Nico and Betty are two different women from two different worlds, but if you read about them in the books I have read this week, you might think their dispositions are frighteningly similar.   I'm talking about Nico – that Nico – who became a rock star legend for her short stint with the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s. She was with the band for a very short time, one album, before she was kicked out, abandoned by bandmates who may have been threatened by her good looks and ambition.  This is the story of a woman who was born into poverty in the ruins of World War II.  Her father fought for the Wermacht on the side of the Nazis.  She never knew if this was true, and she would never have the opportunity to ask him about it.   He did not return to the family after the war was over.  Someone had told her he was shot by his own command.  Nico's mother wasn't one to confide in.  She was mentally ill. Nico grew up in a cloud of mystery and despair.

Betty is the protagonist in a 1960s Georges Simenon novel I just read by the same name. I hope no one who reads this will cringe at my comparing a real-life historical figure and a fictional character, but that's exactly what I'm going to do.   Betty's age in the novel  – the story takes place in Paris – may be equal to Nico's upon her joining the Velvets.  Much of what happens to Betty has already happened to Nico.  Both of them have been cast aside by their lovers – the fathers of their children.  At an early age, Betty marries  a French Aritocrat who who seemed to care little for the person she truly is.  His desire for her centered on her ability to provide him beautiful children. I mean Betty has little control over her own destiny.  She is caught in a marriage of little love or respect.  She has little say about anything.   For Nico and Betty, the men in their lives call the shots.

Here is the connection between Nico and Betty -  they are both overwhemingly beautiful. Nico had the looks to become a successful fashion model at age 16.  This provided her with the means of caring for her family and fleeing Germany.  Upon a chance meeting with famed Italian director Frederico Fellini, she is immediatley offered a role in his new movie.  But she can't act, she says.  "You'll be Nico, the model,"  he tells her. This guy doesn't listen to a word she says.   Fellini won't be the first or the last Man to dismiss Nico's thoughts and feelings.  When Betty leaves the house, she captures the eyes of men from all sides.   Her husband's closest friends can't seem to keep their hands off her.  Nico and Betty are equally attractive and sad. Because of their extraordinary good looks and sensual appeal, they are both objectified, persecuted, and diminished by men. Not surprisingly, Nico could never learn to sustain a healthy relationship with one man.  Soon after she was booted out of the Velvets, her need for heroin far surpassed her desire for love.  She lived half her life in darkness.  Nico's biography which I'm currently reading is titled You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone. From the first pages of the Simenon novel, Betty is lost, unhappy, and always drunk.  She walks out of the rain into a Paris bar, clearly not having slept in days.  Her clothes are tattered,  All she wants to do is drink and smoke.   I know. I know I should be sickened by her circumstances, but I became hooked one chapter after another. Very soon into the book, we find Betty is recently divorced. Her husband found out that she was cheating on him and, with all the power at his disposal, kicked her out of the house and cut her off from her own children.  Now the only thing Betty has left in life is her drinking.  Both these women, Nico and Betty,  are bent on self-destruction. They are terrible scarred.    When Nico famously sang "I'll Be Your Mirror" for the Velvet Undeground in 1966, she could have been staring directly at Betty.   I could imagine them say to eachother. "I know you… I know you." 

Nico became a rock star legend for her short stint with the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s.  When she came to New York City, she was a successful fashion model and part-time actress.  On her resume, you might say, she could post her experience of cutting a record in Europe, but it wasn't very successful.  Because this is a visual analysis, I won't spend much time on Nico's singing abilities. She had a low, monotone voice.  She didn't have much of a feeling for rhythm or pitch. Famous pop artist Andy Warhol would later say her voice was everything "from eerie, to bland, and smooth and hollow, to a 'wind in a drainpipe."  But that didn't matter.  When people saw Nico for the first time, they could not take their eyes off of her.  No one was going care what she sounded like.  Warhol was committed to finding a band to play behind her.  She was a real Nordic beauty.  She was tall, distinctive and beautiful.  She was like a rock 'n' roll statue in a museum.

The first thing you might notice about Nico is her high cheekbones. I say they are high, because they are closer to the bottom of her eyes than the bottom of her nose. Maybe they give her an icy look, for she was a very cool customer.  This probably came from her modeling experience. She was non-flamboyant.  She showed little expression.  Her hair, long and straight, falls to her shoulders and down her back.  Her look is accentuated by her bangs, which  are full and cut straight across the face.  This page-boy look accentuated her cheekbones.  The golden blonde hue of her hair sharply contrasted with the dark tones of her bandmates.  The Velvets were famous for dressing in black and wearing mirrored sunglasses on stage.  I just read some place the lips are the face's most sensuous feature. The structure of the lips is thought to offer information about a women's sensual aspect.  In this photo, Nico looks extremely attractive but at the same time very sad.  Nico's time in the Velvet Underground may have been the most exciting time of her life; however, the jealosy and anamosity she felt from her bandmates brought her down. They were serious musicians.  She was a pretty face.  They didn't like being pushed into the background. The expression that appears on Nico's face may have nothing to do with her sensuality.  It probably has to do a lot with her depression.   Bandmate John Cale once said, "She hated the idea of being blonde and beautiful, and in some ways she hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her was grief.”

In this image to the right, Betty's hair is much shorter than Nico's but it maintains a similar page-boy style.  Unlike Nico's coif, Betty's hair is messy,  I mean, unkempt,  like she trying to go punk.   Either that, or she has been sleeping face down on the floor.  Her eyes are swollen like she's been crying.  The bags under her eyes give her the look of a raccoon. This is a scene from the French film Betty. The bar she's drinking in is called Le Trou. It's literally and figuratively a "Hole." You can't see the other patrons in this picture, but you can imagine they all have problems too; otherwise they would not be in a bar like this. Betty seems to be playing it Passive-Agressive.  She pays no attention to the men staring at her. In fact, in this image, she seems to have a friendly, mild expression on her face.  The cigarette burning down to its nub between her fingers, however, says otherwise.  Her hands are dirty.  Her fingernails are scuffed. With each additional drink, I imagine that her calm will diminish.  I'm not writing a book report here, but we have seen the Passivity in her; now, we await her Agression. With the Passive-Agressive, it always happens sooner or later.

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Currently, my students are writing about the Sixties. Nico and Betty both seem to  reach a point where they feel excessively sensitive and easily wounded.  Much of their stories take place before the origins of the Women's Movement. They must feel they live in a Man's World – helpless, exhausted, trapped, or blocked.  With so much focus placed on their looks, their unique cerebral qualities are most often overlooked.  In our Sixties Research Projects, I encourage my students to write about the marginalized and the oppressed.  Because they were beautiful women, Nico and Betty were just not offered opportunity to be respected for who they were. This was before any talk about Equality.  Sadly, in the books I have read this week, Nico and Betty became obsessively worried about a dark future.  Their expectations became self-fufilling prophecies.