Who will be the first model to be featured in Playboy Indonesia? Tiara Lestari* has said that she doesn’t want the honor. Perhaps the US publication could go with a historical pictorial, featuring former Indonesian first lady Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno. That link is mildly not safe for work but this not porn, it’s history:

Not too many Indonesian celebrities are willing to undress for the cameras.

But Dewi Sukarno, former first lady of Indonesia, was.

Born Naoko Nemoto, she was working days in an insurance company and nights as a hostess at the Kokusai Club in Akasaka, a place for foreign VIPs. It was there that a fateful meeting with a powerful world leader changed her life. In 1962, at the tender age of 19, she left Japan to become the third of the nine wives of Achmed Sukarno, the president of The Republic of Indonesia. Her full married name was Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno.

Many years later, in 1993, at the ripe old age of 53 she published a book of photos, many of them nude. The book was slammed in the mostly Islamic Indonesia for "violating eastern norms and insulting Indonesia’s dignity" and was banned by the Attorney-General’s office. Several years later, an Indonesian magazine published some photos from the book without permission.

Today the book is out of print and a highly valued collectors’ item.

*AsiaPundit would also congratulate Tiara on passing the 100,000 visitor mark. This site also crossed that threshold this weekend (although by another Statcounter, AsiaPundit had 100,000 visitors as of mid-December).

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