Flexible Venus 4: Scarlett Strallen

There is no doubt about the most striking and erotic poster on the London Underground at present: it is this one of Scarlett Strallen promoting the new revival of A Chorus Line.  It's not just the impossible angle of those extraordinary legs.  It's not just the muscle tone in those silky thighs.  Its the insouciant look in her eyes which seem to say: "Look I can stretch my legs like this and it's no effort whatsoever.  Imagine what else I can do!"  Indeed!

Thirty year old Scarlett Aimee Vaigncourt-Strallen has been a fixture of the London musical stage since she took the lead in Mary Poppins in 2005.  Her three sisters Saskia, Summer and Zizi are all actresses as well.  More alarmingly she is the niece of former stage school moppet and, later, Dr Who companion Bonnie Langford.

Splendid!

Pancake Day Venus: Melissa Debling

Today is Pancake Day so here is Melissa Debling from Ramsgate with a very large stack.  

The strange world of the weekly "lad's mag" in Britain is entirely inhabited by busty creatures such as Ramsgate-born Melissa.  Appropriately, it is a two way fight as market leader Nuts and younger pretender Zoo battle it out with under-dressed Page 3 girls, sport and bad humour.

The "lad" culture can be traced back to the early nineties where it was seen as an antithesis to the "new man" phenomenon espoused by the likes of Arena and GQ magazines.  Defiantly anti-feminist, its popularity is much attacked by nervous politicians and an odd alliance between the liberal and conservative press who are doing their best to turn Britain into a sexless, gender neutral, politically correct, dystopian nightmare (i.e: Canada).

Not long ago the Conservative Party were warning that “lads mags” were a bad thing, were corrupting the young fathers of this country and should be banned (or at least put on the top shelf of newsagents where, presumably, young fathers would not be able to reach them as their arms would be too tired from lugging around the baby, buggy and the bag loads of  paraphernalia that accompany the squealing creatures). 

The main crime magazines like Zoo and Nuts is that they cause men to treat women as sex objects, according to the huffy Daily Telegraph.  Good grief, women are sex objects! That is what they were designed to be and if they weren’t we would all die out faster than the dinosaurs after the meteorite hit. As soon as man first started to create art he started to make carvings of naked women. As soon as he started to paint he painted naked women (and mammoths which were, admittedly pretty impressive and worth recording). As soon as he found a way to record objects on paper using light and light sensitive chemicals (Agent Triple P thinks that the invention of photography was as close to actual magic as you could get, as Arthur C Clarke would no doubt have agreed) he started photographing naked women, especially as many of the early photographers were based in France and had better raw material to work with. As soon as he found a way to make pictures move he took movies of naked women. As soon as he found a way to digitise images and send them electronically he sent naked women. Is it a surprise that the standard image for testing image processing algorithms is knows as a “Lenna” or “Lena” and is a cropped image of the centrefold (Lena Soderberg) from Playboy’s November 1972 edition? Much of the technological advancement made in order to improve the performance of the internet was done so as to be able to move pictures and videos of naked women around the web as fast as possible.

This pernicious anti-sexual movement has now moved on from purporting to protect young fathers from temptation to protecting children, as the press happily alight on the recent disclosures regarding TV presenter and disc jockey Jimmy Saville as moral justification.  We are happy to defy this worrying development here on Venus Observations which has always celebrated women's beauty, difference and, dare we say, superiority.  Life in Britain for millions of people was always handicapped by a peculiar attitude to nudity and sex which does not exist, for example, in many (most?) of the countries in Continental Europe.  What none of the newspapers have addressed, not surprisingly, is whether the mental health of girls in these countries is as shattered as it is supposedly in Britain by their current hates of sexualised music videos, online pornography and depictions of naked women.  Why is it that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe?  Perhaps it is something to do with the long standing and now returning attitudes that sex and nudity (which are not the same thing) are bad, dirty and, therefore, become illicit.

Venus in black stockings 2: Kelly Brook

There are, disappointingly, comparatively few pictures of Miss Brook in black stockings, an unusual situation for a young lady who spends much of her time posing about in lingerie.  Still, we have two fine examples here: one in hold ups and one in suspenders (or a garter belt if you are a North American).

The one above looks effectively slutty, probably because she is wearing a dress rather than just a boudoir concoction as in the one below (in which she looks very young).  The illicit flash of stockings in everyday wear is so much more potent than seeing them on an undressed girl.  Triple P remembers a meeting where he sat next to a girl from HM Treasury who not only flashed the tops of her stockings when seated but spent the whole meeting pinging her suspender straps against her leg.  Most distracting!

We note that poor Kelly broke up with her boyfriend this week, mainly, it seems, because she kept going to meet the previous one.  We imagine that she won't be on the market for very long.

Bond Girl Venus 2: Bérénice Marlohe -Skyfall

Bérénice Marlohe in Skyfall

Triple P went to see Skyfall on Sunday which is a truly tremendous film if not, perhaps, a traditional James Bond film.  In feel it is closer to the literary Bond, oddly, perhaps, that of John Gardner rather than Ian Fleming, but does at last achieve the "grittiness" that the producers have continued to strive for (unsuccessfully) since the days of Roger Moore.  Above all it's a proper film by a proper director made with proper actors. It has more character development than all of Roger Moore's films put together.

Skyfall does, however, have more humour than Daniel Craig's previous efforts and is the first time we have actually liked him as Bond.  Fortunately, he has indicated that he is happy to keep playing Bond. We will not comment on the plot of the film other than to say it is going to be a deserved hit.  The cinema, however, was full of children under ten and it is certainly not suitable for them, not least because it is quite dialogue heavy.  I suspect it's down to parents who remember the Roger Moore Bonds which were more like children's films and haven't registered that they have evolved.

Anyway, decorating Skyfall as principal Bond Girl was French actress Bérénice Marlohe who has leaped from relative obscurity as a bit part actress on French TV to stardom in one impressive leap.

Bérénice went after the role personally, rather than through her agent, by finding the name of the casting director and e-mailing them direct.

Half French with a Cambodian/Chinese father she was finding it difficult to get roles in France as she "wasn't French enough".  Now she has appeared in a hit film she seems to have no intention of working in France again.  Quite right too.  Your loss, our little froggy chums!

Some people have observed that she looks a little like Monica Belucci.  Well, she does in some photographs.  Whatever, she is an extraordinarily beautiful woman and, interestingly, in some pictures she looks completely western and in some quite oriental.  A neat trick!

She is a comparatively elderly 33 and spent ten years of that at the Paris Conservatoire studying classical piano.

If we have any criticism of her in Skyfall it's that she is plastered in far too much make-up but her beauty and elegance shines through, fortunately.

As a previous Bond might have observed: "shplendid!"

The return of the bushy Venus: Britany Nola

Triple P just picked up November's Playboy in the village shop and was immediately struck by the uncluttered cover featuring Shera Bechard (November 2010) which was not covered with the usual distracting blurb.

Inside we had a (rather dull) pictorial of an unnamed girl who, nonetheless, in a retro-themed Italian feature had a discernible waist, a natural bust and even a hint of bush with her eighties-style landing strip.

A bigger shock awaits in the Playmate pictorial in the shape of Canadian-born Britany Nola.  She has proper fur!  She has a natural bust!  She has no tattoos or piercings!  She is lovely!  What with the feature on Hugh Hefner's girlfriends as well we have more thatched girl's than not for the first time in years.  Hooray!  Let's hope that this continues!

Two new milestones

Venus Observations passed two more milestones in the last week or so.  

Firstly, we topped more than two hundred followers, which we could never have imagined when we started this blog in late 2005.  The blog has now been running six years and four months.  Secondly, we have just reached two and three quarter million page views.  We get something like 5,000 page hits a day and between 1,500 and 2,500 separate visitors.  Triple P is very grateful for all those who visit and, in particular, comment.  It really does encourage us to put more stuff up!

Anyway, by way of celebration, here is a picture we have had floating around in our "to post" section for some time without ever really finding an excuse to do so.  It is the actress Lynn Collins who we saw recently in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and who is to play Dejah Thoris in the forthcoming John Carter (2012) film.  There have been comments online to the effect that the Texan born actress isn't attractive enough to play "the incomparable Dejah Thoris" who in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books goes about mostly naked, apart from a few bits of jewellery.  It's a Disney film, however, so she will be very much clothed but not, as we can see, because she does not look good without clothes.  Still, Texan-born Lynn is an experienced Shakespearean actress so we will see what she can do with the role.

Venus Relieved: an unexpected book

With Christmas approaching the bookshops in London are getting what they hope will be their Christmas best sellers in stock.  Waterstones, our major bookstore chain, usually has a small selection of slightly racy photography books in stock which it often augments with a few extras at this time of the year.  The staples include the pictorial books by Dita von Teese, compendiums such as the Mammoth Book of Erotic Women, the Pirelli calendar book, Dian Hanson's "Big Book of..." series etc.  All reasonably mainstream as such books go.

Triple P was just in the Waterstones branch on Trafalgar Sqaure and was looking in the art and photography sections, as he often does.  They had most of the above mentioned books but they also had two copies of a book called Pissy Pussy Girls which we immediately found very ungrammatical.  Inside, surprisingly and not surpisingly at the same time, were a series of pictures by a photographer called Gordon Denman of, well, girls pissing.  The picture below, which is about the least graphic in the book, reminded me of an incident with S from Vancouver many years ago when she just failed to get her trousers off in time in our hotel bathroom, having been trying to escape for some time from an over zealous conversationalist at a work reception and having consumed far too much Granville Island beer. Doubled up in agony in the lift of the Pan Pacific in Vancouver, after we eventually escaped, we really thought, as we unlocked the door to Triple P's room that we had made it.  Alas all she needed was another five seconds!

Now this is not a particularly unusual fetish, we know several young ladies (S included) who enjoy spraying fun, but what was unusual was finding such an explicit book in such  a mainstream shop; and two copies as well!  Triple P was surprised, to say the least.  Denman is better known for his arty books of black and white photographs of real couples having sex but this was a full colour opus.  I wonder how many Waterstones (appropriately!) will sell for Christmas?

Venus with a snake 11: Elizabeth Hurley

Well here is Elizabeth Hurley in a none too subtle version of the girl with a snake theme (actually are there any subtle versions?)  The extended tongue (and we're not talking about the snake) is all a bit much we think.

Miss Hurley also posed, to some effect, with a snake for the film Bedazzled (2000).  In the film she plays the Devil (hence all the snake and apple stuff going on ) who was played, in the original (and superior) 1967 version by Peter Cook.  It's all Faust, of course.  We think that this picture is far more seductive than the more obvious one at the top.  Good grief, we are starting to sound like Agent DVD!

Agent Triple P met Miss Hurley once and found her perfctly delightful although her son, Damien (appropriately), was  a little menace!

Calendar Girl Venus: Daria Werbowy

So, you are a trendy fashion conscious femme in Paris (aren't they all?) and you buy French Vogue every month.  The magazine issues a calendar for you to put up in your kitchen so that you don't miss that vital appointment at the manicurist.

Janvier

So, what would be appropriate for a calendar for a top womens' magazine?  A selection from their best fashion pictures over the decades, some French actors in immaculate suits, clothes as still life, perhaps?

Février

No, lets use pictures of a naked woman in bed draped in jewellery!  That's just what our readers would like!

Mars

Hence, here we have Daria Werbowy, a Polish born Ukrainian/Canadian model, sprawled about looking like a Penthouse Pet from the early seventies, in a set of photographs by Mikael Jannson..

Avril

5'11" tall Daria exposes pretty much everything in this set of pictures which are, we should remind you, for a womens magazine!  She even goes full frontal on the cover.

Mai

She also appeared in the 2011 Pirelli calendar which is, of course, aimed at men (or at least it is in principle;  we suspect that these days it is more aimed at art directors and other photographers than people who sell tyres in garages).

Juin

Now of course, Agent Triple P has observed that women are much more interested in looking at pictures of nice looking naked women that men are of men.

Juillet

Even given that, these images are surprisingly sexualised for their target market.  They are much more explicit, for example, than calendars produced for the likes of FHM or Maxim.

 Août

We aren't saying that we don't like them, just that we are bit surprised by them.  We can't imagine Vogue in the US publishing something like this.

 Septembre

We only became aware of this calendar, which was released nearly a year ago as our French friend N was talking about it the other day.  She told me that she has it up in her kitchen!  Ah well, French women.  That is why they are so fascinating!

 Octobre

Daria is one of the highest paid models in the world (ranks no 6 2020-2011) and still holds the record for opening the most runway shows in a year.

 Novembre

Triple P would be very happy to have these images of her on his kitchen wall but is surprised so many French women do as well!  Good for them, we suppose, or perhaps they only see the jewellery not the girl. 

Décembre

Venus from the rear: Scarlett Johansson

Agent DVD took Agent Triple P out for an enjoyable dinner last night.  We had not seen each other for some time as Triple P has been in Istanbul and Agent DVD has been in the Pyrénées Orientales, in France.  One topic which came up was the fact that he had missed the news about Scarlett Johansson's mobile phone being hacked and nude self-portraits of her being stolen. 

Not surprisingly, Miss Johansson is very upset about this invasion of privacy but, fortunately for the rest of us, the pictures concerned are fabulous.  Or, rather, one of them is.  The one of her bust, nice though it is, is just a conventional view of a pretty, topless girl with that strange, dominating arm that mobile phone self portraits always have.

The one at the top of this post is, however, a minor masterpiece, however inadvertant.  Miss Johansson's glacially beautiful face dominates the right hand third of the picture.  The left hand third is blank giving the composition an uncrowded sense of space. The centre of the triptych contains a wonderful rear view of the actress; all the more senuously revealing because of the swathe of material that she appears to be emerging from, like a butterfly from a chrysalis.  Concealing her front revealing her rear. The camera arm, in this mirror shot, is unobtrusive and by following her eyeline you are brought directly to that perfect posterior.  It is, appropriately, rather like a seventeenth century Dutch interior in its formal composition.  The limited colour palette is remiscent of the cool pastel-shaded interior nudes by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi.

So if you are going to end up with a nude picture of yourself leaking onto the internet at least this one is a splendid picture which makes you look wonderful rather than some unflattering photo that could damage your image. 

Lipstick-coated Venus: Kelly Brook for Exhibition Magazine

Exhibition magazine is one of those expensive advertising-driven arty publications aimed at people with more money than sense.  You would have to be fairly senseless to pay €25 ($35) for a magazine  but then it does only come out annually (if indeed we see another issue at all).   Launched to coincide with Paris Fashion Week at the beginning of this year, the French-based publication intends to concentrate on just one product an issue.  This, the launch issue, concentrates on lipstick.  The very fact that you can produce a magazine that is just about lipstick tells you everything you need to know about the fashion and beauty industry, we think!

The cover features an incredibly (and, no doubt, deliberately) vulvic shot which comes across like something which is a combination of a particularly nasty piece of marine life, something from Starship Troopers and a close-up from Hustler.

The magazine itself looks like an art director's wet dream and appears to be all style and very little substance but we forgive it as they have managed to persuade Kelly Brook to strip off properly for the first time.

Now, Kelly has always been rather shy (yes really!) of revealing her body in its entirity. For a model famous for her bust there are relatively few topless shots of her.

Some may say this is because her breasts are far from perfect but we have to say we prefer her imperfections to some silicone assisted alternative.

Indeed, Kelly herself, when she posed for Playboy last year, admitted that her bust wasn't what it used to be and it is all credit to photographer Ben Hasset that he hasn't over photoshopped her.

British photographer and filmmaker Ben Hasset was born in Britain but now works in New York.  He is a regular contributor to Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.  He also has done advertising work for Omega, Dior, Givenchy, Rimmel and Chanel for whom he directed his first TV commercial.

The thing about these pictures is that Kelly has been photographed full-frontal for the first time.  She didn't even do this for Playboy but maybe she thinks this is ART.

Not only is she full-frontal but she is showing her bits in a way that Playboy wouldn't have done anyway.  She must have been aware of this so why does she choose to do this at the point in her career when she is just getting recognition in the US.  Its not something conservative film producers would be too happy about, we suspect.

Now Kelly is covered in lipstick in these pictures to accord with the theme of the magazine but presumably she didn't apply the lipstick herself and, if so, who got to colour her labia that nice dark red?

There is a whole blood-spattered tribal warpaint thing going on here as well which, no doubt, says primal things about the role of lipstick in emphasising a genital substitute. 

Anyway it's a brave thing for Kelly to do, given  the lack of Playboy-style processing and we think she looks quite splendid in her primitive warpaint.

She won't be posing like this again for a while (if ever) given that she is now pregnant so we must just make do with this fine moment in time!