Tuesday, June 5, 1945. The Berlin Declaration.

The Berlin Declaration was signed by the United States, USSR, Britain and France, confirming the complete legal dissolution of the German state.

Declaration regarding the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority with respect to Germany by the Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the Provisional Government of the French Republic.

The German armed forces on land, at sea and in the air have been completely defeated and have surrendered unconditionally and Germany, which bears responsibility for the war, is no longer capable of resisting the will of the victorious Powers. The unconditional surrender of Germany has thereby been effected, and Germany has become subject to such requirements as may now or hereafter be imposed upon her.

There is no central Government or authority in Germany capable of accepting responsibility for the maintenance of order, the administration of the country and compliance with the requirements of the victorious Powers.

It is in these circumstances necessary, without prejudice to any subsequent decisions that may be taken respecting Germany, to make provision for the cessation of any further hostilities on the part of the German armed forces, for the maintenance of order in Germany and for the administration of the country, and to announce the immediate requirements with which Germany must comply.

The Representatives of the Supreme Commands of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the French Republic, hereinafter called the "Allied Representatives," acting by authority of their respective Governments and in the interests of the United Nations, accordingly make the following Declaration:

The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, hereby assume supreme authority with respect to Germany, including all the powers possessed by the German Government, the High Command and any state, municipal, or local government or authority. The assumption, for the purposes stated above, of the said authority and powers does not affect the annexation of Germany.

The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, will hereafter determine the boundaries of Germany or any part thereof and the status of Germany or of any area at present being part of German territory.

In virtue of the supreme authority and powers thus assumed by the four Governments, the Allied Representatives announce the following requirements arising from the complete defeat and unconditional surrender of Germany with which Germany must comply:

ARTICLE 1

Germany, and all German military, naval and air authorities and all forces under German control shall immediately cease hostilities in all theatres of war against the forces of the United Nations on land, at sea and in the air.

ARTICLE 2

(a) All armed forces of Germany or under German control, wherever they may be situated, including land, air, anti-aircraft and naval forces, the S.S., S.A. and Gestapo, and all other forces of auxiliary organisations equipped with weapons, shall be completely disarmed, handing over their weapons and equipment to local Allied Commanders or to officers designated by the Allied Representatives

(b) The personnel of the formations and units of all the forces referred to in paragraph (a) above shall, at the discretion of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Allied State concerned, be declared to be prisoners of war, pending further decisions, and shall be subject to such conditions and directions as may be prescribed by the respective Allied Representatives.

(c) All forces referred to in paragraph (a) above, wherever they may be, will remain in their present positions pending instructions from the Allied Representatives.

(d) Evacuation by the said forces of all territories outside the frontiers of Germany as they existed on the 31st December, 1937, will proceed according to instructions to be given by the Allied Representatives.

(e) Detachments of civil police to be armed with small arms only, for the maintenance of order and for guard duties, will be designated by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 3

(a) All aircraft of any kind or nationality in Germany or German-occupied or controlled territories or waters, military, naval or civil, other than aircraft in the service of the Allies, will remain on the ground, on the water or aboard ships pending further instructions.

(b) All German or German-controlled aircraft in or over territories or waters not occupied or controlled by Germany will proceed to Germany or to such other place or places as may be specified by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 4

(a) All German or German-controlled naval vessels, surface and submarine, auxiliary naval craft, and merchant and other shipping, wherever such vessels may be at the time of this Declaration, and all other merchant ships of whatever nationality in German ports, will remain in or proceed immediately to ports and bases as specified by the Allied Representatives. The crews of such vessels will remain on board pending further instructions.

(b) All ships and vessels of the United Nations, whether or not title has been transferred as the result of prize court or other proceedings, which are at the disposal of Germany or under German control at the time of this Declaration, will proceed at the dates and to the ports or bases specified by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 5

(a) All or any of the following articles in the possession of the German armed forces or under German control or at German disposal will be held intact and in good condition at the disposal of the Allied Representatives, for such purposes and at such times and places as they may prescribe:

(i) all arms, ammunition, explosives, military equipment, stores and supplies and other implements of war of all kinds and all other war materials;

(ii) all naval vessels of all classes, both surface and submarine, auxiliary naval craft and all merchant shipping, whether afloat, under repair or construction, built or building;

(iii) all aircraft of all kinds, aviation and anti-aircraft equipment and devices;

(iv) all transportation and communications facilities and equipment, by land, water or air;

(v) all military installations and establishments, including airfields, seaplane bases, ports and naval bases, storage depots, permanent and temporary land and coast fortifications, fortresses and other fortified areas, together with plans and drawings of all such fortifications, installations and establishments;

(vi) all factories, plants, shops, research institutions, laboratories, testing stations, technical data, patents, plans, drawings and inventions, designed or intended to produce or to facilitate the production or use of the articles, materials, and facilities referred to in sub-paragraphs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) above or otherwise to further the conduct of war.

(b) At the demand of the Allied Representatives the following will be furnished:

(i) the labour, services and plant required for the maintenance or operation of any of the six categories mentioned in paragraph (a) above; and

(ii) any information or records that may be required by the Allied Representatives in connection with the same.

(c) At the demand of the Allied Representatives all facilities will be provided for the movement of Allied troops and agencies, their equipment and supplies, on the railways, roads and other land communications or by sea, river or air. All means of transportation will be maintained in good order and repair, and the labour, services and plant necessary therefor will be furnished.

ARTICLE 6

(a) The German authorities will release to the Allied Representatives, in accordance with the procedure to be laid down by them, all prisoners of war at present in their power, belonging to the forces of the United Nations, and will furnish full lists of these persons, indicating the places of their detention in Germany or territory occupied by Germany. Pending the release of such prisoners of war, the German authorities and people will protect them in their persons and property and provide them with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical attention and money in accordance with their rank or official position.

(b) The German authorities and people will in like manner provide for and release all other nationals of the United Nations who are confined, interned or otherwise under restraint, and all other persons who may be confined, interned or otherwise under restraint for political reasons or as a result of any Nazi action, law or regulation which discriminates on the ground of race, colour, creed or political belief.

(c) The German authorities will, at the demand of the Allied Representatives, hand over control of places of detention to such officers as may be designated for the purpose by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 7

The German authorities concerned will furnish to the Allied Representatives:

(a) full information regarding the forces referred to in Article 2 (a), and, in particular, will furnish forthwith all information which the Allied Representatives may require concerning the numbers, locations and dispositions of such forces, whether located inside or outside Germany;

(b) complete and detailed information concerning mines, minefields and other obstacles to movement by land, sea or air, and the safety lanes in connection therewith. All such safety lanes will be kept open and clearly marked; all mines, minefields and other dangerous obstacles will as far as possible be rendered safe, and all aids to navigation will be reinstated. Unarmed German military and civilian personnel with the necessary equipment will be made available and utilized for the above purposes and for the removal of mines, minefields and other obstacles as directed by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 8

There shall be no destruction, removal, concealment, transfer or scuttling of, or damage to, any military, naval, air, shipping, port, industrial and other like property and facilities and all records and archives, wherever they may be situated, except as may be directed by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 9

Pending the institution of control by the Allied Representatives over all means of communication, all radio and telecommunication installations and other forms of wire or wireless communications, whether ashore or afloat, under German control, will cease transmission except as directed by the Allied Representatives.

ARTICLE 10

The forces, ships, aircraft, military equipment, and other property in Germany or in German control or service or at German disposal, of any other country at war with any of the Allies, will be subject to the provisions of this Declaration and of any proclamations, orders, ordinances or instructions issued thereunder.

ARTICLE 11

(a) The principal Nazi leaders as specified by the Allied Representatives, and all persons from time to time named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied Representatives as being suspected of having committed, ordered or abetted war crimes or analogous offences, will be apprehended and surrendered to the Allied Representatives.

(b) The same will apply in the case of any national of any of the United Nations who is alleged to have committed an offence against his national law, and who may at any time be named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied Representatives.

(c) The German authorities and people will comply with any instructions given by the Allied Representatives for the apprehension and surrender of such persons.

ARTICLE 12

The Allied Representatives will station forces and civil agencies in any or all parts of Germany as they may determine.

ARTICLE 13

(a) In the exercise of the supreme authority with respect to Germany assumed by the Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the four Allied Governments will take such steps, including the complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany, as they deem requisite for future peace and security.

(b) The Allied Representatives will impose on Germany additional political, administrative, economic, financial, military and other requirements arising from the complete defeat of Germany. The Allied Representatives, or persons or agencies duly designated to act on their authority, will issue proclamations, orders, ordinances and instructions for the purpose of laying down such additional requirements, and of giving effect to the other provisions of this Declaration. All German authorities and the German people shall carry out unconditionally the requirements of the Allied Representatives, and shall fully comply with all such proclamations, orders, ordinances and instructions.

ARTICLE 14

This Declaration enters into force and effect at the date and hour set forth below. In the event of failure on the part of the German authorities or people promptly and completely to fulfill their obligations hereby or hereafter imposed, the Allied Representatives will take whatever action may be deemed by them to be appropriate under the circumstances.

ARTICLE 15

This Declaration is drawn up in the English, Russian, French and German languages. The English, Russian and French are the only authentic texts.

BERLIN, GERMANY, June 5, 1945.

Signed at 1800 hours, Berlin time, by

Dwight D. Eisenhower,

General of the Army USA;

Zhukov,

Marshal of the Soviet Union;

B. L. Montgomery,

Field Marshal, Great Britain;

De Lattre de Tassisny,

French Provisional Government.

The U.S. Army Air Force dropped 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Kobe, Japan. 

The 37th Infantry Division occupied Aritao on Luzon.

More hard fighting on Okinawa occurred and a sudden typhoon damaged 4 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 7 cruisers, 14 destroyers, 2 tankers, and and ammunition transport ship, of the US 3rd Fleet.

A Kamikaze attack crippled the USS Mississippi and the heavy cruiser USS Louisville.

Esquire magazines second class mailing privileges were restored by a US appellate court after having been suspended due to the feature of Vargas Girl pinups, which foreshadowed Playboy Playmates.  The decision was appealed to the United States Supreme Court which upheld the decision, unfortunately, in 1946.

This demonstrates that the widespread public acceptance of pornography was already occurring in advance of the 1953 introduction of Playboy, so the trend we've discussed here in other threads was already underway with the Courts frustrating efforts to restrict the development.  This also, we'd note, runs a bit counter to the heavy attribution we've attached to Hefner's rag, because, as noted, the trend was underway, although Esquire's depictions were illustrations, rather than photographs.  To a certain degree, the U.S. Army publication Yank had headed in the same direction, with its centerfolds, although they were always full clothed.

It wasn't a good trend.

Last edition:

Monday, June 4, 1945. Marines land on the Oroku Peninsula on Okinawa.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1945 British Election, Canada, Collaborators, France, Okinawa, Ontario, Politics, Radio, the spoken word, United States Marine Corps, Winston Churchill

Appearance. Shape and being in shape and women (men will come next).

Donna Reed as a Yank centerfold.  Reed was well known actress by this time, and is perhaps best known for her role in The Best Years Of Our Lives.  Her actual last name was Mullenger but as she started acting during World War Two, her studio changed it to Reed over her objection.  She became a peace activist during the Vietnam War.

Some time ago we received a comment here from a reader, and the reader emailed me after the recent item on fashion, and reminded me that I said I'd do a threat on the topic.

So here it is.

The threads were these ones:

Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia. Was Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

The comment was this one:

Anonymous said...

I read this, and your other post on Fran Camuglia. Wow, what a sad life.

I have an observation that I wonder if you would comment on that your post seems to illustrate. The pretty girls of the 50s and 60s looked different than they do now. They were beautiful, but softer, and more natural looking. Even the real dolls like Camuglia, with their exaggerated features, were softer and prettier. Think Marilyn Monroe.

I don't know what's changed it, but maybe the emphasis on "working out" has. Seems like you have really fit girls, and then really out of shape girls, and not much in between.

My replies were:

Thanks for your comment. Her life was tragic.

On your observation, people do indeed look different at different ages in the past, but I haven't really thought of it in this context. Having thought of it now, a little, I think there's something to your observation. As a minor personal observation, "working out" was not really a thing, as you note, in the 70s when I was growing up. Thinking back to high school I can't really think of any overweight kids at all. I'm sure there were some, but it must have been really rare. It seems to me that high schoolers now look older than we did when we were there, but oddly kids of my fathers vintage, who graduated high school in the 40s, looked much more mature. Nobody looked bulked up, or "ripped", or whatever.
This might be worth a post on the site, after I ponder it a bit.

By the way, while I've already noted it in these posts, her life being tragic isn't unique in terms of Playboy centerfolds. Quite a few of their stories are pretty grim, and Playboy contributed to that. In this case, quite frankly, she was off to a really bad start as it was, as she was married absurdly young, divorced very rapidly, and objectified forever when still in her teens.

I noted that it might be worth a post at the time, and then I went on to other things.  The email reminded me of it.

Well, in thinking about it, and I have no real scientific way to discuss this, my observational comment is, on this question, while I think there are some morphological changes we can observe in women, there aren't really that many.

That's probably surprising.

Let's start off with a couple of things, the first being that the first part of our discussion necessarily references young women.  That's important, I think, for reasons that will become clear.

The second observation is that time period and method of illustration matters.  We're not really going to get, for example, very accurate depictions of women, or men, at a certain point in our past.

Let's start with that.

A lot of comments like this, and I've seen them before, are based on photographs.  I.e., in this case, somebody is looking at a photograph of a Playboy model from 1967 and drawing conclusions from that.  But can we?

Probably not.

 Young couple, 1920s. By their dress, this couple was probably at least Middle Class, if not well to do.  Ages, again, are hard to place in photos but even the caption of this photo regards this couple as "young".  My guess would be upper 20s, and that would have been a fairly common marriage age for a couple with means, in this era.

Most early photography was in the category of portraiture.  Old portraits give us a much more realistic idea of what people looked like than "published" photographs do.  And certainly better than pornography does.   Indeed, that's one of the fundamental destructive aspects of pornography, which we'll get into later.  

Anyhow, cameras had to develop for quite some time before snapshots or the like appeared.  In the meantime, illustration really developed and that gives us a pretty good idea of what standards of beauty were up to at least 1920.  Illustration made use of models, who were chosen for their physical appearance, but they rarely strayed massively from the mean. The first real "standard" was Florence Evelyn Nesbit, who became the Gibson Girl.   She was pretty, to be sure, but didn't depart from the mean in a massive fashion

This was equally true of lesser known models, and indeed, it was mostly true for early movie stars as well.

Movies began to take over from illustrations as the bearers of standards in the 1920s and certainly had by the 1930s.  Female movie stars began to be more and more chosen for their beauty as well as their acting talents by the late 1930ss, which did result in an exaggerated standard in the sense that not every woman you meet is going to look like a movie start.

Teenage girls with cameras in the 1930s.

Actress Susan Hayword as a Yank centerfold.

But, nonetheless, while they were pretty, only in very rare instances were they somebody whom you might not meet, appearance wise, at the Piggly Wiggly.

Lauren Bacall as a teenager.

It wasn't until the 1950s that this really began to change.  

Starting in the 1950s, and I'll place the date as 1953 when the first issue of Playboy came out, the beauty standard became emphasized and highly exaggerated in terms of physical features.  The first Playboy centerfold was Marilyn Monroe, against her will, and her features in some ways became the standard.

Or rather her imagined features.

Playboy emphaszied the supposed "girl next store" with teh concept htat she'd lost her moral compass, was sterile, stupid, and very top heavy.  Marilyn Monroe's early movies, indeed the bulk of them, portrayed characters just like that.  The funny thing is that Monroe's own early modeling photographs didn't depict her in taht fashion at all

The photos above, from the 1940s, show a young Monroe as an actual sort of girl next door.  Her physical features were no doubt the same as they were in her earliest movies, but they weren't being emphasized.  Soon after these photographs they would be, and in movies like Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, they were on display.

Playboy,. as noted, arrived in 1953.  The 1950s gave us a host of actress that were Monroe knockoffs, some with even more exaggerated features. By the early 1960s a wave of Italian and other European actresses hit, all of whom were very topheavy, although they weren't portrayed as dumb.  Playboy and its followers kept on keeping on and if anything exaggerated things more.  Camuglia comes from that era.

Indeed, it was so notable, it made up one of the comedic lines in 1963's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World:

J. Algernon Hawthorne: I must say, if I had the grievous misfortune to be a citizen of this benighted country, I should be the most hesitant at offering any criticism whatever of any other.

J. Russell Finch: Wait a minute, are you knocking this country? Are you saying something against America?

J. Algernon Hawthorne: Against it? I should be positively astounded to hear of anything that could be said FOR it. Why, the whole bloody place is the most unspeakable matriarchy in the whole history of civilization! Look at yourself, and the way your wife and her strumpet of a mother push you through the hoop! As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated. They're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thrombosis, while their women sit under hairdryers, eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day! And this positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms. In all my time in this wretched, godforsaken country, the one thing that has appalled me most of all is this preposterous preoccupation with bosoms. Don't you realize they have become the dominant theme in American culture: in literature, advertising and all fields of entertainment and everything. I'll wager you anything you like: if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight.

In a lot of ways, we're still in it.  It's what's given us plastic surgery and a host of other horrors.

So, overall, what I'm saying is that actual physical appearance didn't change that much, but rather the publicized standards did, to women's detriment.

So what about the gym?

When Camuglia appeared in Playboy in the early 1960s "working out" wasn't a term.  Indeed, gymnasiums were around, but their atmosphere wasn't quite what it is today.  In a lot of places the gym was the YMCA.  Indeed, in this locality, it was for years, before, some time in the 1970s, private gyms began to appear.  

Early gyms really had all the features of moder nones, they were just less used and sort of used by a clas sof urban people who was unusually into physical fitness, save for weight lifters, who are a different class entirely.

Having said all of that, women have been involved in athletics, if not working out per se, for decades.

Australian female Olympic swimmers, 1932.  These women look pretty darned fit.

Girls basketball team, 1907.  Playing basketball while dressed like this must have been a huge pain.

Indeed, nobody was "working out", really, until the 1960s. There wasn't much of a need to.

That doesn't mean that people weren't physically active, however.  Women were involved in Olympic sports right from the onset, for example.  And as late as the 1970s, at least, an incredible number of women engaged in some sports, such as tennis and golf.  My mother, who grew up in the 1930s and 40s, was an avid golfer at one time, and a real fan of tennis. She also constantly rode a bicycle, and she swam nearly daily up until her final decline.  Yes, she's an unusual example, but not that unusual.

Her mother, I'd note, was also a tennis player.

There's sports, of course, but there's physical work.  And everyone engaged in a lot more physical activity by necessity.

Which catches us back up, sort of, to the 1950s.  As we've discussed here before, domestic machinery really came in after World War Two, and with that, a decline in physical activity.  This meant more women went into office work.

The 1950s also brought the country the "cheap food" policy, and we still live in that era, and that's where things really begin to change.  This was noted the other day on Twitter in a post by O.W. Root

O.W. Root@NecktieSalvage

Currently there are two extremes that didn't really exist en masse before.

1 - Extreme obesity

2 - Extreme gym culture

Maybe one day those extremes will fade and a more  traditional historic norm will replace them.

That pretty much nails it in a way, other than to say lots of people are neither part of a gym culture or obese.

A lot of people are taller, however.  That's been well noted.  It's a nutritional thing, but here's one area where people, including women, have a different morphology than they once typically did.  Contrary to what people tend to think, however, its flatted out since the late 1970s after having really gotten ramped up, around the globe, in the 1890s.

Now, here's one more thing that's changed.  Women in particular used to at one time very much "age" once they hit their 40s.

Contrary to what people think, people don't "live longer" than they once did. Rather, premature mortality has dropped way off.  But people did "age" more quickly.  If you look at photographs of married couples the appearance of women over 40 is often shocking in comparison to now.  Now, for various reasons, women in their 40s are not regarded as old or even middle aged, but often if you go back to mid century they'll have a much older appearance.  I"ve seen photographs of women in their 40s whom you would easily guess were in their 60s.

That's probably all due to the stress of life and hard work.

So, all in all, I don't think the evidence supports the assertion there's been much of a change at all.  I do think that an emphasis on a certain look, or a series of appearances, has changed over time, but more recently its broadened back out, which is a good thing.

Iceland girl delivering milk.

Mexican women in festive dress

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 84th Edition. The uncomfortably agreeing with the far right edition (on some things). Hegseth orders transgenderism out and a bill to outlaw pornography.

"Transgendered" troops to depart.

I'll be frank, I don't think transgenderism exists at all.

Gender dysphoria, however, certainly does.  It's a psychological condition, and indeed, a mental illness, often a temporary one.

Moreover, "transitioning from a man to a woman", or vice versa, is impossible.

Whether or not that fiction should be allowed to medically occur for adults (for anyone not in their majority, it's child abuse), is another thing.  I basically don't feel that it should be allowed, as its a manifestation of a mental illness that isn't served by being medically and surgically coddled, but I'll also fully admit there's more than one allowable medical procedure I don't think should be legal either.  Plastic surgery, for example, for mere cosmetic reason for uninjured and the morphologically normal people is also wrong, in my view, and that's not the only such thing.

Nonetheless, the sudden, and it was sudden, post Obergefell societal trend towards treating this mental delusion as something that should be fully supported is not only stunning, but it's flat out wrong.  It may be the only mental illness which has rising to be not only culturally tolerated, but for which the left makes cultural demands.  As I predicated at the time of the Obergefell, making such demands would have a societal ripple that would be devastating, and it has been. There's a straight path from Obergefell to  Donald Trump, as what it brought in was just a bridge too far.

So, here, I find  myself agreeing with Secretary Hegseth's action, even though I'm not a fan of Secretary Hegseth.

As readers here know, I don't agree with letting women serve in combat, so I'm clearly on the far edge of the right on these matters.  But I don't feel that appropriate.  Be that as it may, while women's cycles propose challenges to their serving as combat troops, they don't require medication just to exist in their state.  The "transgendered" do.  So, setting aside that what transgenderism really is, is a mental illness, it'd rapidly become a physical illness to a soldier trapped in an isolated combat environment or a prisoner or war.  As stated here some time ago, I fear for women who will be POWs, as I know exactly what they're going to be subject to. For a soldier who was "transgendered", the treatment as a POW would be barbaric.

By the way, there's a transitioned high school softball picture who has been blowing the doors off of her opponents with her pitches.  Well, she's genetically a guy.

This is just wrong, and shouldn't be allowed to happen.

I'll also note that I may be one of the view Wyomingites in my region to have encountered a guy pretending to be a gal and seeking medical assistance for the delusion, with that person in uniform.  Some time back I had some email correspondence with a full time National Guardsman on something, although I don't recall what.  What I do recall is that he was "transgendered".  Like a lot, but not all, "transgendered" men affecting the appearance of a woman, he looked very much like a guy, which of course what he genetically and morphologically is.

Gender studies also out.

In something that is sort of related, and sort of not, UW is eliminating its Gender Studies degree.

UW looks to end embattled gender studies degree

I don't know much about gender studies other than its one of those host of degrees that came in during the 1970s and 1980s in the liberal arts that have always baffled me a bit.  What do you do with it?

Having said that, I'm not as condescending towards the degree as I once was.  I do, however, think that what US is doing makes sense.  Folding the program into some other sort of sociology degree strikes me as making sense, rather than having it stand alone.

Sorority transgender pleading allowed.

In something else sort of related, and sort of not, the Federal Court has allowed for an amended complaint to be filed in a suit in which it seeks to address a man identifying as a woman being admitted to its house at UW as a sorority "sister".

Banning pornography.

And here's another item that come from the far right, and indeed from Project 2025, which generally scares me overall, but whose goal I find myself in agreement with:

I've posted on the topic of pornography here from time to time.

Pornography is a devastating scourge. It's wholly destructive, and about that there's no doubt

This bill will be interesting to watch.  I suspect it will get no traction  I don't know, for one thing, that Donald Trump cares one whit about pornography.  After all, his wife became famous as a model for posing in a manner that I'd regard as pornographic.  And a guy who rode the Lolita Express to Epstein's jail bait fantasy island doesn't strike me as a man of deep moral principles.  And hte pron industry is powerful and will take this on in the guise of free speech.

It may ironically prove to be the case that deporting people to foreign concentration camps is something most Americans are willing to tolerate, but stopping young women from prostituting their images is not.

Related posts:

Topic One.

Normalizing Mental Illness isn't helping to address it.

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.

How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad argument, and discredit everything you stand for. The Transgender issue and a minister in Laramie.

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.

Topic Four

The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia. Was Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

Blog Mirror and Commentary: QC: Human Sexuality | January 17, 2024 and the destruction of reality.

Blog Mirror. A sane decision

Thursday, June 21, 1973. Lacking in serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Secrets of Playboy

Lex Anteinternet: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. M'eh. Throwing rocks at Hugh Hefner . . . I'm not alone in that.

Lex Anteinternet: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. M'eh. Ross Douthart of the New York Times says what I did, more bluntly.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. M'eh

Prostituting their image

Depictions, Mispreceptions, Objectification, Shame, Shamelessness, Progress and Regression.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 83d Edition. The law and refusal to depart, departing in the worst way, echoes of service.

Labels: 2020s, Baby Boom Generation, Generation Jones, Growing up in the 1970s, law, mehr Mensch sein, Military, Old Age, The Practice of Law, The Second Trump Administration, Vietnam War, Zeitgeist

Monday, April 20, 1925. Route shields

The US adopted the shield symbol for highway routes.

New York police raided Minsky's Burlesque for featuring striptease acts.  Not really newsworthy at the time, the event was later made famous due to a 1960 novel that was turned into a film.

Burlesque shows are mostly a thing of the past, although there are odd efforts to reenact them.  Sort of remembered in a cutesy fashion, they were really much raunchier in some ways than recalled, and indeed many stage shows in general featuring women through the 1920s were fairly pornographic.

Last edition:

Saturday, April 18, 1925.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art, Health, Norman Rockwell, Photography

TikTok? Good riddance.

 

?

Why Donald Trump, who once was anti TikTok now wants to save it is beyond me.  

I hope TikTok never returns.  I'm not concerned about it, I fully admit.  Why should we care about its demise?

Granted, thousands of twentysomething American girls hosted by the ChiCom entity that have made a living bouncing their barely clad bottoms and tops will now have to fine legitimate work, but so be it.

The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia. Was Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

The top half of the March 1967 centerfold depicting the 19 year old "Fran Gerard".  This photo was taken from Cynthia Blanton's webpage, where it appears in this fashion (i.e., you can't see her nude) and is put up here under the fair use exception.  No doubt if the full centerfold was spread out, Camuglia's happy smile would not be what attention was drawn to.

Lex Anteinternet: Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.: I ran into this item in a really roundabout way, that being a random link to a 1967 newspaper article.  That isn't mentioned in either o...

Sort of going down the rabbit hole, I suppose, on this one, but the story is so illustrative of certain things, most of them pretty sad, so it's worth an additional, illustrative, look.

Cynthia Blanton replied to the post here, which was extremely nice of her to do, on her being a doppelganger for Francis Anna Camuglia, the March 1967 Playboy "Playmate", who appeared in that role as Fran Gerard.  It turns out that my comment that they were close in age was not only correct, but there's an added freakish element of. The two young women were just eight months apart in age and, while Blanton had not met Camuglia, they had even been schoolmates in the same California high school, Granada Hills High School, prior to Blanton's family moving only shortly before March 1967.  

Camuglia's obituary simply notes that she "attended" the school, which causes me to suspect, with nothing to back it up, that she might not have graduated.  Her life would likewise suggest she didn't graduate.

The high school still exists, but is a charter school now.  It was nearly new then, having opened in 1960.  It seems to have consistently been a well regarded high school.

Camuglia was just a teenager when she appeared in Playboy and only barely out of high school.  And not only was she only 19 when the photos ran, give the nature of production, she was 18 when they were taken.  

One year younger would have made this child pornography.

Not that this would prove to be a deterrent for Playboy.  At least two of the Playboy "Playmates" were 17 years old when their photographs were taken, and the magazine knew that at least one of the girls had that young age. They waited to run that girls' 17 year old nude photographs until she turned 18, which would not have made it legal, but rather likely to be undiscovered.  Another seems to have lied about her age, although seemingly this could have been checked up on.  One girl was specifically run as a recent high school grad who was the "youngest" playmate and getting her high school wish to be a centerfold, when in fact she was 17.

Early on, Playboy was under a serious European threat for advancing pedophilia, although oddly enough from its cartoons.  It turns out, however, that it did in fact go as low as it could go, age wise, for nudes, and even lower than legally allowed.

To add to the sadness of this, Camuglia's first husband had divorced her, or vice versa, just a month prior to these running.  When he married her he was 37 years old. She was 18.

I don't know the reasons for the divorce, or the marriage.  What did an 18 year old see in a 37 year old. I don't know what he saw in her, but her physical attributes were no doubt undeniable. The marriage lasted only seven months and he disappears from the record.  A person has to wonder if the Playboy spread brought about the divorce, although that's pure speculation.  The odds wouldn't have been good for its survival at any rate, given the odd age disparity.

Her next marriage was in 1970.  She would have been 22 years old at that time.  Her second husband doesn't seem to be mentioned on her headstone, however, which suggests that she was not married at the time of her death.

Her father died in 2010, and her mother in 2016.  Their devotion to each other, and their children, is noted on their headstones.

Undoubtedly another Playboy photograph, but as she more likely actually appeared.  Fran Camuglia didn't actually wear glasses.  This was taken from an entry on Find A Grave and is likewise put up under the fair use exception.

I don't know where this all goes, but its a sort of morality play on bad decisions, combined with a lack of societal safe guards, and declining public morality.  It's perfectly legal for a 37 year old to marry an 18 year old, but it's almost never a good idea.  I'd guess her parents opposed it, and we don't know the story behind it.   Really short marriages of much older men to teenagers have historically tended to be explained by pregnancy or mistaken belief in pregnancy, and the 18 year old Camuglia could fairly easily pass for an older young woman.  Male interest in her can easily be explained by her obvious, apparently, physical assets, something which has apparently caused her to retain a fan base forty years after her tragic death.

It's hard to believe that this story wouldn't have worked out better if Playboy hadn't been around to exploit young women.  I'll spare repeating all the details that were given in the documentary on the magazine, but they're horrific.  Suicide wasn't limited to Camuglia.  Murder was visited on at least one Playmate and visited upon a person by one.  According to the documentary one young woman associated with the magazine died at a party and her body simply disappeared.  One suicide scrawled her opinion on Hugh Hefner graphically on a wall in the apartment where she killed herself.  A host of "bunnies" was  used by men at an event physically in a way that traumatized them.

What, if anything, Camuglia endured we don't know.  Maybe only having her 18 year old body be the object of, well, for forty decades, which would be odd enough, and which would also contribute to psychic loss.

In 1967 when Camuglia appeared in the magazine, in middle class society the magazine was both accepted and regarded as dirty.  It claimed for itself that it managed to become the Stars and Stripes of the Vietnam War, and as grossly exaggerated in Apocalypse Now, it was so accepted by that time that Playmates appearing in the way that movie stars had in World War Two and Korea in the combat theater occurred.  Pinup girls didn't appear overseas in the earlier wars, even though they existed.

At the same time, however, the magazine remained a "dirty" magazine and there were legal efforts as late as the 1970s to try to address its obscenity, although they failed.  Being n the magazine branded those who did it in ways they could not escape.  Whatever happened to Camuglia, she apparently couldn't escape it.

Well, may God rest her soul and may the perpetual light shine upon her, and all who endured such tragedy..

Related thread:

Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

Labels: 1960s, 1967, 1970s, 1980s, 1985, Commentary, Growing up in the 1960s, Growing up in the 1970s, Playboy Philosophy, pornography, Teenagers, The relationship between men and women, Women