Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 14, 1994                   TAG: 9403150177
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT WAS A DIFFERENT STORY IN THE '60S

There is Arthur Trout of Roanoke, who recently changed the newspapers he uses to line cabinet drawers and sent me an aging clipping of this really great piece I did on this bathing suit called "Wildlife."

You young - and old - women will have to remember that I was relatively just a lad in June of 1965, which was a long time before female members of my own family regularly referred to me as a chauvinist hawg.

This story is not illustrated by one of those charts newspapers use these days to compare the price of bonbons in 1913 to their current cost.

No. It is illustrated with a picture of this - honestly, I don't know how else to describe her - splendidly endowed young woman wearing the "Wildlife" suit as it seldom was worn.

This is what reporters used to call cheesecake but don't anymore for fear of being busted right in the mouth.

(I won't mention this young woman's name because she probably is, nearing 55, a feminist. And her husband, who is a lot younger than I am, might whack me in my bad knee with a pipe.)

But there is something charming about the way she stands barefoot on a city street, below a NO STOPPING OR STANDING sign that warns of the city's towing ordinance.

She has a umbrella in her right hand, and some clown on a construction walkway obviously is ogling her heavily. I don't remember a thing about this story , but I hope I threatened him with bodily harm - although his presence added a lot to the picture.

I suggest that you young and older women might like to check your recipes for tomato surprises at this time. What follows is not pretty.

In this story I don't remember writing, the manager of the store asks this "pretty red-headed girl" - that's right, ``girl'' - to pose in the bathing suit in question.

The girl cheerfully agrees because she has "the right kind of figure" to do this successfully.

There is also some mention of an "overly endowed figure," although I don't recall writing that.

And I then asked the store manager how she thought Gina Lollobrigida might look in this suit, and she said it "wouldn't cover one umpteenth of Gina."

You remember Gina, girls. Had a figure that would have blown out all the lights on Bent Mountain with or without an ice storm.