“Fiesta Melons”: Pin-up Pumpkins and Hollywood Honeydew

Plath loved Hollywood. Hollywood in 1956 was full of pin-up girls: Liz Taylor was the star of the moment with her movie, Giant. Marilyn Monroe starred in Bus Stop. Deborah Kerr was back with The King and I, and Jayne Mansfield became famous with The Girl Can’t Help It. Carroll Baker, Anita Ekberg, Sheree North, and Mamie Van Doren also followed in Monroe’s platinum-blonde bombshell sex-goddess tradition that year with Baby Doll, Zarak, The Best Things in Life are Free and Star in the Dust, respectively. Terry Moore held out as the darker-haired pin-up girl, starring in Between Heaven and Hell. 1956 was the year of celebrating bosomy curves, and Plath’s “Fiesta Melons” is having a bit of fun with so many breasts.
Since her 1951 journal entries, Plath wrote often of other women’s figures, especially noting large breasts. She believed that most American males worshipped women with rounded big breasts (UJ, 36), and that hers were small and inadequate (UJ, 38, 98). Plath also wrote about Hollywood’s female images: “The liquid, gleaming lips of movie actresses quiver in kiss after scintillating kiss; full breasts lift under lace, satin, low scallops: sex incarnate” (UJ,110). In one journal entry, focusing in great detail on a peer’s breasts, Plath uses her word “thumpable” from the poem, but this time it was about the girl’s nose. Still, the connection between “thumpable” and “breasts” has been made as she calls the melons “thumpable” in her poem.  Plath wrote, “I am part man, and I notice women’s breasts and thighs with the calculation of a man choosing a mistress … but that is the artist and the analytical attitude toward the female body … for I am more a woman; even as I long for full breasts and a beautiful body, so do I abhor the sensuousness which they bring …” (UJ, 55). Plath occasionally referred to youth as a “green age,” and these melons of her third stanza are “Bright green and thumpable,” meaning firm young bodies. It is not surprising then that Benidorm would be the inspiration for “Fiesta Melons.” With its three nude beaches and many others in the Alicante region, Plath and Hughes had plenty of time to notice “innumerable melons.” Plath’s notebook on the Benidorm vacation also included observations of a “full-figured” girl in a white bathing suit, as well as breast-like description of a cylindrical beach bag with “watermelon-red” lining (UJ, 577).
ALICANTE SPAIN, ANITA EKBERG, BENIDORM, BREASTS, CARROLL BAKER, DEBORAH KERR, EARLY POEM, ELIZABETH TAYLOR, FEMALE SEXUALITY, FIESTA MELONS, HOLLYWOOD, JAYNE MANSFIELD, LIZ TAYLOR, MAMIE VAN DOREN, MARILYN MONROE, NUDE BEACHES, PIN-UP GIRLS, PLATH POEM, SEX GODDESS, SHEREE NORTH, SYLVIA PLATH, WOMEN'S BREASTS