Sex as a symbol

Brooke Shields, Burt Reynolds, Anna Nicole Smith, and Julie Ege. What do they all have in common? They have contributed to the changing face of sexuality by being sex symbols of the past decades.

Julie Ege was a Miss Norway and Miss Universe contestant and a Penthouse Pet. She appeared in several British-made sex comedies and soft-porn films during the 1970s, which contributed to her sex symbol imagine of the 1970s.

After serving as a Bond girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Julie Ege briefly became a leading figure in British cinema, monopolising the role of exotic, seductress in the low-brow comedies that were a staple of the time.She was given the title of “new sex symbol of the seventies” and Hammer hoped that a role as a sexy cavewoman in Creatures the World Forgot (1971) would do for Ege what One Million Years BC (1966) had done for Raquel Welch, turning her into a screen icon, but the film flopped. She continued in comedies and also in horror films for several more years, before giving up acting and becoming a nurse in her native Norway.

She was in The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), Rentadick (1972), Not Now Darling (1973), Percy’s Progress (1974) and The Amorous Milkman (1975). Such was her fame at the time that she was one of the celebrities playing themselves in The Alf Garnett Saga (1972), along with George Best and Max Bygraves. She was the girl of Alf’s dreams.

"Julie Ege." Times Online. 2 May 2008. Times Newspaper. 1 Dec. 2008 

     http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3860962.ece.