Friday, September 30, 2011

Pubic Wars Update: 1975 part 1

Chris from Club, April 1975


We have just updated the Pubic Wars entry for 1975 part 1 with more text and a lot more photos to add to 1974 Part 2 which we updated earlier in the week.

Having been rather overwhelmed with bushy pussies from the seventies we might try and find a nice Victorian nude for our next post!

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Pubic Wars update: 1974 Part 2

Chris from Hustler, December 1974


We have now extensively updated this post, which focusses on the arrival of Larry Flynt's Hustler onto the market, with dozens of new pictures and more text.

You can find it here.

Next we will be revisiting the first part of 1975 and will continue to update until we start some more material, which is already under way, for 1977.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

jeep patriot 2012

jeep patriot 2012
 jeep patriot 2012
 jeep patriot 2012







jeep patriot 2012

The 2012 Jeep Patriot, the best-priced compact sport-utility vehicle (SUV) in America, offers consumers segment-leading 4 x 4 capability and excellent fuel economy along with aggressive exterior styling, clever interior features and unsurpassed off-road capability with the Freedom Drive II system.The 2012 Jeep Patriot is unmistakably a Jeep, designed to appeal to compact-SUV buyers who want traditional Jeep styling with best-in-class off-road capability at an affordable price.New for 2012, Jeep Patriot sports four new exterior colors: Rescue Green Pearl Coat, True Blue Pearl Coat (late availability), Blue Streak Pearl Coat (late availability) and Copperhead Pearl Coat (late availability). Calibration improvements to the available Continuously Variable Transmission (CVTII) provide drivers with better launch acceleration, smoother deceleration, improved pedal responsiveness and reduced engine noise.Jeep Patriot combines the packaging and interior flexibility of an SUV with the performance, handling, fuel economy and price of a compact car. Many standard safety features, such as all-row side-curtain air bags and electronic stability control (ESC), add to Jeep Patriot’s tremendous value.

The 2012 Jeep Patriot offers an array of clever features consumers will appreciate whether commuting to work, exploring new trails or out-of-the-way places or driving in challenging weather condition. A Uconnect® media center with iPod interface, SiriusXM Satellite Radio, navigation with SIRIUS Travel Link, power sunroof, a premium audio system with nine Boston Acoustic speakers, articulating liftgate speakers, illuminated cup holders and fold-flat rear seats are some of the available cool features that make the 2012 Jeep Patriot the perfect compact SUV, enabling drivers and passengers to enjoy any adventure.


Victorian Venus: Hypatia by Richard Belt




We have looked at the story of Hypatia before but here is another interpretation by the sculptor Richard Claude Belt (1854-1920).  We came across and photographed this fine piece at the Draper's Hall in London where Triple P was attending a dinner.  The Draper's Hall, which is one of the most splendid livery halls in the City, also houses Sir Herbert Draper's splendid paintings The Gates of Dawn and, on the ceiling, Prospero summoning Nymphs and Deities.


You can just make out the sculpture in the far corner of the hall.  Agent Triple P is visible in this picture!


Belt was the son of a Westminster blacksmith who became a successful and fashionable (he moved in the Oscar Wilde set), if not universally appreciated, sculptor. Charles Lawes, another sculptor, accused him of being a fraud who got others to do his sculpting.  By this time Belt had produced sculptures of the Royal family, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron (the profitable commission for which was said to have been down to his influential friends) and other eminent figures.  In 1881 he sued Lawes for libel, in the last case ever heard at the Westminster Hall.  The case dragged on for 43 days and Belt called 82 witnesses to testify that he had, indeed, sculpted his own material.  During the trial he actually sculpted a bust of the judge, Baron Huddlestone, in court to demonstrate his skills.  He was awarded £5,000 in damages against Lawes. Lawes, however went bankrupt as a result and it seems that Belt never received the money, driving him into financial difficulties.


Richard Belt


Things didn't go so well for Belt in 1886 when he was in the dock for the fraudulent sale of jewellery to Sir William Abdy.  By now also practising as a photographer, he had introduced an Austrian lady, several years before, to his friend Sir William Abdy.  Sir William married the lady but only susbsequently discovered, as Belt well knew, that she was addicted to diamonds.  Belt bought diamonds cheaply and then sold them to Sir William to feed his wife's habit at four times their market value. He went to prison for 12 months with hard labour.

Belt's Hypatia was purchased by the Drapers Company in 1890.  There is nothing that particularly marks her out as Hypatia but she is as good a reason as any to turn out a splendid Victorian nude.

Monday, September 26, 2011

toyota venza 2011

toyota venza 2011
 toyota venza 2011
 toyota venza 2011







toyota venza 2011

Toyota designed the 2011 Toyota Venza to appeal to an emerging section of the market that prioritizes bold, innovative design, and excellent handling but still requires outstanding roominess and utility.011 Toyota Venza offers all of those qualities, along with a luxurious and refined interior, and SUV-like flexibility, specifically in its foldable rear seats, a large cargo area, higher driver sightline, available all-wheel drive (AWD) and up to 3,500-lbs. towing capacity.

2011 Toyota Venza was the first Toyota passenger car to include the STAR Safety System™ as standard equipment. Other firsts include a multi-information display that can be customized to adjust the font size and content and navigation voice instructions available in Spanish, French or English (XM Traffic is only available in English).Performance and Efficiency
The 2011 Venza offers a choice between four-cylinder and V6 engines, both with excellent responsiveness and fuel economy. Both the four-cylinder and V6 models are available in front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive (AWD) versions. 2011 Toyota Venza’s standard 2.7-liter four-cylinder engine delivers 182 horsepower at 5,800 rpm and 182 lb.-ft. of torque at 4,200 rpm. The four-cylinder 2011 Toyota Venza is EPA-rated at 21 MPG city/- 27 MPG highway for the FWD model.

The 2011 Toyota Venza’s available 3.5-liter V6 produces 268 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 246 lb.-ft of torque at 4,700 rpm. The V6 FWD model has EPA-estimated fuel economy ratings of 19 MPG city/26 MPG highway.
Both engines are mated to a six-speed sequential-shift electronically controlled automatic transmission with intelligence (ECT-i). The six-speed ECT-i provides an engaging driving experience and helps optimize fuel economy. Uphill/downhill shift logic selects the proper gear for driving conditions and helps provide moderate engine braking during downhill driving.

2011 Toyota Venza's available Active Torque Control AWD System optimizes torque distribution between the front and rear wheels to help ensure stable acceleration and smooth cornering on all road surfaces. AWD offers enhanced traction and helps provide excellent overall handling in inclement weather.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

audi tt 2011

audi tt 2011
 audi tt 2011
 audi tt 2011








audi tt 2011

This is the 2011 Audi TT. It looks the same, it steers the same and it sticks the same. But there's one major difference: torque. Audi has managed to coax an additional 51 pound-feet of twist from its ever-evolving 2.0-liter TFSI four cylinder. The result? The standard TT isn't just the Bauhaus design icon that propelled Audi into the luxury limelight at the end of the last decade – it's finally a proper sports car. And it's about damned time. Follow the jump to see what we're torquing about.Starting April 9, the world will get its first peek at next year's Audi TT at AMI Lepzig. So far, details are iffy on exactly what we can expect from the 2011 coupe and roadster, but the car is due for a mild facelift. We're guessing new front and rear fascias and a revised wheel program are likely to find their way into the soup de jour.

While the reworked TT models will be the highlight of the show, Audi has also promised to bring along a slew of its other products. Nestled among the 25 production models and two show cars will be the freshly-minted A1 compact as well as at least one of the e-Tron show cars. AMI Lepzig will run from April 9-18. Follow the jump for the press release. 

Friday, September 16, 2011

Suspended Venuses: Girls in hammocks by Sir Sydney Harpley



When Triple P was at school  he was a library monitor, mainly because it gave him the oppotunity to stay indside during bad weather and throw noxious little squirts out of the library for talking too loudly.  Also the teacher in charge of the library, an extraordinarily cute German lady who was the only female teacher at the school, was so fine that Triple P and his co-conspirator, Frogspawn, would have done anything for her. 




The third librarian was a jolly chap called Nicholas who was rather derided on account of the fact that he was small and rather arty and said his father was a sculptor.  This, we felt, was a pathetic job and we poured scorn on the unfortunate Nicholas as a result.  It was only years later that Agent Triple P realised that Nicholas's father was none other than Sir Sydney Harpley (1927-1992) whose wonderful bronzes were the highlight, for Triple P, of every year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.




Anyway, he was particularly famous for his girls in hammocks so here are a few.  Wish we had been nicer to young Nicholas now...

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Ferrari festival 2011

Ferrari festival 2011
 Ferrari festival 2011
 Ferrari festival 2011










Ferrari festival 2011

The Ferrari Festival is an annual Italian Buffet that takes place at the Italian Village restaurant in downtown Chicago. You get to see a group of modern and vintage Ferraris and all of proceeds the benefit Children's Memorial Hospital. My favorite car of the day was the Ferrari F40. The F40 is incredibly rare, fast, and still looks amazing. I wish I could have stayed to hear it fire up. My number two would defiantly be the 599 GTB. I think the GTB looks amazing, plus it's a proper, front-engine, V12, Ferrari. I'd jump at the chance to drive any of these cars (except for the one that was leaking radiator fluid).Earlier tonight was the 6th annual Ferrari Festival, sponsored by the Ferrari Club of America, Ottawa Chapter.  It was a decent display of fine Italian iron, with examples ranging from the ’80s to today.  There was a 512 (better known as a “Testarossa”), a 348 (better known as “Magnum PI’s ride”), and even a Maserati Biturbo.  As a car show, however, it was a bit of a bust.  Not many cars had arrived by the time I left, and the cars that were there were behind a rope and guarded by a small battalion of teenagers armed with walkie-talkies who walked in front of the cars and made sure no one touched them as they cruised down the street.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Updated Pubic Wars post

From Oui magazine, 1974


We have extensively updated our Pubic Wars post for the first half of 1974 which can be found here.  The main reason for this was the acquisition of a number of copies of Oui magazine from that year.  As a result we will shortly be revising the entry for the second half of 1974.

Venus Revealed: The Pubic Wars 6 -1974 Part 1



1974 saw Playboy's 20th Anniversary and the magazine interviewed Hefner about Playboy and his philosophy. Incredibly, this interview took writer Larry DuBois six months to complete! Inevitably, they came to the question of Playboy's imitators and of them all Penthouse was singled out for special attention.


Hefner dismisses his imitators


Penthouse, Hefner observed (having dismissed Playboy's other imitators like Gallery, Cavalier and Genesis) "was going to be called Playgirl until lawyers warned its publisher, Bob Guccione of the danger of trademark infringement... So he settled on Penthouse, a name closely associated with Playboy- our first TV series was called Playboy's Penthouse...but not close enough to be actionable." Hefner continued: "The primary feature in each issue of Penthouse is a pictorial rip-off of our own Playmate of the Month, imaginatively titled "Pet of the Month." Hefner celebrated Playboy's 20th Anniversary with the pneumatic but chastely posed Nancy Cameron. The only radical thing about her centrefold was that it was double sided and also showed her from the back.


Nancy's front

Nancy's back


In the annual Playmate Review feature there was a lot of fluff on view, especially in the picture of June 1973's Playmate of the Month, Ruthy Ross.


Ruthy Ross gives it some fur


Ruthy was displayed in a fluff on fluff situation on what looks like one of those nylon faux fur rugs which were so popular in the mid-seventies. Agent Triple P remembers having a rug just like this on the orange (!) carpet in his bedroom and, indeed, we had several young ladies pose on it in similar fashion in the late seventies and early eighties!


Claudia Arena on January's Penthouse cover


Penthouse's particular Pet for the January 1974 edition appeared on the cover in a very bold nipple flashing cover.




Inside, it wasn't just her nipples she was flashing as the young lady in question, one Claudia Arena, posed in two pictures, including her centrefold, caressing her black bush.   This was Penthouse's naughtiest centrefold to date and, incidentally, Claudia, who was, like Bob Guccione, a Sicilian American, also displayed possibly the hairiest arm seen in the magazine so far!


Claudia enjoys her bush


The UK edition included both photographs but eliminated the hint of labia in the top one.  The photographer was John Slack in his only Penthouse pictorial.  That was because he was the one who had discovered Claudia at a lingerie fashion show in a motel in Orlando, Florida.  So he was one of those few photographers who got their work published in the magazine because of their relationship with the model.


Claudia grumps to the press in January 1974


Claudia, however, wasn't too impressed with the text that the Penthouse writers attributed to her.  She subsequently told the press that the magazine's story "made me sound like  a sex-starved country girl going around humming hillbilly songs."  She went on saying "The only thing they got right was my name and statistics" (35-22-35). She also declared that she wouldn't be posing nude anymore as "I don't want to be another Linda Lovelace."  Oh dear!




The second model pictorial (the third pictorial featured vegetables photographed in a supposedly erotic way) in the January issue featured German born model Paula Kite photographed by Ken Marcus. Marcus made the most of her bust with this nice nine picture full page sequence which harks back to the Penthouse breast caressing of the sixties.



It wasn't all just about her tits, however. With this full page photograph Marcus presented the most explicit labia picture so far in the magazine. No concealing shadow here for Paula's pussy. This photo, not surprisingly, was left out of the UK edition.


Karen Christy for February 1974


Hefner may have ranted on about Penthouse copying him, but his February cover looked awfully like a cover from Guccione's magazine; right down to the flowers. He even went in for some bold nipple flashing as well, from Miss December 1971 and former girlfriend, Karen Christy.




Inside, the Penthouse style continued with this photograph of the Playmate of the Month, Francine Parks, who was photographed in soft-focus. Her inviting pose would have been unthinkable for Playboy a few years before.




Oui's February cover featured November 1969 Playmate of the Month and 1970 Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings on the cover.  Claudia's brazenly displayed nipple was pretty bold for Oui, or indeed any other men's magazine in America at the time.  Tragically, Claudia would be killed in a car accident in California just a few months short of her thirtieth birthday in 1979.




Inside, centrefold girl Violente gave us a rather nice rear-end shot.




A piece on strippers in Hamburg's Reeperbahn gave us this combination of fetish clothing and implied lesbianism in a foretaste of things to come.




February's Penthouse Pet and cover girl, Beatrice Vogler was presented in a less explicit but, perhaps, more sensual centrefold than January's. Her hand between her legs, a trail of golden hairs between her bottom cheeks leads the eye to her barely concealed anus.


Beatrice Vogler gives it some tail


Beatrice's pictorial was rather modest, on the labia flashing front, compared with some which had come before over the previous few month so, at first, it seems odd that she never appeared as Pet of the Month in  the UK.


Lucy Lunn on the cover of the March 1974 UK issue



At this point the UK Pets were running one month behind the US so it would have been expected that Beatrice would appear in the March edition in the UK (Volume 8, number 12). However, for that issue the UK had Lucy Lunn (supposedly from Romney Marsh but given her appearance in a lot of Swedish magazines we suspect she was from that country) as their centrefold instead. 




Lucy had several pussy touching shots but her magnificent bush meant that no glimpse of her labia were visible.  The reason the UK edition couldn't use the pictures of Beatrice was not because of some concerns over the explicitness of her pictorial (as had happened before) but because pictures from this shoot by Jerry Bloomberger, (this was his only Penthouse pictorial) had already appeared in rival magazine Men Only just three months previously (November 1973).





Just five pages of pictures from her pictorial appeared in Men Only Volume 9 no 1 in the UK which appeared in April 1974. This was bad luck for UK Penthouse readers as they missed out on one of the best golden fleece pictures of the seventies (above), with Beatrice's fine strands catching the light all over her lower belly.  This lovely shot never made it into the UK pictorial.


Ouch!



February also saw a couple of Penthouse's more arty pictorials with the model in Living Doll made up to look like a clown (something we will not show as we don't want to encourage clowns in any way) and a sequence of photographs supposedly being self portraits by a model called Cheyenne from a forthcoming Penthouse publication: Penthouse - I am Cheyenne. This picture (above) is the most striking of those.




Whilst Playboy's Playmates themselves were not as abandoned as Penthouse's Pets it didn't mean that Playboy had given up the battle. March saw another saucy cover from Playboy featuring Debbie Shelton resplendent in stockings and suspenders and revealing the full profile of one breast. This was at a time when both magazines were still wary of bare breasts on the covers of their magazines for fear they might be taken off the newsstands. They were pushing the limits by just offering the odd peek of their girls’ peaks.


Deborah Shelton on the cover of Oui: February 1975


The lovely Miss Shelton would appear on the cover of the Playboy owned Oui magazine in February 1975. She had won the Miss USA contest in 1970 and went on to be runner up in the Miss Universe competition that year.


Miss Shelton as Miss USA


Under the more refined "Deborah" she would go on to be a successful actress; first appearing on screen in a Greek film in 1976 with Telly Savalas' brother George. Most famously she appeared in 62 episodes of Dallas as Mandy Winger in the mid-eighties, where she got to wear some of the most ornate boudoir lingerie to have ever been seen on TV.




Deborah in Body Double


Agent Triple P also remembers her fondly from Brian de Palma's Body Double (1984) where she dances around wearing very little whilst watched through a telescope by a neighbour before indulging in some, naughty at the time, faux masturbation. She is still making regular TV appearances.




Talkning of faux masturbation, inside the March Playboy there was a non-Playmate pictorial of the, unusually, short-haired Morgan, photographed by Philip Dixon. One of the pictures showed Morgan really getting to grips with her groin in what was was Playboy's first real Penthouse-style faux masturbation shot.  This was another barrier breaking rejoinder from Playboy but demonstrated, yet again, that Penthouse was making the running and Playboy was playing catch-up.




Not only were Morgan's fingers going where no Playboy girl's had gone before but in one full sized picture she sits with one leg draped over the arm of a chair, a necklace around her waist barely concealing her vulva. In fact, it does not conceal it completely: Morgan displays Playboy's very first labia.




March's  Pet Marie Ekorre (her surname is Swedish for squirrel, Agent Triple Pis told!) demonstrated that Penthouse had moved away from its original remit to only feature unpublished girls as Pet of the Month.




Penthouse claimed Marie was eighteen but she was actually twenty-two at the time her pictorial appeared.  She was already an actress having made films, since 1971 in Sweden, Denmark and Germany, such as Keyhole (1974).


Marie in Oui, August 1973


Ekorre had already appeared as the Centrefold in Oui in August 1973 where she was photographed by Swedish photographer Siwer Ohlsson. Ohlsson had discovered her during casting calls for the film RötmÃ¥nad (1970) which gave Christina Lindberg her big break. In fact they later appeared in the same film, Was Schulmädchen verschweigen (1973) but, sadly, didn't appear together as it was a portmanteau-style film made up of seperate episodes.


From her March 1974 Penthouse pictorial


She was a successful model and continued to make soft-core films until 1976. Unable to break into regular films she opened a Jeans shop in Amsterdam and then later ran a modelling agency in Spain before returning to Sweden. Unlike her contemporary, Christina Lindberg, she doesn't participate in conventions or conduct interviews about her time as an actress and model.




The following month she appeared as Pet of the Month, with the same pictorial, in the UK edition of Penthouse but with  this alternative and striking cover.


The lovely Sarah and her lovely crutch


Marie didn't flash her bits for the March issue but Guccione continued to push on the labia front with this photograph of the appropriately named Sarah Crutchfield. This pictorial didn't appear at all in the UK edition as they were increasingly using different pictorials (and covers) from the US edition.


Suzanna squeezes


One pictorial from Penthouse's March issue which did appear in the UK was the one featuring the delightfully top heavy Suzanna Hayes.  Busty enough for Playboy but much more tactile photography from Bob Guccione than Playboy would have done at the time.




Over at Oui, which was still trying to win readers from Penthouse with its "European" approach, they became the first major magazine to put two girls on the cover.  Not just that but they were touching each other in a sensual way and one of them was showing Oui's first bare nipple on its cover.




Inside, the far from European J Frederick Smith's two girl set was playful rather than passionate with a lot less implied lebianism than Penthouse's last effort the previous year.




Centrefold girl that month was the gorgeous Laure Berg, photographed by Andre Berg (coincidence?), who gave us this superb fluff between the thighs shot.

One picture that appeared at the beginning of the magazine was of a (very) young girl flashing her bare bottom.  Worryingly, several readers wrote appreciative letters about it.  "That shot of the young girl in March Openers was dynamite.  I am certainly glad that Oui has found that there is another type of sensuality that far surpasses what is currently in most men's magazines" wrote someone from Atlanta. The other two letters that appeared in the July issue were so distasteful that we won't even quote them.  We won't show the picture as these days it could lead to a jail sentence.  Thank goodness Oui didn't pick up on this nasty approach.  How times have changed (for the better in this case).


The peachy Karen June Sliger


April saw Playboy produce another cover that made it look like Penthouse. Karen June Sliger became only the third Playboy cover girl to appear wearing stockings but she would be the first to fully bare her bottom for the newsstands of America. Penthouse had been featuring girls in stockings for some time but it was only gradually that Playboy went down the boudoir lingerie route, which it is now so closely associated with, as well.


Marilyn contorts


Inside, Playboy ran a pictorial on porn star Marilyn Chambers who contorted herself into some very un-Playboy like shapes including this very abandoned bubble bath shot.  It was the increasing acceptability and availability in theatres of hard core films like Chambers', Behind the Green Door (1972) that was one of the factors in driving the men's magazines to become more explicit.


Penthouse's April cover girl was Elaine Lowny


Penthouse took their April Pet, Nancy Sebastien outside, in a pictorial largely shot in field of long grass overlooking the sea, in a rather Playboy type location. There were a couple of interior pictures of her, including this one where she flashes her labia.  This shot was considerably toned down so that Nancy's bits were barely visible in the UK edition where she did appear but not as Pet of the Month.

 
Nancy flashes


Cover girl, Elaine Lowny also bent over backwards to push at the labia flashing barrier in her pictorial in the April issue.  Her pictorial never made it over the Atlantic to the UK at all.


Elaine bends


For April's Oui they went for an even more explicit nipple shot than the previous month; getting as bold as Penthouse's January cover.  Neither Playboy nor Penthouse had put men with their naked cover girl.  In this case it is to illustrate a circus themed pictorial.



Inside, Oui still hadn't gone down the labia display route so, visually they were no naughtier than Playboy but this picture of Martine shows that they knew that the pussy was the coming thing in the Pubic Wars without actually displaying it.


Martine idly tweaks herself 


May's Penthouse saw Pet of the Month, Brandy Howard, also on the cover in a very naked shot for the time.



Inside, we had a pictorial by John Demetrius, in his only Penthouse feature, of Shawn Day whose very wispy curls did not conceal her bits.


Shawn flashes
Pet Brandy's pictorial was not as explicit as some of the others that had gone before; the exception being her centrefold shot.


Brande rubs


Brande is shown, like Claudia Arena in January, seemingly rubbing her pussy. Somewhere along the line the Pubic Wars battle had moved from who could show a girl's pubic hair to who could show a girl touching her pubic hair to who could show a girl who looks like she is pleasuring herself.  To look to see how Playboy was responding to the increasing crotch-caressing shots from Penthouse you only have to look as far as their May issue.




For a start Playboy showed more than their recent hints of areolae with covergirl Marsha Kaye wearing a very see-through set of lingerie. So far neither magazine had actually fully showed bare, completely unobstructed nipples (at least in the US, Penthouse in the UK was being bolder) so this was strong stuff for Playboy.




Inside, Playboy ran a pictorial on lingerie which opened with a photograph of a girl  with her hand inside her tights and caressing her pussy, her eyes closed in ecstasy.


  Marilyn goes for it

 
That month's Playmate, Marilyn Lange had the sort of enormous bust that Playboy loved (Penthouse was never as bust-obsessed) and so, not surprisingly, the pictorial concentrated on showcasing those assets. However, with one small picture Marilyn became the first actual Playmate to be pictured indulging in faux masturbation.



Oui went for the man and woman on the cover approach again in May and, indeed, two of their pictorials that month were boy/girl ones and this was at  a time when Penthouse had only had two such pictorials ever.




Neither pictorial was really raunchy, however, and, indeed, one featured a pillow fight but at least that couple were shown kissing whereas in the second one a chaste kiss of a bare shouder was as naughty as it got.




This approach, however, did not go down well with many of the readers.  One complained about the May issue that "two out of the three (pictorials) featured couples.  Ditto the subscription ad and the cover of the issue."  He continued: "Part of the attraction of magazines such as Oui is fantasy...with the introduction of a partner, however, these fantasies are shattered.  Please give us the girls and leave the studs to Playgirl and Viva." 


The offending ad from May 1974


This of course highlights one of the key issues of erotica: is it only erotic if members of the opposite sex alone are depicted or is a fundamental of erotica that it depicts interaction between two sexes?  Most erotica from ancient times until the birth of photography depicted couples. What graduallly happened over time, during the first half of the twentieth century, was that it became more acceptable to show pictures of girls alone whereas the addition of men crossed the line into pornography.   These magazines were dealing with a legacy largely circumscribed by Playboy in the mid-fifties.   It was Guccione and Penthouse who started to introduce couples into the pictorials as part of their greater concentration on sex in itself (rather than as part of a wider lifestyle as Playboy posited).


January 1974's Viva featured Janet Dunphy, October 1972's Penthouse Pet of the Month on the cover


The correspondent mentioned, critically, Guccione's womens' magazine Viva, which had been launched less than a year previously.  It featured a couples pictorial every month which not only looked like the ones in Penthouse but often featured the same models and photographers as well. 


The first issue of Playgirl June 1973


Playgirl, which the aggrieved gentleman  felt a more proper repository for male nudes, had first appeared in June 1973, three months before Viva, and featured its famous male centrefolds.  Interestingly the cover of the first issue of Playgirl  was of a couple rather than a man on his own.  Given that Viva often featured couples on their covers as well it is easy to see where those who made the negative comments on  the "big debate", as Oui subsequently called it, were coming from.


Carol Augustine


Putting it out much more in May was Oui's sole girl-only pictorial, centrefold Carol Augustine who displayed, pretty much for the first time in Oui,  some of the spread-legged hints of labia that were becoming more common in Penthouse.  In fact, Carol had been Penthouse Pet of the Month back in February 1972.




Things got even worse for Oui the follwing month.  They had at least, dispensed with the couple on the cover in favour of another lone nubile nipple flasher.  However, a piece featuring the then wife of film director Russ Meyer, Edy Williams also included a male model, Richard Dow,  in every picture of her.




Further on in the magazine there was a pictorial on nudist beaches of the world which had several pictures of full frontal men in it.


Brazenly naked in Guadeloupe


The real issue, however, was that instead of a centrefold girl they had a centrefold couple.  They had included a man in their centrefold picture of Florence Fossorier in their very first issue, of course, but at least they had had the majority of the pictures just featuring Florence.  Here, however, it was a couple right from the start.




In particular, it was this picture that got them into trouble with some of their readers as, six months before Penthouse risked it, their male model in a couples pictorial is just showing a glimpse of the previously unshowable.  "Please take the June issue of Oui and shove it up your ass," wrote someone from New Jersey, elegantly.  ""For the man of the World" should read "For the queer of the World"" he said, referring to the magazine's tagline.   Yes, the issue of the depiction of the penis caused a split in the readership.  Oui published equal numbers of letters from each viewpoint but the men stayed, at least for the time being.




No men on Playboy's June's cover but another teasing, nipple-flashing effort with Playmate of the Year Cyndi Wood's prominent breast nestled amongst the marabou feathers. Given that this was literally a head and bust shot then she was exposing a bigger area of nipple than any previous Playboy cover girl.


Wild thing!


Inside, Cyndi sprawled about on a zebra skin rug in the way Playboy now felt it had to go in order to keep up with Penthouse's sexed up women.




We bring the first half of 1974 to an end by looking at Penthouse's offering, the cover of which featured a positive cornucopia of bare breasts from the candidates for the Pet of the Year play-off.  Not everyone was delighted with this, however, and VR of Holidaysburg wrote in with a letter published in the September issue venturing that the magazine shouldn't have nude women on the cover.  In the pet playoff feature itself girls had a couple of pictures each in the pictorial, some of them being ones the magazine hadn't printed before.




Angela Adams had appeared as Pet of the Month back in November 1972 and so this picture, which just reveals a hint of her labia, wouldn't have been able to have been published at that time.





Even more explicit were August 1973's Lane Coyle's two Play-Off pictures.  Although all these pictures appeared in the UK edition the offending bits were airbrushed out.





Pet of the Month Alicia Justin was caught by photographer Peter Fortuna, in his only Penthouse set, spreading her legs to reveal her divided mound and then with her hands on her pussy.  The trick, of course, being that it looks like she is unaware of the camera and has been caught out, diddling herself on the rocks.




The final pictorial featured model Deborah Clearbranch smilingly spreading her thighs for Earl Miller in the countryside.  For the first time Penthouse had displayed its girls labia in every pictorial in an issue.  What was it that has provoked this full-lipped presentation of pussy for this issue?  The answer, of course, was the first issue of Larry Flynt's Hustler, due out the following month.  Unlike all new mens' magazines to date which had modelled themselves on Playboy, Flynt was specifically targeting Penthouse.


Deborah/Desiree in Men Only November Vol 48 no 11  (1983)


Deborah herself, having failed to make a go of it in conventional movies (such as the B-movie girls in prison classic, Caged Heat (1974), transformed herself into the late seventies/early eighties porn star Desiree Cousteau (thanks to our anonymous source) and not only appeared in the conventional mens' magazines at the time but also the hard core ones like Swedish Erotica.


Deborah/Desiree gets it from John Holmes on the cover of Swedish Erotica


She also made a lot of hard core films.  However, it would be a notorious pictiorial that she did in Hustler in 1975 which would have the most far-reaching consequences and we will examine that when we look, in full, at the Pubic Wars for the second half of that year.

From the following month Penthouse would be fighting the Pubic Wars on two fronts.