Century seen by a one-track mind
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Your support makes all the difference.QUITE WHO came up with the entries for Playboy magazine's 100 sexiest women of the 20th century is not quite clear. Were they voted upon by the mag's sad readers? Or simply dreamt up by the staff in the fetid atmosphere of its photographic department?
Either way the result is drearily predictable. The list reads like a lexicon of Bill Clinton's schoolboy, or perhaps in the President's case not so schoolboy, fantasies - all big hair, large breasts and wide, wide mouths.
It starts with Marilyn Monroe and then goes downhill - Raquel Welch, Cindy Crawford and even the unnaturally configured Pamela Anderson are all in the top 10.
It is a lust-list preserved in aspic. There may be a preponderance of modern names but the template is still essentially Hollywood circa 1955. Pouting, sultry, curvaceous etc. Playboy may have got rid of its Bunnies but the really important things clearly never change.
Should we care? No self- respecting feminist these days even bothers to picket the Miss World contest with its tired attempts at modernity (ditching the high heels and swimsuit image in favour of promoting the environment). So why should anyone bother to object to this jaded breast fest?
It's not merely the limited nature of the physical template. British model agencies were yesterday lamenting the omission from the list of Kate Moss or others in the super-waif tradition.
What is so wearying is the assumption that sexuality resides in posturing physicality.
Where is the recognition that some people - such as some of the Tory men who surrounded Margaret Thatcher in her glory days - find power a turn on? Or the scornful authority of a Princess Anne? Or the quick wit of a Dawn French? Or the cool poise of an Ingrid Bergman who is the kind of film star noticeably absent from the list?
Sexiness may go beyond immediate appearances, but men's magazines, it seems, never can.
Playboy's Top 100 women are :
1. Marilyn Monroe
2. Jayne Mansfield
3. Raquel Welch
4. Brigitte Bardot
5. Cindy Crawford
6. Sophia Loren
7. Elizabeth Taylor
8. Pamela Anderson
9. Bo Derek
10. Jean Harlow
11. Rita Hayworth
12. Kim Basinger
13. Ann-Margret
14. Anita Ekberg
15. Jenny McCarthy
16. Farrah Fawcett
17. Betty Grable
18. Kim Novak
19. Ursula Andress
20. Gina Lollobrigida
21. Evelyn Nesbit
22. Jane Russell
23. Elle Macpherson
24. Sharon Stone
25. Lana Turner
26. Grace Kelly
27. Stella Stevens
28. Jane Fonda
29. Mamie Van Doren
30. June Wilkinson
31. Elke Sommer
32. Marlene Dietrich
33. Bettie Page
34. Linda Lovelace
35. Madonna
36. Heather Locklear
37. Vanessa Williams
38. Joan Collins
39. Candy Loving
40. Clara Bow
41. Josephine Baker
42. Angie Dickinson
43. Hedy Lamarr
44. Mae West
45. Catherine Deneuve
46. Donna Michelle
47. Halle Berry
48. Candy Barr
49. Brooke Shields
50. Suzanne Somers
51. Greta Garbo
52. Theda Bara
53. Christa Speck
54. Vanna White
55. Dorothy Stratten
56. Barbi Benton
57. Tempest Storm
58. Barbara Eden
59. Claudia Schiffer
60. Christie Brinkley
61. Stephanie Seymour
62. Patti McGuire
63. Sally Rand
64. Michelle Pfeiffer
65. Naomi Campbell
66. Demi Moore
67. Ava Gardner
68. Anna Nicole Smith
69. Lili St Cyr
70. Paulina Porizkova
71. Janet Jackson
72. Cheryl Tiegs
73. Irish McCalla
74. Cynthia Myers
75. Diana Rigg
76. Kathy Ireland
77. Liv Lindeland
78. Gypsy Rose Lee
79. Lena Horne
80. Linda Evans
81. Shannon Tweed
82. Gene Tierney
83. Janet Pilgrim
84. Joan Crawford
85. Loni Anderson
86. Jacqueline Bisset
87. Louise Brooks
88. Julie Newmar
89. Terry Moore
90. Lynda Carter
91. Marilyn Chambers
92. Diana Dors
93. Fay Wray
94. Carroll Baker
95. Katarina Witt
96. DeDe Lind
97. Dolly Parton
98. Blaze Starr
99. Mata Hari
100. Lillian Muller
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