Les Girls: Miss Bernadette Bassenger

"That's our girl Bernadette. I just knew that stumbling around the pub circuit with Les Girls for two hundred years must've taught her something."

Look, I know, I know...I shouldn't have done that first drawing of Bernie, because it was somewhat of a gateway drug to...this.

I've written a fucking fanfic as well; and we aren't talking some piddly one-off. Oh no sir; 9000+ words. Fucking hell...I don't intend to post it here, but it is online elsewhere if anyone is for some reason particularly desperate to read it.

Okay, context/excuse time. I sat down with the intention of drawing Dita Von Teese, believe it or not. However, I made a bit of an arse of her nose, went 'hey, you know who that looks like?' And then just said fuck it and turned it into Bernadette. I was entirely intrigued by the mentions of Les Girls and her previous life, if you will, of minor celebrity; the headcanons began formulating and now here we have it. I maintain that she was somewhat of a poster child for Les Girls, hence the literal poster.

She's meant to be in her twenties or so here; I know that the nature of the poster thing seems more striptease/burlesque than vaudeville, but once again - was intended to be Dita Von Teese. There's my excuse. The more I think about it, particularly considering the costumes from the film, the more it occurs to me that this may be slightly too couture for drag as well. But hey; I maintain that Bernie started transitioning relatively young (24 or 25 I think) so this might not technically be drag at all. And even if it is, she's always struck me as more of an evening gown and cigarette person than anything else. I had planned to draw her in a sort of flapper outfit - pink, and with considerably more feathers - but once I got the idea of the flash of garter and dress with slit up the leg and that notion went out the window pretty damned quickly. You don't need to be told who I based her hair on...