Roman Bathing Venus 1: by Roy Krenkel

We have decided to start a series of pictures of women in Roman baths but rather than beginning with one of the usual Victorian classicist paintings we were very taken by this fine study by American illustrator Roy G Krenkel (1918-1983) whilst researching some pictures for our Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis blog.

Although Krenkel studied at the Art Student's League in the late thirties he was largely self-taught and was influenced by many things (he was an inveterate museum visitor, for example).  However, his voluptuously curvy women were certainly influenced by the work of the Australian painter Norman Lindsay the subject of one of Agent Triple P's favourite films, Sirens (1993).

This sketch and the finished drawing above feature the tepidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.  These thermae (public baths) were built quite late in the Roman period (begun in 212 AD) and were the largest in the world on completion in 217 AD.  Covering a massive 27 acres they had seating for 1600 people.  Named after Emperor Caracalla (this was a nickname, he was actually called  Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), during whose reign they were built, they continued as functional baths until 573 AD when invading Goths destroyed the aqueduct that supplied them with water.

Tepidarium of Caracalla (detail)

Krenkel has depicted both men and women sharing the facilities at the same time whereas, in fact, access to  thermae for men and women was seperated by time, with women visiting from first thing in the morning until 2.00pm.  After this men had access until dusk.  Interestingly, women were charged double what the men paid.  Although technically men and women weren't supposed to be at the baths at the same time, and no well bought up Roman woman would dream of being so, prostitutes did frequent the baths at the same time as the men; although this was often officially banned by various emperors.  Krenkel's women depicted here, therefore must be of the "loose" type!

The baths today. Just behind the ugly white building at top left (the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation) can be seen the site of the Circus Maximus

Agent Triple P has visited the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and they are still very imposing, despite the depredations of earthquakes and the looting of stones for building materials. Many years ago, when Triple P was in Rome, setting up an office for his firm, we used to run past the baths whilst training for the London Marathon as they were on the road that led to the Via Appia Antica, which was our favoured training route.

Teenage Nudist Venus

Well, not really.  Zakkers has pointed out a TV documentary on Channel 4 which Triple P missed last week.  Now Channel 4, which is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, was supposed to be a high-brow channel catering to minority interests.  Lately, critics have been saying it has fallen a long way from its original, lofty, educational values. The title of last week's documentary, My Daughter the Teenage Nudist, exemplifies this exactly. 

Broadly, the programme made the assertion that more teenagers (of both sexes, but concentrating on the female makes a much more appealing title, of course) were espousing going around with no clothes on.  Meanwhile, others in the programme were trying to recruit more younger people into the naturist movement (a particularly delicate task, we would think). 

Anyway, there were perilously few teenage female nudists in the programme but one rather fetching twenty-five year old, Alex, (pictured above).  Triple P, of course, thinks attitudes to nudity are bizarre in many countries but we don't particularly think that the naturist movement helps in delivering a better public attitude to nudity as they exist in a self imposed ghetto which, almost by definition, is keeping bodies hidden; unless you are a member of the club.  The real issue for Triple P with naturists is that they do everything without clothes; a wholly fake existence.  A properly adjusted society would, of course, expect appropriate clothes for different activities but not have a problem with, for example, nudity at the beach or in saunas (Agent DVD had an interesting experience of the different attitudes of continental women to the latter when working in Switzerland).

Attitudes to public nudity vary from country to country, of course, with Britain being somewhere in the middle.  Although there are nudist beaches in the UK they never seem very popular (partly because of our weather) but there is certainly a fair amount of topless female sunbathing in those few sunny days we do get in the summer.  But is this a trend that's increasing? British girls are happier to strip off when abroad and this is certainly more likely than thirty years ago, for example.  We are not yet, however, relaxed enough about our bodies to not blink at the sort of public nudity (especially male) seen on the beaches of Northern Europe.   The key thing here is that naked and dressed people mix freely and are not seperated into ghettos.

In America, things are more restrictive than here.  Triple P's German friend B was given a warning by a policeman on Santa Monica beach for being briefly topless whilst she changed into her swimsuit; something that would have not caused any reaction on a Baltic (or even British) beach.  In the UK, of course, being naked as a man in public used to be a criminal offence whereas a woman being naked wasn't.  The Sexual Offences Act of 2003 now makes it clear that naked swimming or sunbathing is no longer an offence, whichever sex you are.  Now it's only a problem if the intent is to shock.

So, it doesn't look like we are going to be inundated with teenage nudists any time soon, despite Channel 4's assertions.  Triple P has only two stories about teenage, naked girls.

A few years ago Triple P was down in Chichester Harbour, one hot (we do get them sometimes) summer day, with a large group of friends and relations and we met up with another family and their equally extended group. Anyway there was much swimming off the beach and, afterwards, one young (fifteen we subsequently discovered) lady from the other group engaged us in an interesting (to Triple P, anyway) story about Roman ship's anchors being found off the beach.  As she did this she stripped off her one piece swimsuit , towelled herself down and then got dressed.  She was naked on the beach for maybe thirty seconds and all the time telling me about this Roman ship landing point.  It could have been a sexual tease, of course (she had a fine, mature, body for a late teenager, with those perfect, hemispherical breasts that pre-gravity girls of that age have), and she exuded physical self-confidence.  However we don't think so.  She was just relaxed about being naked in a context where that would be perfectly natural (changing on the beach).

The reason we think this is because of our other story, which relates to a male friend who came home early from work one day to find his sixteen year old daughter and half a dozen of her friends naked in his kitchen, as they had been skinny dipping in his pool.  None of them made any attempt to cover themselves up because, due to the age difference (he was in his mid forties at the time) they didn't regard him as a man, just an old person!

Jenny floats

So, as the law here now recognises, the difference between acceptable nudity and unacceptable is the presence of some sort of sexual intent or situation.  In films, the British Board of Film Classification is quite happy to let non-sexual nudity appear in a "PG" or even a "U" film which, forty years ago, would have required an "AA" or an "X" certificate. The 1971 film Walkabout contains several full frontal shots of Jenny Agutter and was originally classified as an "AA" (equivalent to "15") but the DVD is now classified as a "12". 

In America there are some who seem to equate all nudity with sexuality. This, to most Europeans, is a very bizarre attitude but as long as people have this link in their minds we are not going to be seeing many more naked teenagers on the streets!

Birthday Venus: Echo Johnson

Today is Agent Triple P's birthday (oh no, not another one!) and to celebrate we present a few pictures of someone else born on 11th January: Playboy's Playmate of the Month for January 1993 Echo Johnson.

There are not a lot of famous people who share Triple P's birthday and Echo doesn't appear on any of the lists we looked at.

We are quite critical of the current standard of photography in Playboy and, indeed, the quality of their Playmates and prefer those from the sixties, seventies and (especially) the eighties.

Texan-born Echo, however, is a naturally beautiful girl and very much to Triple P's taste as, unlike Hugh Hefner, we do not have a thing for plastic-looking, busty blondes.

We went out to lunch today but are having a quiet evening so plan to just open a nice bottle of Champagne later, as we are feeling our age!

Non-Centrefold Venus of the Month 4: Raven, December 1973

Just time to get December's non-centrefold of the month posted, in the lovely form of "Raven" from Men Only's December 1973 issue.

She is just the sort of dark, exotic lovely who appeals to Triple P and the fact that she is posed in a nice tropical-looking setting helps immensely as the usual festive season drizzle runs down our window on this dreary afternoon.

Hers is a steamy, sultry appeal and we can only imagine being in her basic cabin in the humid heat as she lounges around or takes a cooling bath in a wooden tub.

It's a short pictorial this but benefits from some large full-page pictures and not too many of those picture in picture pages that the Paul Raymod magazines often annoyingly went in for.

Raven, does sluttily sultry very well, we have to say, and this picture is our favourite from the pictorial.

In their usual nonsensical way Men Only waffled on, in the text accompanying the pictorial, about the fact that she was from Knightsbridge in London and had only just returned home from travelling abroad.  Utter rubbish of course as whilst she conceivably could be British she really looks like she hails from somewhwere rather more exotic.

Anyway, she is a very fine antidote to a dreary day, we think.

Although we have no information on the model the photographer is Frenchman Serge Jacques, one of the longest serving glamour photographers in the world.  He originally started taking pictures of naked women back in the late forties; contributing many photos to the French magazine Paris-Hollywood which he published.  This was really the first truly international mens' magazine.

Originally it featured photo sets of (clothed) starlets and topless cabaret girls but, over time, the actresses disappeared to be replaced by more naked models.  The magazine ran from 1947 until 1973.

Alice Amo by Serge Jacques

Jacques himself ran into trouble a lot in the fifties as his pubic hair flashing models were deemed indecent and he was arrested by the French police, who regularly raided his studio, many times.

Brigitte Bardot by Serge Jacques

 

His most famous images were probably the ones he took of a very young Brigitte Bardot on a beach in St Tropez.

Another Jacques lovely

Jacques went on to work for all of the top mens' magazines in the seventies: Oui, Playboy, Penthouse, Chic, Club International, Mayfair etc.  Amazingly he is still photographing naked ladies, in his studio in Prague (as he says Eastern Europe is where the most attractive women come from - we have to agree), at the age of 83. 

Serge Jacques

Most Unfortunate Venuses: 25 bad centrefolds from Playboy - 12 to 1

Having looked at the number 25 to number 12 bad Playboy centrefolds we finish our review of centrefolds which make Agent Triple P cringe and look at the top 12, starting with this early effort.

12 Barbara Cameron. November 1955

Although Miss Cameron has a nice face and figure we just can't get over that Brillo pad hair.  Not sexy!  Also, the way the tie hangs so as to obscure her face in the mirror is a mistake.

11 Rusty Fisher. April 1956

More nasty hair in this one and an awkward pose to boot.  The baggy jeans make it look like her bottom half has been pasted on from a picture one and a half times the size.  A very ugly picture.

10 Alice Denham. July 1956

Another most unfortunate picture from 1956.  We can see what they were trying to do here with a pillow fighting picture but the suspicion is that most of the "feathers" have been (badly) added afterwards.  Most don't look like feathers at all and just serve to obscure Miss Denham.  Frankly it looks like a seagull has done a poo on the picture and then walked up and down on it.

9 Heather Ryan. July 1967

Again, Miss Ryan is a nice looking girl with an eye-catching figure but she looks very stiff and uncomfortable here.  Frankly, she looks like some sort of stiff-limbed Frankenstein's monster who has just lurched out of the sea.  We wouldn't be at all surprised to find a couple of bolts in her neck.  The backlighting doesn't help either.

8 Sandra Settani. April 1964

Here we have Miss Settani in the landed tuna pose.  That's not the real problem though; its dull but not offensive as such.  No the problem is her hair.  It has so much lacquer on (presumably to stop it blowing around everywhere in the wind) that it looks like it has been carved out of wet tarmac and plopped on her head.  The sailor hat just draws attention to this terrifying confection as it shows how big her hair is. The forward sweeping horns look strong enough to hang lifebelts on. Every time we see this picture we can imagine touching her hair and our hand just sticking fast to it! 

7 Jean Cannon. October 1961

Thrust between the trunks of two trees much of Miss Cannon is obscured; the foreground trunk cutting across her form in a particularly jarring way.  What is worse is why on earth the photographer chose trees covered with distracting graffitti.

6 Sally Sheffield. May 1969

Sally has what Agent DVD would call a "hard" face and photographing it from this angle does her no favours.  The half closed eyes don't help either.

5 Jessica St George. February 1965

Jessica looks really uncomfortable here and her face is frozen into a nasty rictus that makes her look for all the world like dwarf actor Warwick (Willow) Davis.

4 Jean Moorehead. October 1955

Poor Jean has to cope with really big knickers, a see through petticoat that just draws attention to her solid thighs and a cluttered set.  Very unflattering. Even worse, the previous centrefolds stuck to the door show how good other ones had been.

3 Carol Eden. December 1960

Cursed with a hairdo that must have been old fashioned even in 1960 and photographed from an angle that no woman looks good from this is an insipid and unattractive shot.

2 Jackie Rainbow. October September 1954

This one is so old fashioned it could have come from the thirties.  An unflattering angle, a bad hair style and a ridiculous nineteen twenties pose makes this a horribly contrived and unattractive picture.


1 Clayre Peters. August 1959

So here it is.  In Agent Triple P's opinion, the worst centrefold Playboy has ever produced.  Wearing a quite hideous and nasty coloured negligee which almost looks painted on rather than real, a glassy-eyed Clayre poses uncomfortably inside a door.  She looks exactly like a zombie advancing unsteadily towards the camera.  The idea of a successful centrefold should be that you should want to step into the picture not run for your life.  Nasty!

Our next Playboy themed post is going to look at the evolution of the portrayal of naked women on the cover and their subsequent retreat from that.

Most Unfortunate Venuses: 25 bad centrefolds from Playboy - Part one: 25-13

Agent Triple P's friend HMS is a laconic Northener and one of his distinctive phrases, when being presented with something perhaps not of the highest quality or otherwise ill-conceived, is that something is "most unfortunate".  Some time ago we looked at all our favourite Playboy centrefolds month by month; picking a handful as being especially pleasing to Triple P.  We have a screen saver which puts up pictures of Playmate centrefolds of that particular month and occasionally we are taken by a particularly bad one. So this post looks at all the really bad centrefold pictures there have been. The choice is no reflection on the women concerned; just their centrefold pictures.

The American science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon created Sturgeon's Law a few years ago; which is that 95% of anything is crap.  On the whole Playboy centrefolds do not fit this rule although it is arguable that most are a bit dull and that often, given the limitations of the format, better pictures of the girls are often in the main pictorial.  A couple of dozen are, however, for Triple P more than just dull; they are actually just awful and often make an otherwise attractive young woman look terrible.  British TV is full of "list programmes" at this time of the year (Fifty worst celebrity moments of 2011etc.) which give gainful employment to a small group of second rate comedians who only seem to appear on these sort of shows. So this is our particular selection of the most unfortunate 25 centrefold pictures Playboy has produced over the last six decades or so.  As is the case for list TV programmes we will attempt to put them in some sort of order, with the least awful being at number 25 and the worst being at number one.

Number 25: Athena Lundberg, January 2006

Really a demonstration of everything that is wrong with current Playboy photography.  Super bright, over-saturated bubblegum colours, over-photoshopped, plastic-looking body and lighting provided by a searchlight.  It's included here, though, because of the ludicrously over the top and utterly distracting cartoon background.  There is a girl in this picture but it may take you some time to spot her.

Number 24:  Jillian Grace, March 2005

Jillian is a lovely girl with a fine, natural body but they have made her adopt a most uncomfortable and clumsy looking pose here, with her right leg bent and placed to one side.  We never look at the rest of her as we can't take our eyes off that awkwardly placed knee and foot.

Number 23: Sandra Edwards, March 1957

Sandra is an attractive lady but not in red tights, which make her look extremely solid below the waist and completely dominate the picture, despite the attempt to ameliorate this effect by placing other random blobs of red in the frame.  We don't like the heavy flick up eye make-up either.

Number 22: Marianne Gaba, September 1959

The wearing a shirt and nothing else look can be very effective (Penthouse used the clothed top and unclothed bottom half extensively in the mid sixties, for example) but this is an ungainly pose which doesn't even show off Miss Gaba's impressive posterior to best effect.

Number 21: Gwen Wong, April 1967

Gwen is a spectacularly pretty girl and her outfit is cute as well but we just can't get past that hair!  It just completely dominates her rather delicate features and is just plain silly, even for the sixties. We suspect that underneath that huge pile of hair she is really a Martain from Mars Attacks!


Number 20: Stella Stevens, January 1960

There is nothing particularly wrong with this shot of actress Stella Stevens; it's just dull.  However, January 1960 is our birth month and we really wanted a better centrefold than this.  She just sort of lies there as an inert object, like a tuna on a fishmonger's slab.

Number 19: Lorrie Menconi, February 1969

It's easy to spot the two reasons Lorrie was chosen as a Playmate but Triple P can't take his eyes off her strange bendy mouth smile.  Unlike one of the other shots in her pictorial where her smile looks genuine this looks terribly forced; not surprising after days of posing, probably, but it puts Triple P off completely.

Number 18: Zahra Nobo, March 1958

In Playboy's pre-pubic days the need to hide their models' groins was a constant source of difficulty.  However, there were considerably more elegant solutions than standing her behind a post and then having to get her to bend sideways so we could still see her face.  This pose also makes it look like she has no waist either. The hand to the face makes it look as if she has bad toothache too.

Number 17: Felicia Atkins, April 1958

More terrible eye make-up makes poor Felicia look positively demonic.  Unusually for a Playboy centrefold she is not looking at the camera which just makes her appear to be in some mad reverie of her own. Triple P finds this image very disturbing!

Number 16: Linda Moon, October 1966

Linda is a big girl in every way but this low-angle shot on her face, a very unflattering haircut and the pose make her look like an East German shot putter.  Elegant it is not.

Number 15: Nadine Chanz, October 1996

Another very awkward pose for Nadine whose dropped right shoulder and tilted head makes it look as if her face has been badly photoshopped onto her admittedly impressive body.  She looks very uncomfortable in every way.

Number 14: Mercy Rooney, December 1972

So, lovely all the way down to her hips and then...GOAT!  Who could possibly have thought that this was an attractive outfit!   Bizarre and offputting!

Number 13: Gay Collier, July 1967

So Gay might have been able to just get away with this cheesy pose and unattractive smirk but any chance of redeeming the picture is ruined by that ridiculous flower which makes her look like the centrefold of Playclown.  They even titled her pictorial clown princess even though there was nothing about clowns in the piece, just her wanting to be a ballerina, but presumably even the copwriter was overcome by this most bizarre of all Playboy centrefolds.

Next time we will look at the most loathsome dozen centrefolds and announce our all time worst.