Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren stripped off and pouted with an abandon that took the prudish 50s by storm and their sex goddess image endures even as both turn 75 this week.
The broody blonde French “sex kitten” and the dark, sultry Italian have marked the decades with their beauty, talent and iconic status in the wave of sexual liberation that marked the 1960s and 1970s.
But they have taken distinctly different paths since those early days that shocked a Europe still rebuilding after World War II.
Only three years ago, Loren, then 72, posed semi-nude on a white bed for the 2007 edition of the racy Pirelli calendar — sharing months with the Spanish actress Penelope Cruz and other much younger celebrities.
The voluptuous Loren, who still sports plunging necklines, said at the time she was thrilled by the experience. “I didn’t think they would ask me such a thing,” she said, “then thought, what the hell, I am going to do it anyway.”
Bardot deliberately left behind the “demon-driven temptress”, as she was dubbed in the 1956 film that propelled her to stardom — first husband Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman”, and lives in semi-seclusion passionately devoted to animal rights.
Crusading against bull-fights, hunting, and all forms of cruelty to animals, she is rarely seen in public except to press home her campaigns. One such occasion was on her 72nd birthday when she came to Paris to mark her foundations’ 20th anniversary, looking every bit her age and walking on crutches to relieve arthritic pain.
She also took a swipe last year at US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for calling herself a pitbull in lipstick. Bardot called Palin a “disgrace to women”, saying “no pitbull … is as dangerous as you are.”
Born September 28, 1934, into a well-off Paris home, the French bombshell made it into “Elle” magazine with the help of family ties when only in her teens and at age 18 starred in a first film, before marrying first husband, Vadim.
Though the first of four marriages lasted only five years, her work with Vadim caused such scandal that B.B., as she was soon known, quickly became an icon of erotica for some, a symbol of liberation for others.
Seeing her sway to a sizzling mambo beat or stretch out in hot sand “will make you gasp and never forget”, said the trailer of “And God Created Woman”.
Bardot, said feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, “does what she pleases and that is what upsets.”
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