Tallulah Bankhead, Feminism, and Pubic Hair

These three subjects somehow have a connection

Tallulah Bankhead Used to Show Up at Parties Completely Naked

The well-documented actress of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, would often arrive at swank Hollywood events attended by the movie industry’s elite, wearing nothing but her birthday suit and a pair of heels. And everyone knew it was just Tallulah.

Rosemary Counter wrote about her Vanity Fair in May 25, 2021…

Bankhead had a signature party trick she pulled at all hours, at home and work and everywhere else. “Nudity was the most effective weapon in her arsenal of shock tactics,” writes Joel Lobenthal in Tallulah! Naked cartwheels, missing underpants, and stripping—she did them all for fun.

Tallulah Bankhead

While Tallulah and I have about as much in common as a tornado and a teacup, her twisting vortex of witticisms and sexuality often traced a path of downed power-lunches and overturned egos a mile wide across the Los Angeles basin.

After all, she did have Mae West to compete against at the time.

But where I approach conversations like a cup of bitter sardonicism, with endless refills and a cardboard sleeve to protect your feelings from getting burned, Tallulah would blast through the doors, walk through a crowd of people, and place her pink nipples and hairy-brown bush on display while nursing a martini and arguing the differences of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Where Mae West used curves and corny lines to raise eyebrows, Tallulah added refinements to nudity and sexuality to raise shlongs in the pants of Hollywood elites.

Tallulah’s Hairy Bush

What’s interesting is that girls in today’s Zoomer generation have moved away from shaving their pubes. They’re even letting their pits and leg hair grow, and not because fashion models are sprouting weeds from the cracks of their barely-there beach wear, or because boys are becoming girls and girls are becoming boys. Rather, girls are just questioning why hair (or the lack of) defines femininity.

And I would entirely agree.

What’s interesting is that women shaving pubes in the 1920s and 1930s was actually a thing. If there was body hair anywhere, girls were shaving it off. Gillette introduced the first “safety razor” for women, allowing girls to reveal more skin than ever before. For the first time in the United States, women could be valued for their physical beauty instead of their ability to clean a chicken.

But Tallulah wasn’t putting her naked body on display to be valued. Sporting a bush the size of Diana Ross’ afro was Tallulah’s way of making herself the elephant in the room that no one wanted to address. It wasn’t enough to shove her clit into the face of society’s elites; she made them choke on the hair too.

When I first learned about her, I found myself fascinated. I wanted to read everything I could find. At a time when women were rallying around first-wave feminism, Tallulah was pushing the limits of empowerment and emancipation in ways that made Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Sanger look like the June Cleavers and Carol Bradys of their time. When women were fighting for their voices to be heard, none were peeling off their clothes and forcing people to pay attention as Bankhead.

But was Tallulah doing all this to break the mold and define herself as the extreme definition of female empowerment, or was she doing this to be noticed, naughty, and nonconformist?

Biographies suggest the latter. Her father seemed to prefer her sister, causing Tallulah to go to extremes to get his attention and approval. And despite everything she did to get it, she never got it. It made her feel defective.

And I can relate to that. My dad was something of an elusive figure, even though he was very much in our lives early on. I say “our” because I have a younger brother. Dad was much more involved with Steven than I because Steven was a boy. And no matter what I did to be a “good girl” I could never get his approval. It frustrated me, and there were times I thought I was just not good enough. But it didn’t frustrate me to the point that it did for Tallulah. I mean for one, I grew up in a naturist family; we were already naked. And two, I still had Mom.

But my mom wasn’t exactly the wholesome example of a mother figure. As a naturist, she was more occupied with perfecting her body. She worked out on a treadmill, she stuck to low-carb diets, she made regular appointments with an esthetician, and unlike Tallulah, she did laser hair-removal on her body. Taking care of herself was more important than taking care of Steven and I.

There was a point in my teen years when I became so frustrated with my home life and school life, that I wanted to walk through the neighborhood naked and wander as far as the store about a mile away and see who cared enough to stop me. My parents had already divorced and my dad rarely saw us. My mom took a job at a restaurant, leaving Steven and I to ourselves in the evening. And by then, our reputation as nudists was already established in high school, attracting a lot of attention from boys and a lot of jealousy from girls, all of which caused me to withdraw and hide from everyone.

But, I never had the strength to pull off the Lady Godiva stunt.

Somehow, me being naked and Tallulah being naked were two completely different enigmas, even though we had some similarities in our youth. Even in her later years, she still craved attention. But here I am, wanting to hide from it.

Perhaps my mom is more like Tallulah, using nudity as a way to address a pain lurking deep down inside. But where Tallulah used her bush to show strength, Mom eliminated it completely to define beauty.

I often question myself if living the way I do has its roots in seeking attention. I don’t exactly hide in the van all day and all night the way Emily does. I feel the desire to venture through the wilderness in the nude, walking away up to a few miles at times, convincing myself that if someone else happens to cross my path, I would just not care and act as if I’m not worried in the least. Yet, when I do hear or see someone approaching, I still cower and hide.

But, the feeling I get from being naked outside, deep in the wild, immersed in nature, energizes me and connects me to this Earth in ways I cannot fully explain. It’s worth the risk of geting seen, and if I am seen by others, I have to tell myself if Tallulah could get away with it, so can I.

I still admire her for having the strength to thrust herself nude into a room full of tuxedos and evening gowns and own it with a cigarette and martini. I’m sure she was called all sort of names popular in that day, “harlot”, “tramp”, et al, but maybe that’s the acknowlegement she was seeking. It never seemed to have hurt her career.

Every naturist has a reason for living this lifestyle. It’s not always just feeling the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze. Each naturist came into this with a different story, and gets something different out of it. We’re not all the same animal.