Perfect 10 (magazine)
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Perfect 10 is a quarterly men's magazine featuring high resolution photographs of topless or nude women who supposedly have not had cosmetic surgery, and focuses in particular on slender models with piercing eyes and medium to large, youthful breasts in pensive or artistic poses. A recurring theme is that of the model wearing boxing gloves. To this end Perfect 10 has even gone so far as to promote and film boxing matches between a number of their models, aired most recently as Perfect 10: Model Boxing on the Showtime cable channel.
The majority of Perfect 10 's models hail from Eastern Europe--particularly former Soviet Union states--although many American and Brazilian models are also showcased. Perfect 10 is often the first to feature upcoming fashion models and glamour models nude, and a number have gone on to become Playboy Playmates or Penthouse Pets, most notably Jodi Paterson (2000 Playboy Playmate of the Year) and Erica Lookadoo (aka Juliet Cariaga, 2000 Penthouse Pet of the Year). Miss Universe contestants Evelina Papantoniou (Miss Greece 2001) and Leilani Dowding (Miss Great Britain 1998) also posed for the magazine. Other notable Perfect 10 models include Erica Campbell, Katie Richmond, Veronika Zemanová, Marisa Miller, Tereza Benesova, and Ashley Degenford. Many Page 3 girls have appeared in the magazine's pages, like Michelle Marsh and Sophie Howard. The magazine features disproportionately few black, Latin, or Asian models; most issues feature none at all.
In keeping with the natural beauty aspect of the publication, many of the models are photographed with little or no make-up, with few exceptions.
History
Perfect 10 was founded by former Stanford computer science professor and hedge fund manager Norm Zadeh in 1997 when a stripper friend was rejected from Playboy because her proportions didn't fit the magazine's ideal. To get noticed in an already saturated adult magazine market, Norm gave prominent display to his "$435,000 Perfect 10 Model Search" in which the model from the first year deemed most beautful by a panel of celebrity judges would receive a $200,000 prize. $100,000 went to second place, and $50,000 to the third place models. The remaining $85,000 was split between the remaining seventeen finalists. Ashley Degenford eventually won, and went on to land a role on the FX channel's The X Show. Marisa Miller, the second runner-up, went on to become a Victoria's Secret and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
In August 2005, Perfect 10 asked the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to stop Google from caching and displaying thumbnails to third party sites which offer unlicensed images from Perfect 10, because this interferes with their cell-phone thumbnail offer. In February 2006 the court granted the request in part and denied it in part, ruling that the thumbnails were infringing but links sites with images were not. The case is among the first to be decided on issues of search engines.