Books, Arts & Manners: Skin Deep

I WAS sitting in the coffee house around the corner when one of the owners put the primordial kneeling Marilyn Monroe pin-up in the magazine rack. What was she doing displaying old cheesecake? (Sometimes she sells it.) Then I saw that it was Laetitia Casta, the current “it” model, imitating the Marilyn pose on the cover of Rolling Stone. From naughty to ironic/iconic in 45 years.

Young women wear more on the city streets. A little more. In summer they don’t wear much. Flesh ripens with the cherries, and stays out through the corn and the tomatoes. “America the Beautiful” the song speaks of amber waves of grain. America the country gives acres of amber. Where bison grazed, men gaze. It is a delight to behold.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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I WAS sitting in the coffee house around the corner when one of the owners put the primordial kneeling Marilyn Monroe pin-up in the magazine rack. What was she doing displaying old cheesecake? (Sometimes she sells it.) Then I saw that it was Laetitia Casta, the current “it” model, imitating the Marilyn pose on the cover of Rolling Stone. From naughty to ironic/iconic in 45 years.

Young women wear more on the city streets. A little more. In summer they don’t wear much. Flesh ripens with the cherries, and stays out through the corn and the tomatoes. “America the Beautiful” the song speaks of amber waves of grain. America the country gives acres of amber. Where bison grazed, men gaze. It is a delight to behold.