This photo is a landmark in my early fascination with the female body.
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| Photo: Brian Lanker |
I was in thrall to that classic Buddha-style bathing-beauty pose. I memorized the placement of each tiny, round, plastic sequin on that bikini.
There’s a fun contradiction in this photo. Paulina is on a Polynesian island, wearing a sparkly and brightly colored swimsuit, lounging on a canoe, with a flower in her hair. You’d expect the girl in this situation to be the type of bubbly blonde you’d find on a postcard or a Hawaiian shirt.
But instead, there’s Paulina, of the Eastern European strain of swimsuit models, with her pensive and almost gloomy expression. Even when Paulina smiled, it was subtle and mysterious instead of sunny and inviting.
More recently, she’s all big, toothy smiles …
… but back then, she added a layer of depth and darkness to what I found appealing in those early years, laying the groundwork for my tastes to this day.
This is a better quality scan, but it has the page split.
SI: The world is ending. Go ahead and open up your vault to all your high-quality photos. You’re sitting on so much potential joy.
I remember how surprised I was as a teenager to see Paulina interviewed on Letterman or somewhere and seeing how jacked up her teeth were. Then she made that Anna movie and the teeth got fixed - I think it might've been done as part of the character's story? Anyway then she's back in SI for 89 and for the first time ever we see she has teeth. The pictures exuded a whole different personality. But this picture here - the languidness of the whole thing just draws you in. Hard to believe she was probably only 20 when that pic was taken.
ReplyDeleteFor whatever reason I youtubed Paulina the other week to see if she ever did some runway. A Calvin Klein show popped up and to my surprise also in the show was a young Stacey Williams. It was the good old days where runway models didn't have to be sticks.