Stevie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Manual

Yes­ter­day, on Twit­ter, Priscil­la Page remind­ed us of the time when “Ste­vie Nicks showed us how to kick ass in high-heeled boots in her body­guard’s self-defense book,” call­ing our atten­tion to the lit­tle-known 1983 book, Hands Off!: A Unique New Sys­tem of Self Defence Against Assault for the Women of Today.

The book itself was writ­ten by Bob Jones, an Aus­tralian mar­tial arts instruc­tor who dou­bled as a secu­ri­ty guard for Fleet­wood Mac, The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Joe Cock­er and oth­er stars. And it fea­tured what Jones called “mnemon­ic movements”–essentially a series of nine subconscious/reflexive self-defense moves (like a swift knee to the groin). See Jones’ web­site for a more com­plete expla­na­tion of the exer­cise rou­tine that also pro­vid­ed, he notes, a great car­dio work­out.

Ste­vie Nicks agreed to take part in a pho­to­shoot where she would help demon­strate the nine mnemon­ic move­ments. Jones recalls,” This lady was a pro­fes­sion­al: in two hours I had a hun­dred of the most mag­nif­i­cent pho­tos ever offered to the mar­tial arts, and just one would make the cov­er [above].”

“On this day of the shoot I was stand­ing in my mar­tial arts train­ing uni­form, wear­ing my Black Belt. Then Ste­vie appeared, her hair done to resem­ble the mane of a lion. She was psy­ched up for some seri­ous pho­tograph­ing. Ste­vie wore her famil­iar thick-soled, thick-heeled, knee-high brown suede kid leather boots. High roll-over socks appeared over the top of these ele­gant Swedish boots and hung ten­ta­tive­ly around her knees.” “In these kick­ing-style pho­tographs the sun also made her dress par­tial­ly see-through: just enough to be artis­ti­cal­ly inter­est­ing.”

Hands Off is now long out of print. But you can find a series of images from the book on the Voic­es of East Anglia and Dan­ger­ous Minds web­sites.

via Priscil­la Page/Coudal

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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