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!
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women
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Part of the Variety View segment, this antiquated and offensive short aims to keep women in their place by joking about their rotundness and their men's displeasure. The narrator follows several women who are overweight and offers various advice and instructions on how to thin down. With various footage of women engaging in “weight-reducing” activities, like passive exercise machines, a treadmill, exercise, steam baths, even a hilarious bit on facial yoga. Constant juxtaposition between the fat woman who resorts to machines and the thin beautiful women who engage in physical exercise for weight loss. Overall, the narrator is poking fun at the ridiculous methods which women will resort to achieve beauty. Image
Tex Avery's sensual adaptation liberates its characters from their Disney-style forest and slaps them in the middle of swanky Manhattan. Grandma's a nymphomaniac swinger, and her rustic cottage home a hip penthouse pad. Little Red has become a red-hot singer-stripper; the Wolf is a model of lupine lechery; and the forest is supplanted by a big-city nightclub as the enchanted place of forbidden sexuality. The Wolf tries to pull the old Red Riding Hood gag in order to meet up with Little Red, but Grandma has other ideas. Image
Cindy is sad, she's all alone now that her best girlfriends have all left town after graduation to study in their chosen fields (you know, secretarial and teaching of course). But Cindy doesn't have a career path, just a great hairdo. That is until Cindy meets with an older friend who's having a fabulous time in Beauty School. Suddenly, the path becomes clear, and Cindy enrolls the very next day. See what she learns to make every woman as beautiful as she can.
Curator's Biography
Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009.
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