S06.E06: Thrown For A Loop By Betty Boop

[Stats Queen]

21 hours ago, Sugar said:

 

I feel like the age on this forum must run a little old with the clutching of pearls at things that "just aren't done" in fashion. It think it bears repeating that what people wear in magazines, photoshoots, album covers and movie premiers aren't what you and I are going to wear to our office party or brunch with Karen

 

Sadly, I run a little old. It was the fishnetty see through of the skirt that bothered me. 

 

Also, Alyssa is gorgeous with an awesome figure, so I’m with others - what’s going on with letting her be on the runway like that.

[slothgirl]

3 hours ago, Miss Ruth said:

I couldn't stand Josh on his first appearance.  The way he treated everyone, especially Bert and Becky, was atrocious.  I hated to see him appearing on "All Stars" the first time but I was pleasantly surprised at the changes in his personality.  The same goes for Ken.  I really like both of them now.  Ken and Helen had a couple of "knock-down, drag-outs" but seem to have gotten past that, and now seem to be friends.  I have often wondered if the producers, or someone at the show, have had talks with them about their behavior.

I would expect that the last thing the producers want is a reduction of DRAMA. Although since it was getting dangerous for the crew with that one guy (Sancho?) and the incident with Ken resulted in hot irons crashing about, maybe they wised up and realized that they needed to set limits

[ratgirlagogo]

On 2/8/2018 at 11:33 PM, RedheadZombie said:

I had to snicker when Not Tim Gunn warned one of the designers to beware of going trampy.  I thought trampy was Betty Boop's look.  Not many women were going around with their panties showing back in the day.  She's a bimbo.

No, that's her boyfriend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbo_(Fleischer_Studios)

http://bettyboop.wikia.com/wiki/Bimbo

On 2/8/2018 at 11:45 PM, hoodooznoodooz said:

Isn't the concept of Betty Boop offensive and insulting? In Wikipedia, they describe her as combining in appearance the childish with the sophisticated -- a large, round baby face, with big eyes and a nose like a button. And there's a reference to her being a sex symbol. 

She's a flapper.  Yes it's an antique term, and her heyday was the 1930's (the films were all made between 1930 and 1939) - the precode 1930's especially that celebrated women's right to say YES to sex when they wanted it, and NO when they didn't.   She wasn't a doormat and she wasn't a Disney Girl. Her very ethnicity was unclear - Jewish, Italian, Black  - but urban for sure.  She was a creation of hip New Yorkers who drew wildly surreal artwork and scored their cartoons with hip music from people like Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.   For the kind of annoying people in the 60's and 70's who believed they were unprecedented  groundbreaking hipsters - they learned by watching these cartoons that grandma and grandpa had enjoyed recreational drugs and fucking as much as they did.  Thus Betty Boop made it onto the Midnite Movie circuit along with Magical Mystery Tour, Reefer Madness, et. al.  On the strength of all that a marketing juggernaut was launched starting in the 70's as I remember and as some have said probably a lot of people know her from that who might not have seen the cartoons - Fabio mentioned having a Betty Boop clock with a skirt that ticked back and forth - much like the Felix the Cat clocks you can still buy (speaking of antique cartoon characters).

The Fleischer cartoons all were sold into TV syndication in the mid 50's and they've been all over the TV landscape ever since.  I saw them growing up on the local stations that played all that older RKO material, like the Little Rascals, W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, the Astaire Rogers musicals, etc.   AMC was running them 20 years ago when it still ran classic movies.  While Helen is (ahem) NOT a favorite of mine I don't doubt she might have watched them with her grandma, especially growing up in a family of artists.

I like Josh more this season than I ever believed possible. He still has the humor and bitchiness but a little experience, I'm guessing, has allowed him to dial down the arrogance.   I'm glad he won this challenge because I think he's the only one who enjoyed it.  I especially liked that he made his entire outfit in black and white - because OF COURSE Betty should be in black and white.  And the way he made her head's outline - again her ethnicity is, appropriately, open to interpretation.

Edited February 11, 2018 by ratgirlagogo

[honeywest]

Betty Boop was originally an anthropomorphic poodle. When she was turned into a human flapper, she kept her dog boyfriend, Bimbo, and acquired Jewish parents. (In the cartoon “Minnie the Moocher,” they speak Yiddish.)

Many of the Betty Boop and other Fleischer Studios cartoons are on YouTube and are well worth watching for their great music (and their sly digs at Disney).

[Beden]

14 hours ago, Stats Queen said:

I feel like the age on this forum must run a little old with the clutching of pearls at things that "just aren't done" in fashion. It think it bears repeating that what people wear in magazines, photoshoots, album covers and movie premiers aren't what you and I are going to wear to our office party or brunch with Karen

 

with respect, I think we're all aware of this. What's done or not done is clearly a matter of opinion and subjective but (you knew there would be a 'but' here, right?) there are some things I simply find aesthetically displeasing. Granny panties shining out under a long semi-see through skirt,  happens to be one of them. JMO.

[enoughcats]

12 hours ago, honeywest said:

Many of the Betty Boop and other Fleischer Studios cartoons are on YouTube and are well worth watching for their great music (and their sly digs at Disney).

Darned if you haven't made Betty Boop interesting!  Well done.

[Elizzikra]

Quote

Im not sure why everyone is hating on Betty Boop

I don't have a problem with Betty Boop as a cartoon character. A fictional character - not an actual person. I thought it was a ridiculous challenge. I didn't like Miss Piggy or Marge Simpson either. I especially hated Miss Piggy as a judge - c'mon - it was whoever was voicing her acting as a judge. Voicing a puppet doesn't make one any sort of expert on fashion. 

I do like this a little better since it was to add to a Betty Boop collection being developed for Torrid though I still think it would have been better to have used plus sized models and incorporated that into the challenge. 

I liked Josh's top, but not the diaper and fishnet skirt. None of the things I liked about his top (the color, the beading detail, etc) made it into the final design though. They just kept the graphic and slapped it on a cheap cotton t-shirt. Shame.

[dleighg]

1 minute ago, Elizzikra said:

None of the things I liked about his top (the color, the beading detail, etc) made it into the final design though. They just kept the graphic and slapped it on a cheap cotton t-shirt.

exactly. The bead details at neck and sleeve made his T-shirt special; they put the design on a thin cotton T.

[ichbin]

4 hours ago, Elizzikra said:

liked Josh's top, but not the diaper and fishnet skirt. None of the things I liked about his top (the color, the beading detail, etc) made it into the final design though. They just kept the graphic and slapped it on a cheap cotton t-shirt. Shame.

I'm actually surprised that Torrid didn't choose to make something based on that skirt.  I could totally see someone in the real world wearing a skirt like that over leggings.  

[jhlipton]

On 2/10/2018 at 5:57 PM, ratgirlagogo said:

She's a flapper.  Yes it's an antique term, and her heyday was the 1930's (the films were all made between 1930 and 1939) - the precode 1930's especially that celebrated women's right to say YES to sex when they wanted it, and NO when they didn't.   She wasn't a doormat and she wasn't a Disney Girl. Her very ethnicity was unclear - Jewish, Italian, Black  - but urban for sure.  She was a creation of hip New Yorkers who drew wildly surreal artwork and scored their cartoons with hip music from people like Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.   For the kind of annoying people in the 60's and 70's who believed they were unprecedented  groundbreaking hipsters - they learned by watching these cartoons that grandma and grandpa had enjoyed recreational drugs and fucking as much as they did.  Thus Betty Boop made it onto the Midnite Movie circuit along with Magical Mystery Tour, Reefer Madness, et. al.  On the strength of all that a marketing juggernaut was launched starting in the 70's as I remember and as some have said probably a lot of people know her from that who might not have seen the cartoons - Fabio mentioned having a Betty Boop clock with a skirt that ticked back and forth - much like the Felix the Cat clocks you can still buy (speaking of antique cartoon characters).

The Fleischer cartoons all were sold into TV syndication in the mid 50's and they've been all over the TV landscape ever since. 

I'm glad he won this challenge because I think he's the only one who enjoyed it.  I especially liked that he made his entire outfit in black and white - because OF COURSE Betty should be in black and white.  And the way he made her head's outline - again her ethnicity is, appropriately, open to interpretation.

All of this.  I remember seeing Minnie the Moocher when I was a teen (late 70's or so), along with the other Fleisher Bros cartoons (Popeye was one of them, hence the weird video).  My wife is in her early 50's and loves Betty Boop.

Betty is not a "bimbo".  She dresses the way she wants and doesn't care about puritanical poo-bahs trying to "slut-shame" her.  And she introduced me to Cab Calloway so that has to count for something!  Hidey hidey hidey ho!

[Diane Mars]

1 hour ago, jhlipton said:

Betty is not a "bimbo".  She dresses the way she wants and doesn't care about puritanical poo-bahs trying to "slut-shame" her.  And she introduced me to Cab Calloway so that has to count for something!  Hidey hidey hidey ho!

For me, viewed from my small and far away Switzerland, I always saw her as one of the 1st feminist in history !!!!

[cheewhiz]

7 hours ago, jhlipton said:

nd she introduced me to Cab Calloway so that has to count for something!  Hidey hidey hidey ho!

I love Cab Calloway although I was introduced to him via The Blues Brothers!

The challenge sucked as did the directions and most of the designs.  

[Locutus]

And then they trot out Popeye, for no reason whatsoever. I thought maybe he was going to give them an additional challenge, but no, just time filler????

[Empress1]

On 2/10/2018 at 1:14 AM, Jazzhands said:

My husband and I are the same age as Alyssa, and it makes him crazy when I watch this show.  He says she was his first TV crush and he can’t understand why the stylists on this show seem to hate her so much and pick the frumpiest, least flattering outfits and hairstyles for her.  

Alyssa was known for being sexy! She's posed nude at least once, she was a vampy character on Melrose Place. Even on Who's the Boss, she wasn't sexy (she was what, ten?) but as she aged, she blossomed, to use the word my grandmother would use. I follow her on Twitter and she's very political, often traveling to districts to volunteer for special elections. She looks better - sexier! - in jeans and candidate t-shirts than she does here. I don't know what's going on here but more often than not, she looks stumpy and dowdy.

I'm an old millennial and I've never seen a Betty Boop cartoon. I know who she is, of course, but I don't know what Helen was watching at her grandmother's house on Saturday mornings. I hated this challenge. Torrid is for plus-sized teens so I think they should have used plus-sized models. Josh's shit is ugly (I've said it before, even during his first season, and I'll say it again: I think he just has bad taste), although I can see why it won since it was Torrid. Like, Torrid isn't re-creating Stanley's very Town and Country look - it's not their aesthetic, and Torrid is more downmarket. I would have moved Anthony higher since he was working with the Betty Boop hourglass shape, but again, his would have been more expensive to reproduce.

Edited February 13, 2018 by Empress1

[slensam]

2 hours ago, Empress1 said:

Alyssa was known for being sexy! She's posed nude at least once, she was a vampy character on Melrose Place. Even on Who's the Boss, she wasn't sexy (she was what, ten?) but as she aged, she blossomed, to use the word my grandmother would use. 

As an aging male Gen X'er who "watched" "Embrace of the Vampire" more than once in the 90's I can attest to this. 

[BarneySays]

On 2/8/2018 at 9:47 PM, Fiero425 said:

I was never into Betty even when I was a kid! I had more of a rapport with Marge since I started watching the Simpsons from the beginning when FOX became a network! ;-)

I would highly recommend you watch the pre-code betty boop cartoons.  They are funny and racy and often include music by great jazz/blues legends.  They're pretty phenomenal. 

[BarneySays]

On 2/9/2018 at 3:07 AM, qtpye said:

So lets make a young youthful look about an eighty year old cartoon that represents an outdated almost pedo fetish of juvenile womanhood?  Go Betty Boop!

Actually, Betty Boop is a reflection of the Vargas look, very popular at the time.  Also, her look was not "pedo" or juvenile.  It was a popular look.  I suggest you google a picture of toby wing, a berkeley girl.  Her face is very close to betty.  It's odd to think of a cartoon with such a voluptuous figure as "juvenile womanhood."  Her character is also very Mae West- no one could ever call Mae West juvenile.   

[qtpye]

3 hours ago, BarneySays said:

Actually, Betty Boop is a reflection of the Vargas look, very popular at the time.  Also, her look was not "pedo" or juvenile.  It was a popular look.  I suggest you google a picture of toby wing, a berkeley girl.  Her face is very close to betty.  It's odd to think of a cartoon with such a voluptuous figure as "juvenile womanhood."  Her character is also very Mae West- no one could ever call Mae West juvenile.   

From Human Right's Article: https://www.crowdh.com/sexist-cartoons-princesses-patriarchy-pedophilia/

Quote

Betty Boop was always designed to be a “sexy character” and has therefore been featured in some questionable sexist cartoons, some of which have been banned in the past. What makes her very sexualized appearance especially concerning is the fact, that Betty is usually portrayed as an underage girl. Her age is not officially fixed, but subtextual, she has described herself as 16 years old in one cartoon, while blowing out exactly 14 birthday candles on another occasion. And as any underage girl, she has to watch out to not become the victim of pervy sex predators because what else.

[jhlipton]

On 2/12/2018 at 7:07 PM, Locutus said:

And then they trot out Popeye, for no reason whatsoever. I thought maybe he was going to give them an additional challenge, but no, just time filler????

They were both popularized in Fleischer Brothers cartoons, so there is a connection, however tenuous.

9 hours ago, BarneySays said:

Actually, Betty Boop is a reflection of the Vargas look, very popular at the time.

Vargas became popular in the 40's i n Esquire magazine, and blossomed from 1959 to 1974 in Playboy (which is where I discovered him).  So if anything, Vargas is a reflection of Boop.

[Beden]

21 hours ago, Empress1 said:

I'm an old millennial and I've never seen a Betty Boop cartoon. I know who she is, of course,

I suspect that to really know Betty you have to be at least an old Baby Boomer. I know we had the chance to catch her on Saturday morning cartoons. I did, thought they were stupid, but hey, that's just me. And I was like 7. I was a huge fan of Fractured Fairy Tales (part of Rock and Bullwinkle); they were wonderfully twisted takes on the classics. Oh, and Mr Peabody, Sherman and the Wayback Machine.

[Wandering Snark]

Late to post but did anyone else think Alyssa's hair style for the runway was a nod to The Grinch??

Once I thought it I couldn't un-see it:

[dleighg]

I thought it was an obvious nod to Betty Boop herself!

[Jobiska]

Thanks for all the background on Betty Boop--I can appreciate the historical contribution, but I can't get over her squeaky voice and the face that both her chin and the top of her head look like butts.  Not to mention her mouth is on her chin.  She was not made more attractive to me by being created in life-size 3D form in the workroom.  

I can't get over that Merline is still there with all those wonky seams.   At least Josh's, taste level aside, are always well-constructed!  

[Beaner]

My public service plug for Torrid: when my daughter was in her late teens/early twenties, she gained a lot of weight due to a medication she was on and was feeling very bad about herself.  Torrid was a lifesaver. They had very trendy & stylish clothes, lingerie, and accessories, and somehow made it empowering, celebrating plus sized young ladies. My daughter volunteered to model at an in-store fashion show, a very fun event in which the models were referred to as "sex kittens." And why not?!  

[Wings]

@Beaner.  I love your avatar! At one point I had all B Klibans books, only 2 survived 3 moves. 

[Calamity Jane]

On 2/10/2018 at 12:53 PM, Miss Ruth said:

  The same goes for Ken.  I really like both of them now.  Ken and Helen had a couple of "knock-down, drag-outs" but seem to have gotten past that, and now seem to be friends.  I have often wondered if the producers, or someone at the show, have had talks with them about their behavior.

 

I have always been pretty convinced that Ken got some professional help after his disastrous first appearance, and very likely medication for whatever was making him so erratic and impulsive.  It's been very nice to see how much his behavior and general aura have improved since then.  He has an entirely different energy now.

[Beaner]

@Wings

Thank you! I had a couple of his books many years ago. I'll have to look out for them. It would bring back happy memories of happy times. 

[Vermicious Knid]

I'm pretty sure Ken said when he came back on, the last All Stars?, that he had gone through anger management. It seems to have worked.

Torrid is, in fact, Hot Topic's plus size store.

Burger King owns Tim Horton's.

Oh, the actual show? Most of the outfits were terrible. This was a silly challenge, but not any sillier than making clothing out of balls.

[Gothish520]

On 2/16/2018 at 8:50 PM, Beaner said:

My public service plug for Torrid: when my daughter was in her late teens/early twenties, she gained a lot of weight due to a medication she was on and was feeling very bad about herself.  Torrid was a lifesaver. They had very trendy & stylish clothes, lingerie, and accessories, and somehow made it empowering, celebrating plus sized young ladies. My daughter volunteered to model at an in-store fashion show, a very fun event in which the models were referred to as "sex kittens." And why not?!  

 

18 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

Torrid is, in fact, Hot Topic's plus size store.

Torrid used to be Hot Topic's plus-sized line but actually bears no resemblance to it now. It is still owned by the same parent company but branched off from Hot Topic back in 2015. HT still has that punk/goth vibe whereas Torrid is geared more towards the average teen/young adult. They have some cute things. I can't speak to the quality, but the prices aren't Walmart cheap, that's for sure. I think it's great that there's a store with cute, stylish clothes for the plus-sized young woman.

Edited February 24, 2018 by Gothish520

[JeezumCrow]

I’m in my early 30s and I’ve loved Betty Boop since I was a child. I had at least two VHS tapes with her cartoons (“Swat The Fly,” which also features Pudgy, was my favorite). I dressed as her for Halloween twice. 

 

That said, I didn’t think any of the looks captured her essence, and I hated her voice - it sounded like a bad impression. And count me in the “Why was Popeye even there?!” Party. 

[millennium]

On 2/10/2018 at 4:00 AM, English Teacher said:

She may have lost her “gorgeous”;intro, but Isaac told her that she was “too pretty”recently.  So it hasn’t gone away completely.   Lol. 

I think a big part of her cachet went out the window thanks to the disgusting deeds of her husband Harvey Weinstein.   Does anyone believe the savvy and beautiful Georgina Chapman was entirely ignorant of what was going on for years?    

I have a visceral dislike of Josh McKinley.   I hate "bitchy queen" personas to begin with, but he's also mean.   I have never doubted it was he who stole a fellow designer's money at Mood during his first season on Project Runway.   If he fails here, perhaps he has a future doing product endorsements for Sharpie.  

My problem with his design, if you can call it a design, is that he sought to emulate the famous "I ♥ NY" (I Love New York) rebus.   But Josh's stupid shirt strung together the letter "I" with an image of Betty Boop's hair, and the name Betty.    Thus proclaiming to the world, "I Hair Betty."   It made no sense at all.

Edited February 26, 2018 by millennium