Huntington Beach Model Has Mixed Emotions Over Her Cover Picture

When Saturday Review magazine printed the picture of a striking honey-limbed, blue-eyed blonde in a bathing suit on its cover with the headline “Sex Sells,” the model had mixed emotions.

“I thought it was interesting, and I was excited my picture would be on the cover of the Saturday Review,” said Gail Smith, 22, a model and aspiring actress who now lives in Huntington Beach, “but I think pretty girls can help sell magazines without bringing sex into it.”

The 60-year-old magazine, long known for its philosophy of liberal humanitarianism and its criticism of the arts, for the first time changed from a format of headline-only front covers and started using pictures, a move designed to attract new readership and to boost newsstand sales and advertising.

“There’s nothing wrong with them doing that and I’m really pleased to be part of an innovative change by the magazine,” she said, “but I just think the headline gives the wrong impression. It could lead some people to read something into it that’s not really me.”

In explaining her laid-back life style, which includes driving a Jeep with her dog Bubba as the passenger, she said: “Sometimes I get teased by other models for being what they call a goody-goody. In New York, when others wanted to go dancing I wanted to go shopping. Life is what you choose and I choose this way.”

Although approached by Playboy magazine for a photo layout, “posing nude is not for me,” said Smith, who was raised in an Illinois town of 1,000 residents and now lives with her parents. “Other models have posed nude and have paid for it in terms of a career problem.

“I feel I have a good modeling career ahead and taking a different route can only hurt it,” she said. “Besides, I couldn’t do that (pose nude) to my family and friends.”

She pointed out that she has had a serious boyfriend for three years, a former Rams player.

Rabbi Henri E. Front of Huntington Beach, the new chair of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said the target this year “is embodied in the letter H: the Homeless, Helpless, Healthless and Housing.”

OK cabbage roll lovers, stay with me on this.

According to founding Cabbage Heads Jim Dean, Vick Knight, Jerry Kobrin and Paul Salata, the Stuffed Cabbage Appreciation Society International will hold its third annual Great Stuffed Cabbage Roll Off on Sept. 21 at Newport Center’s Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

Contestants must bring precooked entries for judging, tasting and display, provide enough “bites” for 500 people and pay $40 to enter. The Costa Mesa YMCA Family Crisis Center gets the proceeds.

Acknowledgments--Santa Ana firefighter Mike Overn won the decathlon gold medal during the recent World Police and Fire Games in San Jose and fellow Santa Ana firefighter Dennis Hill won the silver medal in the triathlon.