{"id":3597,"date":"2013-04-23T00:26:12","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T00:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.msnaughty.com\/blog\/?p=3597"},"modified":"2013-04-23T00:26:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T00:26:12","slug":"suspenders-and-the-pout-farewell-chrissy-amphlett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/23\/suspenders-and-the-pout-farewell-chrissy-amphlett\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspenders And The Pout: Farewell, Chrissy Amphlett"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wv-34w8kGPM\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday brought the sad news that Christina Amphlett, lead singer of the Divinyls, had died, succumbing to a combination of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. My initial reaction was shock that there was any illness and then sadness that she was gone. She was only 53. When you&#8217;re about to tick over to 40 like me, 53 is <em>way too fucking young<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I want to write about Chrissy because she was something of a feminist, sexual icon. Not just to Australians but to people all over the world, thanks to the ground-breaking single <em>I Touch Myself<\/em>, one of the first songs to openly broach the topic of female masturbation. For that alone, we should be thankful..<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>To those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, Chrissy was also a symbol of rebellous, angry sexuality. Her on-stage uniform of ultra-short school dress, ripped stockings and suspenders, combined with a lethal pout, was an in-your-face example of raw sex and pure attitude. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/entertainment\/music\/defiant-performer-refused-to-play-by-the-rules-20130422-2iar5.html\">This piece in the SMH<\/a> talks about how Chrissy was one of the few women in an incredibly male-dominated music industry and how she held her own.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Amphlett was dangerous and fearless and confounding because she didn&#8217;t follow the rules.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a kid, I was both mesmerized and repelled by her. I knew that suspenders were <em>rude<\/em> &#8211; my illicit viewings of porn magazines had taught me that &#8211; so seeing them on Countdown at 6pm on the ABC was a bit of a shock -but also incredibly sexy (and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yAzIIG9DFb0\">Hot Gossip<\/a> dance troupe on Kenny Everett cemented that fascination for me).<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, she wasn&#8217;t a <em>nice girl<\/em>. She never smiled at the camera, she took up space on the stage, she danced in a crazy way. Her songs were loud and wild, her hair was messed. She squatted over grates so the camera could look up her dress. It went against all the things I&#8217;d been taught about how women should behave and my pre-teen self was scandalized.<\/p>\n<p>Now, of course, I look at Chrissy and can only admire her stage presence. That woman knew how to exude power and strength at the same time that she exuded sex.<\/p>\n<p>I recommend reading this piece: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/arts\/music\/how-chrissy-amphlett-decided-she-was-the-monster-australia-needed\/story-fn9d2mxu-1226626142284\">How Chrissy Amphlett decided she was the monster that Australia needed<\/a>. A great first-hand account from Chrissy about how and why she developed the school girl persona. Some quotes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I cherished that schoolgirl. She did people&#8217;s heads in. Being her gave me a freedom I&#8217;d never known. I owned that stage &#8211; and, whether they liked it or not, the audience in front of it. Up there I could do as I pleased. I could be as frenzied, demented and scary as I wanted to be. It was as if I were a marionette whose strings were being jerked by malevolent goblins&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There was something about my body and my sexuality, my physicality, that threatened audiences. Looking as I did made my performances more confronting. Mine was not a safe body, not a doll&#8217;s body. It was real. I had large breasts, I had long legs, and though small I was fit and powerful. My fringe, my pout, my outfit, my voice &#8230; the uniform, the threatening props&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I could explore my emotions and my sexual fantasies onstage and in turn the audience explored theirs through me, although I never consciously used sex to manipulate an audience response. my sexuality is tied up with expressing myself through music, which is connected to the spirit. When I performed, sexuality naturally burst out. I don&#8217;t apologise. Evoking sex and danger is better than evoking boredom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Farewell, Chrissy.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday brought the sad news that Christina Amphlett, lead singer of the Divinyls, had died. She was an icon of angry sexuality. <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/23\/suspenders-and-the-pout-farewell-chrissy-amphlett\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-popular-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}