Linnea Eleanor “Bunny” Yeager embodied the contradictions of midcentury America. The photographer, who died in 2014 at the age of 85, was a flirty exhibitionist and a suburban housewife. She was a busy breadwinner and a mother of two. She flouted the social decorum of women of her time, yet she was married to a cop. She was also one of the most successful pin-up, or “cheesecake,” photographers in the country.
Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s documentary Naked Ambition pays tribute to Yeager, denuding the limited, and limiting, professional options available for women of her time. Like photographer Lee Miller before her, Yeager was a fashion model quite accustomed to performing for the camera. Unlike Miller, who produced some of the most crucial photojournalism of World War II, however, Yeager built a career capturing bombshells frolicking on the beach or cuddling with cheetahs whose coats matched the models’ string bikinis.
Bettie Page in Naked Ambition
A lean (willowy?) 70 minutes, Naked Ambition is part of the recent documentary trend that seeks to canonize as artists creators who were excluded by the elite of their time, often due to sexism and racism. Whether Yeager was actually overlooked by 20th-century art historians depends in part on whether one includes the pin-up genre within the broader sphere of photographic portraiture. For those who do, including myself, the question is: How did Yeager’s photos honor the distinct personality, material conditions, and status of her subjects?
The best example would seem to be her 1954 portraits of Bettie Page in a safari park near Miami Beach. Whether coyly peering over her shoulder or dangling from a tree with a knife between her teeth, Page looks like she’s having a blast, comfortable in her bronzed skin and duly proud of her lithe, curvy body. These photos, which Yeager sent to Playboy magazine, would ultimately launch the two women into stardom, and into an ongoing creative collaboration. Playboy’s regular publication of Yeager’s work — and her own promotion of the brand — led to a period of fame and fortune, both of which the film blithely celebrates without reservation.
Bunny Yeager in Naked Ambition
In this example, as in its title, Naked Ambition seems to suggest that practically everything Yeager did was praiseworthy because it was enterprising. It’s undeniable that she was an industrious talent who dared to be a photographer at a time when few women excelled in the field. But does this make her a critical artist in her own right? Of this I’m less sure, based on her larger oeuvre. Yeager herself seemed disinterested in making art, though she was keenly attentive to creating magnetic commercial photographs. What is indisputable is that her meticulous, woman-forward approach engendered an archive of fabulous photos, in which the nude female subject often seems exactly that — a subject — as much as a sexual object. “You felt like you were with a girlfriend,” shares Nani Maka, one of several former models recalling the photographer’s mischievous persona.
Despite its hagiographic tone, Naked Ambition is compelling when it examines how Yeager’s ebullient photographic approach to female nudity was matched by her rejection of midcentury conservatism. Even if they adhere more to the principles of commercial than fine art photography, her pin-up portraits serve as time capsules for an era in which female sexuality was kept separate from “respectable” women’s self-presentation. They are also a reminder that women can find real pleasure in the act of posing for the camera, of being in a body and knowing that this body is considered beautiful. As Yeager model Marcia Valibus, who passed away after the film was made, said: “It looked like I was having fun.”
Bunny Yeager in Naked Ambition
Naked Ambition is playing in select theaters nationwide.
