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Number Six's avatar

Dear Shari--

Gross! and your analysis is spot on.

When I was eleven years old, before I even hit puberty, I used to go to the grocery store with my mother, as, back in 1980, she shopped at the Acme surrounded by cornfields, while my dad worked for the Nazi company that employed most of the local husbands and fathers.

I was a total horn-dog, and I was being mind-controlled, so I was very keen to find pictures of naked or topless women.

As I describe in my first book, these consisted of two pieces of art reproduced in my book on dragons, while Dungeons and Dragons sought unsuccessfully to promote gang-rape fantasies, with homosexual bonding and disparagement of women, not to mention two drawings in MAD Magazine, which was used to program children, pre-teens, and teens, as hand-drawn parodies suggested rape with Charlie's Angels and Jacqueline Bisset in "The Deep."

Playboy was completely unavailable, and it was all I wanted. Over the coming years, as described in my third book, its operation would be white-washed as (i) Hugh Hefner married the Playmate of the Year, Kimberly Conrad, (ii) his daughter, Christine Hefner, became president of the magazine, (iii) Playmate of the Year Debra Jo Fondren became a born-again Christian, who continued to associate with the "Playboy Family," and (iv) Playmate of the Year Donna Edmondson became the ultimate goody-goody ambassador for Playboy, as she innocently promoted wholesome fantasies and art photography. This was in response to the Meese Commission on Pornography, as CIA operatives like Laurel Aston exposed what really went on at the Playboy Mansion, so Hefner cleaned up his act, and his magazine, while he was on his best behavior.

Although Playboy was not available at the Acme, or elsewhere, I would excuse myself from my mother's shopping activities to look at the magazine rack in the front of the store, where I combed the pages of Glamour and Mademoiselle for pictures of topless women.

It's funny that Playboy was far more wholesome than the fashion magazines that targeted female readers.

It's also funny that during this time, and shortly afterwards, I browsed the photography shelf at Walden Books, where I hungrily gazed upon volumes like How To Photograph Women, How To Photograph Nudes, and a beautiful book of Bo Derek, whom I celebrate in my writing.

The funny thing was that they were trying to use Mrs. Derek, nee Cathy Collins, not only to lead women to wreck their hair with corn-rows, a la "10," but also to lead older men to divorce their wives, so they could marry a teenage hottie just as the big kid, John Derek, had done.

But, for me, and my friends, Bo was not a far younger teenager--but a far older woman.

Anyway, although repulsive, it is interesting and valuable that you expose the disgusting perversity of the fashion industry, which, like mainstream comic books and mainstream television, was far worse than the underground comics I would later read, showing the ravishment of super heroines, or, at least for a short time, the Magazine for Men.

Your friend,

Timo

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Bert Powers's avatar

This kind of perversion should never be labeled as art or freedom of expression especially when it is mainstreamed and accessible to minors. I do not consider this art. So sad this type of exploitation is allowed and promoted. We have lost our moral compass.

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