Bettie Page Dies At 85

Former model and Playboy Playmate Bettie Page has died at the age of 85.

The controversial model was one of the first ever Playboy Playmates and raised a few eyebrows with her fetish modeling work that was considered quite extreme for the 1950s.

By the 1960's she decided to become more Christian, and less modelly. She volunteered to become a Christian missionary in Africa, but was rejected by her church because she was a divorcee.

She disappeared from the spotlight in the 1960s and didn't really resurface until the 90s. Sadly she was exploited by management and found herself missing a lot of money she should have been entitled to from her work, leaving her as she put it 'penniless and infamous.'

In 1993 she fired her useless agency and signed with one that was able to pursue money she was owed, and gave her some more financial security. In recent years she had hired lawyers to recover money being made from the use of her likeness.

In many ways it's a sad tale of a woman who was screwed over by the system. But in other ways it is a positive story of a woman who refused to be bound by the oppression of women in that era.

Her life was chronicled in the move The Notorious Bettie Page, although some critics claimed the movie failed to really explore the depth of the real Bettie Page.