Girlhood in America, an Encyclopedia

The part about Annette picks up in the section on hair-styles:

Because the bouffant was frozen in place with hairspray, the aesthetic of this style was one of control. ...Mouseketeer Annerre Funicello epitomized this look. On an album cover for the soundtrack of her movie Beach Party [1963] Annette stands next to her personalized surfboard, apparently ready to hit the waves when the surf comes up.

The photograph did not reflect a scene from the film because Annette rarely surfed or even entered the water in her beach movies. Her hair, eye makeup, and figure had to keep their shape under all circumstances, never shifting, smearing, or wiggling despite water, wind and sand. At the same time that her body was controlled, it was also highly sexualized-cinched at the waist with her breasts artificially uplifted. She was erotically enticing in her snug suits and nylon supports, and she embodied the romantic and passionate promise of a perfect 1950's wife.

On the occasion of the release of her movie Back to the Beach [1987] Annette Funicello recalled her original role as Dee Dee in Beach Blanket Bingo [1965]. She noted: 'Oh, my God. When I look at those movies now and see my hair...It never moved. The wind would blow and every hair stayed in place. Even when I'd go into the water, my hair never got wet. We're not talking real life here.' If in her movies she ventured into the water, she emerged looking as if she had not left the shore. As Funicello's quote testifies, a girl's place was not in the water but on the beach, looking pretty and preparing lunch. Her fixed appearance signaled to the public that her whole on the domestic front was secure. She had found the perfect balance, her controlled hairstyle and artificially uplifted figure suggested that she was enticing and seductive and at the same time morally chaste and untouchable until the day of commitment. She embodied postwar domestic ideology from head to toe.


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