Playboy
August 2001
“belinda”
As a young teenage Go-Go’s fan, I often longed to see Belinda Carlisle naked. It may be nearly twenty years later, but the good folks at Playboy have answered many a teen boy’s wish. Gracing the cover and a nude photo layout is the one and only Belinda Carlisle. To be honest, with the advent of digital retouching and the over abundance of silicone breast implants (not to mention a life), Playboy has lost much of its appeal. But the Belinda piece is some of the best photo work I’ve seen in the pages of the top men’s magazine in quite some time. The photos, which were shot in Thailand by Richard McLaren, are a far cry from what you might expect. The images recall the classic pin-up art of Vargas or Elvgren. The timeless feel of the images mixed with just how good Belinda Carlisle looks make the other photo spreads in the mag pale. I mean, the over inflated strippers from The Sopranos? Yikes! Those breasts look even less real in print than they do on the show.
Of course, if you want to try to lie to yourself and say you are buying Playboy for the articles, you can always point to the profile of Jet Li, the interview with Tim Burton, or the reviews of digital video cameras. We all know that you actually just want to see the lead singer of The Go-Go’s naked.
