Ten years after the death of Bettie Page, the world’s most famous pinup girl, a new book co-authored by Tori Rodriguez shines light on the sex symbol’s life after retirement.
Bettie Page: The Lost Years features never-before-seen images of and letters written by Page. Rodriguez, who was managing the late star’s blogs and social media, was introduced to Page’s nephew Rob Brem, who was in possession of the historical artifacts.
Page maintained a loving and close relationship with her sister Goldie, for whom the letters were meant. Goldie kept those letters and personal images of her and famous sister after all of these years.
“Ron had talked about that there was a bit of a rivalry there in terms of modeling. He said Bettie would get a bit jealous when photographers would pay more attention to Goldie on shoots. And that Goldie was jealous of Bettie’s growing popularity in the modeling world. But overall, they were very supportive of each other.” Rodriguez told Fox News.
In private, Page suffered from mental illness and depression as well as issues with her body image, Rodriguez explains. “She would plainly state that ‘I’ve been so depressed I ate everything in sight.’ Things like that. So she’s clearly stating that she was an emotional eater. Another thing I wonder about is antipsychotic drugs are very well-known to have weight gain as a side-effect.”
Page died in 2008 at the age of 85 after she suffered a heart attack while fighting pneumonia.
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