It's All in the Eyes

Can a pin-up artist also be a feminist? Olivia de Berardinis belives that she finds empowerment in her sexy nudes.

She can't remember a time when she did not draw women. Girlhood inspiration came from the Playboys her father, an aeronautical engineer, would leave around the house, and from her mother, whose larger-than-life personality, yen for fantasy and lack of inhibition included a fondness for trying to impersonate Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn. Her mother also had a penchant for prancing through the house undressed if no visitors were around.

Olivia says the extroversion genes apparently bypassed her. One reason she paints fabulously sexy women is to vicariously inhabit their bodies and their attitudes...Art historian Maria Elena Buszek, author of ``Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture,'' thinks Olivia's paintings celebrate women rather than turn them into sex objects: Her subjects, says the Kansas City Art Institute professor, ``are very much in control, owning their own sexuality in a way that doesn't necessarily need the approval or context provided by a male viewer.''

``For me,'' says Olivia, ``it's all in the eyes. Otherwise it becomes just body parts.''

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