MON CHAUDIEU

Miss France runs into a world of problems.
Beauty pageants are sexual events. Let’s not debate it. Despite claims by many that they’re merely a celebration of health, beauty, and talent, they provoke a subtly sexual reaction, a bit like the foot rubs in the film Pulp Fiction. To quote Vincent Vega: “We act like they don’t, but they do. There’s a sensuous thing going on where you don’t talk about it, but you know it.” Isabelle Chaudieu certainly must have known it. She won the title of Miss France today in 1984, four days before her eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately for pageant organizers, she had already posed nude for a professional photographer. The French magazine Lui bought the photos, paired them with shots of Chaudieu in her pageant regalia, and splashed them inside its February 1985 issue. In France as elsewhere magazines hit the newsstands a bit earlier than their official publication date, which led to Chaudieu being stripped of her title on the 31st of January 1985 and being replaced by runner-up Carole Tredille.
 
Beauty pageants are falling out of favor. There’s no doubt of that. More people are beginning to understand our original point that they’re basically sexual in nature. This isn’t because such people have dirty minds. Reasonably speaking, when people see a woman parade up and down in a bathing suit they aren’t imagining her swimming the 200 meter butterfly—they’re imagining her peeling out of the suit and performing the Venus butterfly. Sex is the reason every one of us came into being and is the main goal, biologically speaking, of all our lives. It’s just plain silly to expect people not to be reminded of it. And pageant organizers know their product does exactly that, which is why they punish women like Chaudieu, Vanessa Williams, and others for displaying themselves as sexual beings. It’s toweringly hypocritical, but also understandable in the sense that they’re desperate to protect a highly profitable product.
 
The photo we’ve shared below of Chaudieu showing off her body as well as her 10,000 megawatt smile didn’t come from her Lui layout but rather from one of the many later sessions she did after deciding to make a career of glamour modeling. She wasn’t the first Miss France to be dethroned because of nude pictures. In 1983 Isabelle Turpaultwas defrocked for photos published by Paris Match. And interestingly, Chaudieu’s replacement performed in hardcore porn under the name Tenessy after her reign as Miss France. Chaudieu had cinematic ambitions as well, but of the mainstream variety. She appeared in Gwendoline, aka The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak, but that was her only screen credit. After a few years posing for men’s magazines she disappeared from the public eye, and today a person who was once the most famous—or notorious—in France, doesn’t even have a French Wikipedia page. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies

Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne.

1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director

In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.

1977—Joan Crawford Dies

American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer.

1949—Rainier Becomes Prince of Monaco

In Monaco, upon the death of Prince Louis II, twenty-six year old Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, aka Rainier III, is crowned Prince of Monaco. Rainier later becomes an international household name by marrying American cinema sweetheart Grace Kelly in 1956.

1950—Dianetics is Published

After having told a gathering of science fiction writers two years earlier that the best way to become a millionaire was to start a new religion, American author L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book is today one of the canonical texts of Scientology, referred to as “Book One”, and its publication date serves as the first day of the Scientology calendar, making today the beginning of year 52 AD (After Dianetics).

1985—Theodore Sturgeon Dies

American science fiction and pulp writer Theodore Sturgeon, who pioneered a technique known as rhythmic prose, in which his text would drop into a standard poetic meter, dies from lung fibrosis, which may have been caused by his smoking, but also might have been caused by his exposure to asbestos during his years as a Merchant Marine.

Art by Kirk Wilson for Harlan Ellison's juvenile delinquent collection The Deadly Streets.
Art by Sam Peffer, aka Peff, for Louis Charbonneau's 1963 novel The Trapped Ones.
Horwitz Books out of Australia used many celebrities on its covers. This one has Belgian actress Dominique Wilms.
Assorted James Bond hardback dust jackets from British publisher Jonathan Cape with art by Richard Chopping.

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