Punk Becomes Poet

Joanne Latham makes a BIG impact in the world of "reader's letters" digest publications, particularly for "Response," a periodical featuring b/w photographs and illustrations throughout rainbow pages (many pages a different color).

As fresh a face as Joanne's, who is now teaching yoga in India (as was as recently as mid 2000s), was just what the men's magazine market needed very late 1970s, thus changing the attitude of the industry forever. The look of a woman when she's pissed-off has a certain appeal to those looking for it, and pair that with a bust rivaling those on ancient Chinese fertility stones and the result is a powerful statement of womanhood, to start. 

It seems Joanne was pissed from the beginning, as an erratic full-figured punk model who probably irked the rest of them not getting near the airtime as she, never really taking a strong advocative stance on what she did as a model. Her attitude towards nude and semi-nude modeling was apparent from the start, but was blatant to her hungry, drooling fans only four years into her career as a cover and poster girl. By 1983, editors were featuring layouts of the English gal, arguably the most prolific after June Wilkinson, admitting that she'd already reached the peak of her career. Obviously her golden era was early in the 1980s, as evidenced by the digests represented here, but her impact is one that can no longer be held, lasting throughout anything that came in her wake. 

Each of her appearances have the heir of irony, begging the viewer to wonder on what side of the bed she awoke the day of the shoot. Some of her sessions bespeak a downright angry bitch. Some of her sessions bespeak only the sweetest of girls-next-door eager to show you her recently discovered feminine form. Joanne is the brightest aura and the darkest enigma of eroticism in print. In and out of the biz as quickly as any, she began a website devoted to her modeling career, but it isn't currently maintained, and took her love of spiritual oneness to a level paramount to her previous endeavors, becoming a Buddhist and traveling to the countries of origin, a poet of spiritual transformation. After this, or maybe because of this, she lost much of the weight so admired in the pages of Penthouse, Response, Mayfair, Partner, Game, and the like, and we can only presume the same weight came away from that rivaling rack.

    


What the shit are you doing now, Joanne? Do you teach the ways of Buddha, the ways of ancient yogi to eager respondents, in lands so far from your uprising? Only those closest know the difficulties of your plight in the often thankless land of nude posing, but those of us who take in your sight with something more than basic ball-grabbing, Cro-Magnon impulse hurt in our hearts for your justification.



If she ever poses again for any reason other than travelogue candids, I hope to be the man with the camera. She will be snapped with admiration. She will be photo'd in pure easiness and will not be misused. Posing anyway she wishes, no spreading, no arching of the back (save that of the Down Dog or the panca of Namaskara A/B), no delicious presentation of her tan ass (an uncommon pose for Joanne), no colliding of 40+ tits, just the angelic English visage of a woman so pissed she laughs and we finally get Joanne to smile with life's happiness that SHE birthed, her own happiness.

A stunning woman ready to punch someone. 

All images presented created solely by the author of this blog, not copied from other sources.

Not so Psychedelic Fur...

Even the most successful people have their good days and their bad days, and this rings especially true in the world of adult entertainment, be it in the toned, wiry dancers at a strip club, the exaggerated figures of the porn industry, or simply a pinup-turned-pornstar with a knack for "showing off."

Julia Parton was Joyce Patrick and somewhere in between was Nina Alexander (did photog Ed Alexander have interest in Julia beyond their photo sessions?), and her career is textbook, or so it would seem, rise-and-fall. But in light of her prolific output, and once prolific perkiness, does the climb to prime and descent to "Consenting Adults" even matter? She burst like the young cherry she was onto the men's magazine scene in the early 1980s, and held a high position in the list of models who found it easy to appear younger, sometimes significantly younger, than their true age. Unfortunately, and even though she was posing topless and bottomless from the start, her short transformation from covergirl to pornstar was not exactly beneficial. Her measurements were 38-24-36, but this is suspected to have been early in her career, probably when making a frequent appearance in Parliament magazines, and even in German publications devoted to large bosoms.
 

Even as a consenting adult, the mystery of her gaze remained. Her body morphed into a thin frame from a cherubic powder-puff, and to some of her fans the change was apparent, however unsettling. What the shit happened to Julia Parton? Once a top-rated model of the adult industry, with particular attention paid by fetishes like large busts or youthful looks. Julia made it more than fashionable to sport a serious garden, remaining honest in an era where Less Was More, and her infamous muff in pictures may have helped in her early days to avoid any legal situations. When she got into hardcore porn, she quickly adapted many of the practices of the 1980s and early 1990s pornstars, including looks more of a disheveled nature than before, maybe even drugs, and an ever-fluctuating body weight (which seems to happen even more these days....not much has changed). Julia was not a crazy recluse though, and managed to be social despite working incessantly and publishing (early years of) High Society magazine, perhaps the first of the forward-looking adult magazines of it's time.

Any observer of the once-rounded and full-figured Kentucky sweetheart will notice a pureness that waned with blatant speed and recourse. Motivation that arose in eagerness and, honestly, in earnestness, fell by pink satin like a still-burning cigarette. Parton is still one of the all-time greats, successful as both model and mogul, just as hard-working despite a clear distinction of oncoming maturity in a business where youth is the driven snow, and always pretty in pink.

From top to bottom:
a. Star Distributors paperback, 1988. Is Julia, with lolly, showing off or being a brat? Both, purposefully. Likely an image from her early days as a pinup used for the cover, to present a younger allure.
b. "Consenting Adults," by Tanya Springs, Beeline paperback, 1992. Was cocaine still around?
c. "Pretty in Pink," calendar top circa 1985-1989. Endless curves and instant appeal.