Dita Von Teese: Your Beauty Mark

Figure it makes little sense for me to review this new, oversized, lavishly photo-illustrated book by Dita Von Teese by myself.

Figure, if this coffee-table compendium of beauty advice and autobiography and in-depth reportage called Your Beauty Mark, published by Dey Streets Books … if the thing’s going to be done any kind of justice at all, I’ll need a bit of help.

So I called my friend Sylvia.

Not that Sylvia’s any aficionado of professional-level primping, herself, mind you. Not that she’s some pearl-draped sockdollager of a glamor-puss. But she is 1) female and 2) not at all butch, and 3) passingly familiar with, at the very least, lipstick and mascara and pantyhose.

And so she came over, had a cup of coffee, and sat down with me to peruse Your Beauty Mark, to chat about what Dita Von Teese and co-author Rose Apodaca and book designer Kris Tobiassen have created via the world of publishing.

Sylvia Davis: This is … yeah, this is some kind of fancy thing, alright. Fan-cy.

Wayne Alan Brenner: Exactly. So you can understand why I didn’t –

Sylvia: Want to handle it yourself?

Brenner: Yeah. I mean, I’m not quite fabulous enough, am I?

Sylvia: And I am?

Brenner: Well, maybe not fabulous. But you’re, ah, you’re –

Sylvia: I’m not some middle-aged cis-gendered white guy who’s only ever been in drag that one time for Halloween back in Orlando almost three decades ago?

Brenner: Yeah, that.

Sylvia: Okay, so let’s look at this thing. It’s huge, to begin with.

Brenner: It is huge. One of those coffee-table books, right? Like that Antarctica book I reviewed a while ago. But there’s a lot of text to it, too.

Sylvia: There’s more photos than text, I think.

Brenner: Well, yeah, which makes sense – but there’s still a lot of text. More than you usually get with a coffee-table book. I’ve read some of it, too, and it’s not all, ah, vapid or anything like that. It goes – for all that the whole book is about surface, about objectification – it goes a bit below the surface, too.

Sylvia: Yeah?

Brenner: Yeah – like this part here, where Dita’s writing about lipstick.

Sylvia: Dita, huh? You’re on a first-name basis now? She’s coming over for beer and kippers later?

Brenner: Where Ms. Von Teese is talking about lipstick, okay? I mean, check this out: “The first lip paints were red. The five-thousand-year-old tomb of Shub-Ad at Ur contained one made of crushed red rocks. Ancient Egyptian men and women were equally as obsessed with rouging lips and cheeks before – and after – life and used a mixture of pulverized beetles, ants, and henna in small pots. Hindus reddened their lips and teeth with the betel leaf, a mild stimulant when chewed. Which really sounds a heck of a lot better than the mercuric sulfide used by Elizabethans to redden their pouts; not only was it poisonous, but it led to hair loss, sickness, and, finally, early death.”

Sylvia: Nice. So Dita wrote that?

Brenner: Well, her or Rose Apodaca. Whichever one was handling which sections, I don’t know. But there’s a lot of stuff like that in here.

Sylvia: Good historical context.

Brenner: Exactly.

Sylvia: But most of it’s beauty advice. Like all these sections talking about how she achieves her look, what she does, step-by-step, to turn herself into the stunning icon of beauty and style that the world of fashion so relentlessly adores.

Brenner: Yeah, and there’s profiles of other glamor-industry people in there, too. Movers and shakers from the world of fashion that she so relentlessly adores.

Sylvia: And other beauty icons.

Brenner: Yeah, like the greatest-hits-of-Hollywood-glamor kind of thing. You know: Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, that whole crowd.

Sylvia: Hedy Lamarr was a scientist, too, you know?

Brenner: I do know – I was just reading about that on Wikipedia. But I don’t think Your Beauty Mark goes into that part.

Sylvia: No, it’s more about surfaces, like you said, more about making yourself look good. Making your carcass look good.

Brenner: Exactly.

Sylvia: So, we have to –

Brenner: I like how you say that. “Carcass.”

Sylvia: You’re a goober. But, so, judging this thing by its intent … ?

Brenner: Is it a success?

Sylvia: Is it?

Brenner: Yeah, I think it is. I mean, if you’re into the whole glamor thing, right? If you like hearing about the life and times of fashion icons and so on, about the whole industry and bits of its history, and you like looking at photos of beautiful people –

Sylvia: Especially if they’re photos of Dita Von Teese.

Brenner: Yeah, her and all her glamorous friends and inspirations and so on. All these full-color, full-page spreads, perfectly shot and designed on thick glossy paper, big hardcover coffee-table book, just the kind of present you want to put under the Christmas tree of, like, your best gay friend?

Sylvia: Or just anybody who’s into the glamor thing, really. Like, maybe Angeliska?

Brenner: Oh, Angeliska – definitely!

Sylvia: Okay, then I think we’ve about covered it. So how about another cup of coffee for your hard-working friend here? C’mon, Brenner, chop-chop.