Angel With Attitude

Samantha Fox and Page 3

Starting her glamour career at sixteen by coming second in the 1983 Sunday People’s Face and Shape competition, Samantha Fox was a model of irresistible contrasts: an angelic face with a mature body, and possessing large breasts with thin hips.

PUBLISHED in The Sun between 1970 and 2015, the inclusion of a topless model on Page 3 doubled the paper's circulation within a year of its introduction. As other tabloids scrambled to compete, was the notion harmless fun, or softcore pornography for the masses? Conservatives saw it as highly inappropriate for national newspapers, while feminists regarded it as a continuation of a misogynistic tradition. A number of the girls - such as Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker and Debee Ashby - began their careers at sixteen, which was legally permitted in the UK until the 2003 Sexual Offences Act. But in the heyday of the 1980s the models were superstars, and Sam Fox became one of the most photographed women of the world, behind only Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.

In 1986 Fox retired from Page 3 at the age of twenty, and transitioned into pop music (although she did promote Page 3's 25th anniversary and appear in Playboy). It wasn't all plain sailing for the cheeky Mile Ender however, as Fox dodged fanatical stalkers and sued her father/former manager for embezzlement. Indeed, the title of her 2005 album Angel With an Attitude, and her appearances on chat shows, illustrated a grounded yet feisty "girl next-door" demeanour. Appearing on her record covers in sexy outfits and singing behind synthesized disco tracks, lyrics centred around the conflicts of love and lust. Although commercially successful, critics were less kind. Colin Irwin of Melody Maker called Fox "a small step for man, a huge step for lip gloss," while Alanna Nash, writing for Stereo Review, labeled her "airhead pop" and "less a singer than a sex fantasy."

Samantha Fox's debut single Touch Me (I Want Your Body) was a worldwide smash, reaching number three in the UK, and number four in the US Billboard Hot 100.

But if impressionable men were being conditioned to objectify and demean women, where does exploitation end and art begin? The historical definition of a nude shows the ideals of feminine and masculine beauty. Throughout the centuries this perception has shifted by cultural expectation; the first sculpture - the Venus of Willendorf - is known for her curvy figure and wide hips, and thought to be a deity for fertility. Female nudity also held an important place in prehistory, with Egyptian and Near-Eastern civilisations commonly featuring naked women as goddesses who ruled over love, war and even the underworld. Thus there is a mental and physical stature to the female form throughout history, possessing a real power over a variety of disciplines.

Contrastingly, throughout the Medieval period, women were mostly withheld from positions of power, or speaking their voice. In the time of the Renaissance, females were considered to legally belong to their husbands, and practically forbidden to practice art. An aura of seduction had replaced the perfection of these earlier figureheads, as an aesthetic landscape merged with a socio-political one. Samantha Fox certainly encapsulates the power of the female form, and a celebrated fantasy for girls yearning to be models and pop stars.