "But I'm having fun too - I always have a glass of champagne before I go on!"