Come here, child, and listen to our story of magic and wonder. Once upon a time, in an exotic and faraway land — Baltimore in the 1970s, to be exact — there lived a filthy and glamorous drag queen actress named Divine. Her childhood friend John Waters, known to all the land as the Pope of Trash, made her his ingenue, and together they conquered the B-movie world, leaving a trail of scandalized squares in their glittery, shit-stained wake.
Once the legend of Divine broke through from the underground and became firmly entrenched in American mythology, St. Martin’s Press sought to immortalize her in just the same way as her screen-siren idols. So in 1983 they published a book of paper dolls illustrated by Van Smith, the makeup artist for Waters’ Dreamland troupe. Although The Simply Divine Cut-Out Doll Book has long been out of print, some wonderful Internet person has scanned several of its pages for posterity. Click through to see Divine rock some of her most famous costumes, and consider blowing $300 or so on the book at eBay.
