All photos by Star Foreman

Dita Von Teese wears a vintage dress from The Way We Wore and bracelets by J. Max.

See also:
*A gallery of pictures from our photo shoot at Dita Von Teese's Los Feliz home.
*Top 10 Strip Clubs in Los Angeles
*Marilyn Monroe's Seven Never-Before-Seen Mostly Nude Photos at Duncan Miller Gallery

Dita Von Teese can't remember the first time she took her clothes off for someone. It was probably early on, before she became the queen of burlesque and undressing became her job. Probably after ballet class, changing in front of other girls.

She does remember the first time she stripped. She was 19, and back then her name was Heather Sweet. She had been working as a scantily clad go-go dancer in the Los Angeles underground scene when, one night, a friend took her to a bikini club. She was fascinated.

She auditioned on a Monday -- amateur night. Rock & roll and blondes in neon bikinis were the name of the game. But she took the stage in a pink corset with black velvet trim, black stockings, long black gloves.

"You're wearing a lot of clothes up there," the manager said afterward. He hired her anyway. "Dita Von Teese" was born that night, a stage name Heather Sweet pulled out of a phone book.

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Courtesy of TASCHEN

See our previous story on Tascen's ode to female genitalia.

The art publishing company and coffee table book experts at Taschen have put out another racy tome. This time it's The Little Book of Big Breasts, which features more than 150 celebrated big-breasted models from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. (The company previously did a bigger book, The Big Book of Breasts, in case you're confused.)

The book isn't out till June, but on the following pages, we bring you a preview of some of the best photos.

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Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss

See also:
*Marilyn Monroe's Seven Never-Before-Seen Mostly Nude Photos at Duncan Miller Gallery. You're Welcome.
*Big Book of Pussy: New Taschen Tome Celebrates the Hole Truth (Photos NSFW)
*11 Craziest Nude Scandals in L.A. in the Last Year (Photos NSFW)

So you're curious to go to a strip club, but unless your buddy is a regular and brings you along, how are you going to pick which one? Yelp? Give me a break.

Thankfully for you, our L.A. Weekly experts have compiled the top 10 strip clubs in L.A. But don't get too excited -- save it for the girls.

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@viewfromaloft via Twitter

Lots of crazies get in trouble in our fair city, and lots of those crazies are also nude. Just this week a naked man (above) climbed a radio tower in downtown L.A. and threatened to jump.

Do they have this problem in, say, North Dakota? What is it about L.A. that brings out the unhinged unclothed?

Here we give you the 11 craziest nude scandals in L.A. in the last year, culled from our sister blog, The Informer.

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There are more pet names for the vagina than for any other part of the female anatomy. True, you've got your various badonks and cahuengas -- but inversely proportionate to the insecurity women have about their vaginas is the number of nice names by which they refer to them when no one else is around. They more than outnumber the coarse and unkind words with which they're otherwise identified. No small feat, that.

At La Luz de Jesus in Hollywood, they're celebrating that plethora of perceptions with a launch for the latest Taschen volume, The Big Book of Pussy, edited by noted smut merchant Dian Hanson. It's a pink and meaty volume of almost 400 pages devoted to the finer points of this unnecessarily mystifying aspect of the feminine, heavy enough to send gangsters to the bottom of the sea were it chained to their nethers.

[Warning: next page has photos that are not safe for work.]More >>

Wikimedia Commons

For no relevant reason whatsoever, here are some baby carrots next to a ruler. Thanks, Wikipedia.

The following description appeared in a recent casting call for an indie television pilot, as identified by the blog angry asian man:

[ CHANG ]
MALE: 20's - 40's. Asian. Petite, Average, or chubby. Great with comedic timing preferred. FRONTAL AND BACK NUDITY. MUST HAVE AN EXTREMELY SMALL PENIS. (Via The Hangover 2 joke) Pay rate: $100

Does he have to be a 'show-er' or a 'grow-er' or, we suppose it doesn't matter -- the producers are clearly looking for diminution that shows...whether or not it necessarily grows.

So, what's the deal, is this some racist b.s. or what? The production, called Mouthpiece is described thusly:

"An urban Entourage meets The Hangover dramedy. Five young men search for success, love, sex, and power in Los Angeles. One thing [sic] for sure...to make it, you have to have game, you have to know 'the laws,' you have to have a 'Mouthpiece.'"

It's not always entirely racist to require actors to look the part -- a quick read through of casting calls can tell you that. Acting chops aside, one doesn't exactly cast Patton Oswalt as the lead in a Manute Bol biopic. So why does Entourage 2.0 want to rip on an Asian guy with a tiny penis in a world of comedy already surfeiting with crotchal racism and bad body humor?

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At first, the idea of a three-hundred page cultural history of dirty magazines seems quaint, like somebody writing a book-length ode to the telegram. After all, it's been a long time since Playboy stood for anything other than bad reality TV, and you couldn't purchase a Penthouse right now if you tried. Not that you would, of course. At least not if you've got a few free minutes and a decent wireless connection.

But if somebody were to come up with a biography of the dirty magazine industry, it wouldn't hurt if s/he had once upon a time contributed to a few of those magazines himself. Say a big mainstream glossy like Hustler and then, for street cred, an indie weekly like Screw. Toss in authorship of a couple dozen pornographic novels and a few Penthouse bylines, and you've got the perfect candidate. Add a stint as publisher of outsider hobbyist mag High Times -- famous for publishing marijuana leaf "centerfolds" -- and you've got Mike Edison, author of Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Of Playboys, Pigs and Penthouse Paupers: An American Tale of Sex and Wonder, who's appearing at The Last Bookstore to sign his book on Nov. 17.

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Rena Riffel

Everyone remembers the infamous scene from 1995 cult classic Showgirls in which Cristal Connors (actress Gina Gershon) gazes into the eyes of Nomi Malone (actress Elizabeth Berkley) and says, "You see, darlin', you are a whore."

Though the notoriously so-awful-it's-great film seems like a parody these days, there's a new film spoof in town, and this one's purposeful. Showgirls 2 -- Penny's From Heaven, the brainchild of actress Rena Riffel (who played the supporting role of Penny in the original Showgirls), which had a one-night screening last night at the Laemmle Sunset 5. This time around, the word "whore" is said so often (five times within the first 18 minutes of the film) it could spawn a new drinking game.

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Copyright Lawrence Schiller

See also:
*10 Artsy Photos of Boobs From Taschen's The Little Book of Big Breasts (NSFW)
*Big Book of Pussy: New Taschen Tome Celebrates the Hole Truth (Photos NSFW)
*11 Craziest Nude Scandals in L.A. in the Last Year (Photos NSFW)

Life magazine called it "the skinny dip you'll never see."

In what would have been Marilyn Monroe's last film role, the buxom, platinum-haired icon frolicked in and around a swimming pool for the unfinished Something's Got to Give in 1962, a remake of the screwball comedy My Favorite Wife from 1940.

Monroe died before she finished making the movie, but excerpts and snapshots of her now-legendary nude bathing scene have only fueled her posthumous celebrity. Almost 50 years after her death, Duncan Miller Gallery is now exhibiting a dozen rare photos of Monroe from the set of Something's Got to Give.

We have seven of them for you -- #7 is above. Here are six more.

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Courtesy Busting Out!

Emma Powell and Bev Killick

In Busting Out!, creator Emma Powell goes topless. "They're not just sitting there," she says in an interview over the phone. "If they're out, they're bein' used!"

Get your mind off porn and Playboy bunnies -- this musical celebrates the average woman's not-so-buoyant breasts, though, ironically, it begins its North American premiere this week in the City of (Surgically-Enhanced Victoria's Secret) Angels.

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