Fan Bing-Bing as Marilyn Monroe?

Fan Bing-Bing has done a photoshoot for an upcoming issue of "Esquire" magazine and is, in the breathless prose of both CRIEnglish and sina.com, "the second female star to cover the men's magazine following Zhang Ziyi". According to the same sources the spread is paying homage to the look and style of Marilyn Monroe. It provides the official and semi-official PRC news portals a chance to run pictures of a beautiful actress, an opportunity I of which I am also taking advantage with this post.

The English rendition is here and the Chinese here

But there might be a more appropriate bombshell Caucasian actress from the late 1950s and early 1960s with whom to compare Fan Bing-Bing in these pictures.





The gray scale images remind me more of Sophia Loren, particularly the last one above. Here is a still from (I am pretty sure) "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" of which the picture seems reminiscent. Both involve women getting dressed and both involve mirrors with mirror images. Whatever effect the photographer was trying to accomplish with this image of Fan Bing-Bing he made at least one viewer think immediately of the gorgeous cinema goddess of mid-century Italy although the Chinese idol is not quite as voluptuous as Loren.