Mae_West_More_Than_A_Sex_Symbol

Mae West:More Than A Sex Symbol Before Marilyn Monroe and Madonna there was a woman who paved the way for their acceptance into the entertainment industry. Her name is Mae West, a quintessential sex symbol of the early 1900s. Mae West was also a successful playwright, actress, and businesswoman. Through West’s plays and movies, she addressed subjects such as sex, homosexuality, and racial tensions and paved a road for other creative artist to follow with less objection and censorship than she had encountered. She was more than a sex symbol. West was an exception to the social rules of the 1930s. Mae West helped society accept women, homosexuals, and other races into a white man’s world as a playwright, an employer, an actress, and a businesswoman. Born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn to Matilda and John West as Mary Jane, but was almost always called Mae. She detested her father and adored her mother who taught her about men and how to make it in a man’s world. With her mother’s love of the theatre Mae began her acting career at the age of seven and eventually played vaudeville in 1912. During her time in the cheap theatres and vaudeville, Mae honed her writing skills and learned mae, west, women, society, play, sex, paramount, man, drag, woman, men, movies, even, african, movie, west’s, one, because, homosexuality, world, just, icon, male, american, after, way, time, through, plays, people, out, night, york, wrote, white