A Feminist's Arduous Task
Getting Paid to Scrutinize Naked Women Was the Last Resort of a Desperate Man
By Libby Copeland Washington Post Staff Writer

It is a little tough to feel bad for Leif Ueland.

"I really got tired of writing about sex," he says mournfully.

When Ueland decided to write "Accidental Playboy," about the six-month bus trip he took in 1998, documenting Playboy's search for the Playmate of the Millennium -- during which he was dragged to strip joints, obliged to photograph topless women and forced (well, maybe not forced) to sleep with two tryouts -- his publisher wanted to use the subtitle "Living the Ultimate Male Fantasy."

"I just wanted to shoot myself," says Ueland, descendant of feminists, recovering sexual neurotic, gay-seeming straight and all-around Sensitive Male. He made a counteroffer: "Caught in the Ultimate Male Fantasy." That, he felt, more accurately captured the angst of his journey.

Ueland, a struggling writer, was living in Los Angeles and working on a novel when he was offered a job writing daily dispatches for Playboy.com about the Playmate tryouts. The great-grandson of a suffragette, Ueland worried that the Playboy job would turn him into a "pig." But he accepted the offer, eager for cash and adventure and egged on by his shrink.

Once on the bus, he met his subjects: small-town girls and strippers, young mothers and even grandmothers, with gorgeous faces and worn-out faces, dream bodies and botched boob jobs. He saw the leers of one of the other Playboy staffers, watched the way a set of muscly hustlers tried to latch onto the bus to score dates, and felt "guilt by association," "embarrassed to be a man."

Last week, Wisconsin resident Ueland, 37, was in town visiting friends during a break from promoting his new book, and -- in homage to his time scoping out talent at bikini contests and restaurants where the true entree is the wait staff -- we took him to a Hooters in Fairfax.

Here are the women: in push-up bras with cleavage-baring shirts and orange "shorts" that look like bathing suit bottoms, nicely complemented by rust-colored stockings that could pass for support hose.

And here come the men: in suits, in hooded sweat shirts, in pairs and in packs, with fox-stealing-chicken smiles. They perch on stools in this good-time place; greasy fingers and sticky eyes.

In the presence of this well-choreographed mating dance, Ueland can only voice "the disconnect I feel from men. I look around, the men in here -- it just boggles me. I have no idea what they're doing here."

He eats a chicken sandwich.

"There's two things going on," he says, to sum up the surroundings. "There's the objectification and then there's also just the sheer tackiness."

This is the Sensitive Male's burden.

"Accidental Playboy" is perhaps too honest, the kind of honest that makes you feel itchy. It details Ueland's sexual hangups, his dating humiliations and his frank discussions with his therapist. When he began the job -- handsome but perhaps a little too nice, with no job, no money and no car -- he had not had sex in five years. (Then there's the gay-seeming thing. Ueland is well aware of it but he has little explanation for the slightly effeminate voice and expressive mannerisms. It may be relevant to mention, however, that he was a child underwear model.)

On board the bus, he was at first a poodle among pit bulls. Acutely self-conscious and tortured by "a nonstop inner narrative," Ueland hesitated even to approach women for the clothed pictures required for his Web site dispatches. When charged with the task of filing the semi-nude Polaroids taken of the tryouts, he couldn't seem to locate his libido. "Shouldn't I be feeling something other than numb?" he writes.

But Ueland's sensitivity is what saves "Accidental Playboy" from being a mere chronology of blond hair, breasts and bright smiles. While he was biased toward the unusual-looking tryouts, like the one whose "nose is the tiniest bit bulbous," as well as the ones who seem to feel a bit cynical about Playboy and its mission, he was surprised by the unquestioning enthusiasm many tryouts seemed to feel for Playboy. For many, making it onto those glossy pages would mean refuge from the smallness of their lives.

He listened to the women's very American stories (Divorced at 21? Inhabitant of 70 -- 70?! -- foster homes?), noted the sense of humor that strippers tend to have, wondered what it's like to possess the open-sesame beauty that provokes instant marriage proposals and wildly exorbitant gifts. (As if to provide evidence, the Hooters waitress serving Ueland tells of a customer who regularly tips her $100 for his $10 meals.)

He watched countless women undress Read more...

Once, when the fashion editors and advertisers got tired of the Cindy-Naomi-Christy look, they invented the Waif model. Now that they got tired from that, too, be prepared to the latest craze from Europe - the Mouse model.

We're not talking big women here. In fact, we're not even talking of beautiful women. The Mouse models look like, well, mouses. Their most successful representative, Clara Veiga Gazinelli, has beautiful eyes (and something that can look like breasts under the right lighting). Clara had 5 consecutive eds in Vogue Germany, more than any other model in recent memory.

There's got to be some reasons for this success, but it is not easy to guess them. Clara Veiga Gazinelli is also on the first cover of Elle France for 2003, and since she was fully dressed I had a hard time recognising her. The subject was "ballroom dance", and all the issue is full of eds with models in 19th century costumes, so I suppose Elle had no choice but to give even Clara some clothes.

The other reason I didn't recognise her at first glance is the cover was supposed to go to the Chanel girl, Anna Mouglalis, but her pics in the feature were truly awful (photographed by Karl Lagerfeld, of course). It seems she was pulled out at the last minute, and Clara got her first French cover instead.

She looks quite awful on it, with a total flat chest and an equal lack of sexyness. Now, this humble weblog loves models with small tits, and loves even more the concept of the girl's next door, but this is getting ridiculous.

I scanned the only picture in which she looks beautiful, the rest is like the cover, unworth of your attention. The photos are by Filipe Darocha, I think it's his first ed in Elle Fr and I certainly hope it's his last.

Other photographers have done more interesting things with Clara recently. I like this Melvin Sokolsky shot for Vogue Germany. And I think I like the Bruno Dayan pics we're gonna talk about (like the one above this post), but does it have any connection to fashion?

These are disturbing photos, no doubt about it, and art is supposed to disturb, not to reassure. Yet you can't escape the feeling that when Elle France decided to publish this pic, for example, they maybe wanted to print something interesting, but maybe also they didn't know what to do with a girl that obviously cannot model clothes.

As for the most talked-about pic from the Bruno Dayan ed, here you go, I'm not sure I like this very French, desinvolte approach to sado-maso. She looks awfully young. I understand it got some kind of homo-erotica subtext, but still, I really liked it better when Elle France had Demarchelier shooting Tatiana Patitz. You know, real women?

I thought that if I ignored the Mouse trend long enough, it will simply go away. Alas, in the last issue of Vogue Germany, the precursor of the new look, awaited a new catastrophe.

As I said before, I might not like Clara Veiga Gazinelli, but there's no doubt she has an interesting face and beautiful eyes. The latest Mouse is not only a girl's next door, she's the girl's next door you wouldn't invite to your appartment. Please meet Stam, a Canadian model from NY Models Agency who'll make even Clara looking like a dominatrix.

This ed was photographed by Michel Comte, but it is difficult to guess that from the contents. And to think he used to shoot Sharon Stone in the bath!

Still, here she looks sympathetic, maybe she has a great sense of humour. But don't we have girlfriends for that? I mean, take a look at that!

These are the two best pics -- 1 and 2. I didn't scan the rest of the portfolio -- it's very long, printed on a special silver paper that makes it difficult to scan. But the main reason is that in some of the pics, the girl looks simply ugly. Not ordinary, not banal, not girl next door, just ugly. Is this what Fashion is going to be about?