(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-18 10:51

She was invited to dance with The Pussycat Dolls, who started off as a burlesque dance troupe, alongside celebrity guest stars Charlize Theron, Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera.

In corset and stockings, her waspish waist and retro make-up heralded a return to old-fashioned pin-up glamour.

Heather Sweet was banished for ever and in her place stood Dita Von Teese.

Dita's 2005 wedding to Manson, (real name Brian Warner), covered by American Vogue, appeared therefore to be the cherry on the cake and so it came as a shock when they divorced after just a year.

They had seemed the picture of alternative bliss (Manson would paint his wife and write her poetry), but having been together six years Dita filed for divorce, proclaiming herself "happy to have the drugs out of my life".

Dita now appears to be pretty happy playing the proverbial field.

She insists: "I'm on the market! I'm having fun being single and for probably the first time in my life I don't have a boyfriend.

"I truly feel the world is my oyster. I'd spent a lot of years with a man who was a hermit and that was frustrating as in some ways I was more alone while in the relationship."

She says: "I want children only if I'm with the right partner, and I'm not desperate to have a child. I enjoy my life and I enjoy having my friends' children around. Not having my own doesn't make me any less of a woman."

One can't help admiring a woman who's pulled herself up by her corset straps and come from nowhere to become a walking, talking brand.

Her current incarnation as the face of Wonderbra is a dream come true, "I've always wanted to do something with lingerie and it was important for the finished product to be something I would wear myself."

She has her detractors, of course; she does, after all, remove most of her clothes on stage, "and a lot of people think that what I do is anti-feminist", she admits.

"But most of my fans are women and my whole thing has been about finding sexual power rather than abusing it."

She still claims to be shy, "and that always confuses people because they say, well, how can you be shy and still be up on stage doing the kind of dances you do? But most performers are shy and I still go to parties and feel nervous talking to people".

At 35, she must wonder how long she can carry on burlesquing.

"If you'd asked me at 20, I just wouldn't have comprehended the fact that I'd still be doing it at 35. But I'm in better shape and better at what I do now, so I'm just going to evolve appropriately rather than say a time when I should stop."

With that, she heads off to do her "many errands".

If she's off to the shops, one hopes that a comfy tracksuit and trainers will never find their place on her shopping list.

 

 

   1 2 3 4 5   

   1 2 3 4 5