Author: Rebecca Onion / Source: Slate Magazine
I can’t recall when I first saw the famous Burt Reynolds centerfold in Cosmopolitan, but I was probably about 18. The photo, taken in 1972 when Reynolds was not yet famous (but getting there) exudes warmth.
I could almost smell the cigarillo he’s smoking and the man sweat I mostly knew about from clandestine reads of The Clan of the Cave Bear.The picture made me laugh out loud, in a reflexive, embarrassed way. That’s because of Reynolds’ body hair—a luxurious and unapologetic pelt, in true ’70s fashion. All of my celebrity lust objects up until that point were skinny, beardless boys—I had a River Phoenix tribute wall in my dorm room—and I wasn’t used to this. It looked realer than real, like I had stumbled upon a secret. I felt like I was seeing one of my parents’ friends naked by mistake, and it was confusing.
“To say the centerfold was popular would be an understatement,” Taylor Telford wrote in the Washington Post on Friday, detailing the origin story of the photo on the occasion of Reynolds’ death…
The post That Burt Reynolds Cosmo Centerfold Was a Game-Changer for My Teenage Self appeared first on FeedBox.