Raquel Welch Takes on Porn Culture, Feminist Snobs

Raquel Welch is a lot more than a voluptuous beauty in a furry bikini. The former pinup is a thoughtful, intelligent woman who holds surprisingly conservative views on sex, women and the current state of our culture. 'Beyond the Cleavage,' which recently came out in paperback, is part memoir part advice tome -- in it, the 70-year-old sex symbol discusses her iconic movies ('One Million Years B.C.' and 'The Three Musketeers' for starters) and is also incredibly honest about her shortcomings as a mother.

Words aren't minced in PopEater's chat with Welch, who acknowledges her children paid a hefty price for her career choices and laments the "vulgar approach to women today" in society. She says, "I think there's too much homage being paid to pole dancers, let's put it that way." She also talks about about being shunned by the feminist community in the '70s ("They didn't consider me worthy") and the humility that her Christian faith has brought to her.

I was sort of surprised to read how conservative your views are on sexuality and relationships.
Yes, I am. I guess you could call it conservative. I think there is a lost art to being a woman. I was very fortunate to be born when I was because I was able to experience so much of what happened in the cultural revolution of the 60's and how women got a lot more social and economic freedom and were able to really pursue a profession without being considered strange and you could also attempt at least to have children and it was very ambitious. I thought that was all great in theory but I lived some of that and I made some of those mistakes and fell prey to some of those pitfalls. Now I'm old enough to look back and see the attitudes that I see today I find we haven't moved ahead 100%. We made some strides as women but we've also lost something in translation.

It's not like I feel I'm perfect in any way. In fact it's the opposite because of my mistakes. Like having children very early and getting swept up in romantic ideals and physical attraction to my first husband. I mean I was desperately in love with him but we couldn't make a life together but I already had two children in tow and I couldn't stop myself from wanting to pursue a career and I felt like if I didn't I would carry a resentment my whole life for not having followed my impulses.

That's a common thing. Success had to come with great sacrifices.
Later I had to acknowledge that there was a price to pay that not only I had to pay but my children had to pay and that was a bitter pill when it came along. I had to realize I had a lot of making retribution and making things better and healing old wounds and compensating in a sense and trying to make some of this stuff right because I simply wasn't there many times when those little children needed me. But I told myself at the time that I was being a creature of that period that I was doing exactly what a woman of my day did.

So, do you think a woman can have it all?
I don't think anyone can have it all.

I meant a career and family. I know it's sexist because a man never gets asked that question.
I'm not really sure that you can. Those women who have better success at it usually when their children are very young, they take a sabbatical from their career and devote that time to bonding and then that carries it through perhaps to the next stage. I never did that. I think there is this other problem that comes up when the mother is bigger than life. I think it does create all kinds of reactions in your son and daughter. It throws their life off a little bit.

You write about your romantic nature.
I have this romantic part to my nature and maybe that's why I find it difficult when I see this kind of vulgar approach to women today. I think there's too much homage being paid to pole dancers, let's put it that way.

That's perfect!
I mean I'm all for body beautiful but my God there's a head attached. Can we use that too? Come on girls!

You say sex is not the whole enchilada.
Yeah, that's what I feel. I think sex is held up too much. Last night I couldn't fall asleep and I turned on the TV and found 'Peyton Place.' I'm looking at this thing and of course their comment was that people were too repressed and to an extent yeah you could say that. But out of this apparently horrific repression came Elvis, Marilyn, Jimmy Dean, Marlon Brando. I guess somewhere ...

Repression works!
Yeah, maybe. It really doesn't kill your libido let's put it that way or kill your sensuality. I think if anything nowadays, everybody has OD'd on porn. I was talking to my trainer this morning and I said I don't know, do all these girls strip their ZZ bare? I mean they're all busy waxing everything off.

I think it's to make them look like little girls.
That and the standard is set by porn because that's what all the porn stars do. Everyone is steeped in porn. Does every housewife have to look like some apparition? It's all gotten so superficial. I'm sitting here talking to you with my New Balance sneakers on, work out pants and a sweatshirt and no makeup. I don't put myself together everyday like that. It's nonsense and yet that's what people are holding out for.

You were a little miffed at the feminist movement in the early 70's.
It was very clear that they didn't like me. They didn't consider me worthy. They dismissed me as a sex object and they felt they knew all about me and my life. I thought isn't that interesting because I felt like I had struggled pretty hard. I had gone out on my own with no connections, no financial backing with my two kids in tow and I managed to make my way and they couldn't know any of that but they weren't looking very closely. I guess at that time with the image I had I could understand it but I didn't love the idea that women love to look down their nose at other women. I guess we are all uncharitable to others when we're making judgments. That may be part of human nature but I don't know what I would do without my women friends, the world would be a bleak place. I think we should try and be a little more charitable to each other and try to be a little more understanding. It isn't a cakewalk to be born female yet it can be so glorious, so entertaining and so exciting.

Was there a movie where you weren't pressured to take your clothes off?
I know! Yeah there was a lot of that. I felt like I was born in the wrong time. What about all the heat that used to come off all those black and white films? I never saw Marilyn nude in a film, maybe the last one that nobody saw. I think it was kind of more interesting.

Ever look at the poster from 'One Million Years B.C.' and say, 'Wow look at that girl!'
It does sort of make me smile because of course I don't feel like her. There was a disconnect between my image and being a single mother with two small toddlers waiting at the bottom of that mountain where I was filming. Here I was at the top of that mountain where I was filming looking like, I don't know, a primitive female goddess. It was what people were thinking of me and fantasizing and projecting on me. It had nothing to do with reality. I made my piece with Loana [her character] a long time ago. And all the other girls like the girl with the holster under her poncho, they're not me.

You write about menopause.
I think there are a lot more women doctors and that has helped enormously. I went through the worst part of it with hot flashes and mood swings, it was nightmarish. There was also a kind of menopausal depression. You get in these very bleak moods for no reason and you think why am I crying? What's wrong with me?

You go to church and attend study group.
I do and I think it's helped me tremendously. When I started concentrating on looking beyond myself because in the American culture there is an awful lot of self, self esteem, self worth, it goes on and on and we look all the time to the self for answers and I found I didn't have the answers and I never did and it was so liberating because then I could acknowledge there was a higher power and for me it was God and the Christian faith and I found answers there that made me feel much more optimistic about everything. I also felt like I have a whole universe of intelligence to tap into that doesn't have to come out of my own imagination. I just have to know it's there and kneel in prayer and have some humility and realize how insignificant I am and by doing so allow others to come into my consciousness. I think a lot people take different paths. I meditated, I was a yogi, I mean I still do yoga, there was a time when I dabbled in Buddhism but I didn't find anything that made me have faith.

There was a certain idea of decency that I had from my mother. It was a different era but it protected me a lot because in certain circles there were artists who had libertine ideas. I didn't take them on. Maybe I wasn't going to have as much fun as they appeared to be having but a lot of what they were doing seemed to be kind of dangerous to me. I didn't like the drugs or the promiscuous sex, it was never for me. When I was around those people indulging in that I thought, well some of my mother's mid-western values protected me from those pitfalls. I thought it was a nice safety net. I always said I had an early call and slip out. That way I wouldn't have to indulge or reject or cast judgment.

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