Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi

for bio and memoir lovers: this woman was wildly, defiantly ahead of her time.

• she used meat tenderizer and a rubber tube to shrink her waist down to 17 inches

• cut plastic containers to create her iconic claws (press-ons were not a thing in the 1950s 💅)

• was besties with James Dean