John Willie & the Media Machine
Miss Meatface is a performance artist and Fetish photographer who constantly delights the Fetish community with calendars, prints and photography books showcasing her work. Like many Fetish artists, she looks to the past for inspiration and reimagines archetypes from the Fetish idiom. The 1950s glamour of Bizarre Magazine and its editor John Willie (John Coutts) have influenced the artist in particular, who’s amassed an impressive collection of vintage Fetish catalogues and periodicals.
Although it only ran for 13 years, Bizarre majorly influenced fetish artistry and succeeded in bringing the flair of European Fetish clubs to conservative America. It inspired a number of copycats throughout the '60s including Bizarrette, Bizarre Life, and Bizarre Illustrated. While modern creatives use fetish to draw attention, Willie used fashion to hide fetish and bypass the country’s strict censorship laws. The interweaving of fetish and fashion mimicked the erotic styling of previous periodicals like La vie Parisienne, London Life and Bits of Fun. Each illustration eroticised the figure’s curves and lauded the hourglass figure promoted in Christian Dior's 1947 'New Look'.
In this clip, Miss Meatface recalls when she was a young girl and first encountered Bizarre, and why the magazine still resonates with her today.
Click here to watch the clip.
“As a teenager, my dad and I would go down to Berkeley all the time, which is in the North Bay of California. We went to a bookstore one day, and there was The Best of Bizarre Magazine by Taschen. There were beautiful pinup illustrations without arms, ballet boots and pony girls. It was exquisitely glamorous but also really bizarre. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is me. This is absolutely me.” ~ Miss Meatface
FEATURING
Miss Meatface. Performance Artist & Fetish Photographer
The Complete collection of Bizarre Magazine
John Willie. Taschen
Miss Meatface Photographs
Miss Meatface
Fashion illustration
EJ Nègre. Illustrator
Cover image
Miss Meatface