The death of Marianne Faithfull last week at the age of 78 has got me thinking again about female beauty. The obituaries were full of descriptions of the singer and actress, who was, as the Daily Mail put it, “the poster girl for the Swinging Sixties” and “the sixties angel with big tits”. The Daily Telegraph flagged a quote from her one-time manager: “She was everything you could want in a woman that you couldn’t possibly have”. Cobblers.
Faithfull played the part speaking her lines as if she were a child
Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the second half of the 1960s, was not beautiful. She had a timid girly voice, slim boyish hips and sad downward-sloping eyes.
I say this even though the Rolling Stones are one of my favourite bands (along with the Doors and the Velvet Underground), and despite Faithfull being very much part of their story in the late 1960s, when they began to achieve the greatness that would reach its peak in the first half of the 1970s.
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