Dita Von Teese

Dita Von Teese (born Heather Renée Sweet on September 28, 1972 in Rochester, Michigan) is an American burlesque dancer, model, costume designer, and actress. She is known to have helped re-popularize burlesque performance and was once married to Marilyn Manson. Von Teese was born in the small farming town of Rochester, Michigan, the middle child of three daughters in a middle-class family. Her mother was a manicurist and her father was a machinist. She is of partly Armenian heritage: one of her grandmothers was adopted into an American family. Von Teese is known for her fascination with 1940s cinema and classic retro style. This began at a young age and was fostered by her mother, who would buy clothes for her daughter to dress up in. Her mother was a fan of old, Golden age-era Hollywood films, and it was from her that Von Teese developed a fascination with the actresses of that day, especially Betty Grable. She was classically trained as a ballet dancer from an early age, and danced solo at age thirteen for a local ballet company. Though she originally wanted to be a ballerina, Von Teese states that "By 15, I was as good as I’d ever be." She was later to incorporate this element