Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever

[sdmikev]

Really the worst decade of the upper half of the 20th century. Music got really bad, the hair, the clothes, Reagan… Oy.
And I was a teenager (HS in the first 4 years of the 80’s) and don’t look at them with rose colored glasses. Maybe my old Raybans…

[anon61221983]

[Israel_B]

There has been at least one hard cover collection of their published cartoons. Great stuff!

[robulus]

@sdmikev

Really the worst decade of the upper half of the 20th century.

Blasphemy!!! Me and Liz Fraser aren’t listening to you!!!

cocteau Twins - Beatrix

[jsroberts]

@kupfernigk

The available techniques of image “improving” in the 1950s and 1960s were pretty basic compared to what came later. They relied on retouching rather than airbrushing, and there was a long tradition of people who “colorised” black and white images and who were available to do this kind of work.

It’s interesting to compare Gil Elvgren’s real life models to his paintings - you can see many of the same ‘photoshopping’ techniques, even if it involved making a completely new image.

[kupfernigk]

@Kimmo

There’s an overlap between being attracted to women and youth, since evolution has selected for youthful characteristics in women - smaller stature, higher voices, smaller noses and so on, which all contribute to triggering the protective instinct. Seems pretty obvious to me.

It is this sort of observation that causes me to distrust “evolutionary psychology”. Women are optimised for reproductive fitness, which implies a more compact body layout to reduce the work done by the heart during pregnancy, and more fat stores, some subcutaneous, to retain heat better and supply the extra energy needed during pregnancy. There are good biological reasons why this results in a smoother and more curvaceous body plan. Men are to a degree hardwired to recognise an optimal body as being suitable for a reproductive partner, but our brains are so reprogrammable that this can go wildly astray in individuals. And then there’s the effect noticed by Tinbergen which I referred to earlier; the brain’s model of the world is just that, a model, and the stimuli that affect it are not necessarily very complex. To oversimply, at one level the calculation may be “Big boobs, big bottom, small waist, symmetrical face, not pregnant, Ugg get pregnant.”

[kupfernigk]

@robertmckenna

I hadn’t forgotten but: America is a bit more fundamentalist Christian than the UK

And the Atlantic has slightly more water in it than the Mediterranean.

[Kimmo]

Okay, what about the smaller nose and higher voice? And pretty much nobody finds forearm hair unattractive, AFAIK.

[Marktech]

@sdmikev

Really the worst decade of the upper half of the 20th century. Music got really bad

You weren’t listening to the right stuff.

[nungesser]

In scrolling through the images, one caught my eye and made me double-take.

Ma’am, your face says “I want you”, but your chest says “RARR ANGRY EYES!”

[Marktech]

Turns out there are online tools. It’s a whole new world.

http://mosaically.com/photomosaic/6eefec46-03dd-4c77-b096-00108f2d9e10

[By default, this crops to the centre of each constituent image, thus in these cases usually cropping the head. Insert your own porn-dehumanises argument here.]

[Edited for clarity]

[kupfernigk]

@fuzzyfungus

Lena Söderberg, of unexpected prominence in image processing test data fame?

The part of the picture used as a test image is possibly so famous because it is successful as a straight portrait, whereas the Playboy centrefold isn’t.

[KarlS]

@Kimmo

I doubt it’ll ever go away now that the cat’s out of the bag…

I don’t expect it to go away completely, but my nonscientific impression is that we are already well past peak hairlessness.

[manybellsdown]

It’s funny to watch the rise of tan lines as “sexy”. They’re on 80% or more of the photos in the 60’s, and a good chunk of the 70’s. They finally start to taper off in the 80’s, right about the photo of the girl in the tanning bed.[quote=“Kimmo, post:129, topic:74411”]
And pretty much nobody finds forearm hair unattractive, AFAIK.
[/quote]

I dunno, but most girls under 30 seem to shave their forearms now. It seems to be a generational thing. Mine are ridiculously hairy but I can’t fathom shaving them, much like my friend in 1980 who couldn’t imagine shaving her legs above the knee.

[kupfernigk]

@manybellsdown

It seems to be a generational thing. Mine are ridiculously hairy but I can’t fathom shaving them, much like my friend in 1980 who couldn’t imagine shaving her legs above the knee.

T S Eliot, no less, was clearly turned on by them, see Prufrock:

“Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
But in the lamplight downed with light brown hair.”

[manybellsdown]

I love that poem so very very much.

[kupfernigk]

Given your nick, I thought you might.

[robertmckenna]

Hate the 80s in general, gate revert drums and the overwhelming snare, horrible glassy patches on DX 7s, but god I loved that song as a youngster. Loved the Cocteaus, but that song from Treasure in particular.

[robulus]

Then you sir, display impeccable taste and discrimination.

Whenever anyone complains about how bad 80’s music was, I always think that if you spent the 80’s listening to Billy Ocean and Huey Lewis it’s your own damn fault

[TobinL]

@robulus

I always think that if you spent the 80’s listening to Billy Ocean and Huey Lewis it’s your own damn fault

some of us didn’t always have a choice. oh stupid small town midwest college. on the plus side the school radio station played all kinds of not pop drivel of the time and all kinds of really cool music in general.