There's an art to creating good cheesecake.
It has to supply both the illusion of wholesomeness and the satisfaction of having indulged in something vaguely sinful.
Carolyn Vesely is dressed to stop the presses.
Done to perfection, it's a subtle interplay of texture and taste: Sweet and rich with a hint of tart. Soft and seductively silky with a slight jiggle. Delicately cheesy, not dense or overpowering.
With just a thin layer of saucy topping.
Given the current glut of cheap and convenient confections, however, high-quality fare can be hard to find.
Mike Latschislaw hopes to change that by reintroducing Winnipeggers to some of the masters' original recipes.
Put down the fork. We're not talking about Betty Crocker here.
More like Betty Boop, Betty Grable and Bettie Page.
Latschislaw, 42, is a photographer/animator, and this is the other cheesecake -- girlie art, also known as pinup, that harkens back to a time when, erotically speaking, a little really did go a long way.
During the Second World War, it was more American than apple pie.
Rare was the soldier who didn't have a picture of a sexy movie star pinned to his locker or tucked in his kit bag to remind him of the world he left behind.
But the evolution (or devolution, depending who you ask) of girlie pictures actually spans a century.
From the Can-Can dancers who kicked up their heels on Moulin Rouge cabaret posters in late 19th-century France to the Gibson Girls, Petty Girls and Vargas Girls of early 20th-century America to neo-burlesque artists like Dita Von Teese, pinup has long used playfulness, fantasy and glamour to arouse society's sexual conscience.
The fine art of teasing has always been the pinup's forte and artists have tried to capture an essence of innocence -- even when the clothes and the pose were anything but. (Pinup girls were never mortified that their underwear was showing, just pleasantly startled.)
Cheesecake images, produced by both illustrators' paintbrushes and photographers' cameras, provided a peek into the private life of the "girl next door," whose charms are revealed as she's caught, seemingly unaware, in an absurd and potentially embarrassing situation.
Everything old is new again at Latsch Studios.
However Latischlaw, who has done special effects for television, movies and video games, has added digital technology to the classic formula for portraying nice girls in naughty settings.
So what's a nice reporter like me doing in a place like this?
Helping to illustrate how the same computer wizardry he used to resurrect extinct reptiles for the Discovery Channel (When Dinosaurs Roamed America) can make a modern-day newsie look like she should stepped out of a pulp magazine rather than a metro daily.
To mangle a line from '80s celebrity pinup Jessica Rabbit, "I'm not bad. I'm just digitally enhanced to look that way."
OK, it's mostly me.
My "victory rolls" and spidery eyelashes are the handiwork of hairstylist/makeup artist Cristina Mazzei of Pink Star Hair Design, and Kristen Andrews put the '40s style ensemble together at her Ragpickers Antifashion Emporium, located across the street from the Exchange District's new cheesecake factory.
Phone, fan and camera are real, but the desk I'm sitting on is an enhanced garage-sale junker and Latischlaw added the newsroom door.
"The environments are created with 3D software I used for movies and TV," he says, "to give it that stylized, painterly look."
He had already started incorporating 3D elements into his portraits when he decided to add retro pinups to the Latsch Studios lineup.
"I'd put a boy on the deck of a pirate ship or set family photos in environments people couldn't pay to go to," says the father of two, who lived and worked in Los Angeles and Montreal before returning to his hometown in 2004. He also worked on Superman Returns and The Chumscrubber for Winnipeg-based Frantic Films.
"While doing my market research, I found the pinup thing was really popular and there seemed to be a market for it. People tell me it's the kind of thing many women would like to get done to commemorate a time in their life -- something glamorous and sexy."
Latschislaw says he wasn't interested in doing nudes.
"I want to do pictures that women can show their mothers."
Or their significant others.
One Winnipeg soldier stationed in Afghanistan will soon be indulging in a sweet treat from home that beats anything Tim Hortons can deliver.
Carolyn, who asked that her surname be withheld for security reasons, says she wanted to do something "cute and fun" to surprise her boyfriend on their anniversary and decided on a pinup after seeing her friend's photo on Latschislaw's website.
"I've never done anything like this before," says the 26-year-old, who dolled up as an incendiary '50s-style gas jockey. (The nozzle is real, but the pump is a CG creation.) "I don't normally even wear lipstick.
"But I think it's classy, not a Maxim photo shoot -- not that my boyfriend wouldn't appreciate that."
Pinups didn't represent sex so much as suggest it.
Yet because it's synonymous with women -- although male movie stars' contracts also often obligated men to do beefcake photos in the Golden Age of Hollywood -- and primarily targeted to men, cheesecake maintains fans and critics on both sides of the gender fence.
(Comments solicited from female colleagues prior to publication of the photos that accompany this article ran the gamut from "hideous" and representing "one end of the porn spectrum" to "kitschy and kind of fun" and preferable to stories on the latest trends in plastic surgery.)
"It was objectifying," Andrews says, "but it was also a very romanticized, idolized image -- woman as goddess. There's a very different wholesomeness of the pinup girl of the '50s than with some of the glamourized, trashy supermodels of today."
Patti Henderson, a Winnipeg-based movie costume designer who helps Latischislaw ensure all elements of his photo shoots are period-appropriate, says photography took over in the '70s and denigrated the essence of pinup art.
"I think Mike's work might be likened to early Hugh Hefner -- the poses are sexy but they're not revealing -- whereas the stuff today is more like Hustler."
Kay O'Hara, a full-time pinup model in Toronto who runs a paid website (www.pinupglamour.com), has no qualms about being called a sex symbol.
"Isn't every woman who walks on this planet, really?" the 30-ish wife of a native Winnipegger, who is also her photographer, says during a recent phone interview.
"There are gals who walk down the street in their workboots or baseball caps and whether they like it or not, there are 10 men looking at them. It's human nature.
"What somebody thinks when they look at a certain individual, that's something we have very little control over. The way I look at it is to take that and turn it around so that the power is definitely on my side."
O'Hara, who is also a romance novelist, mails around 250 pinup postcards and letters of support to deployed servicemen each week through her Pinups for Troops campaign (www.pinupglamour.net).
The frequent cover and calendar girl in the retro community concedes her work is "provocative" and pushes the envelope, but no more so than Marilyn Monroe in the '50s.
"You won't find any nude pictures of me anywhere."
Not that there's anything wrong with that, in the right context, she adds.
"All of the pinup masters have painted nudes," says O'Hara, whose father was an artist.
"When you consider that the female body is the most beautiful thing that was ever created, to cover it up and say it's dirty, to me, that's wrong."
Pinup photo shoots at Latsch Studios range from around $160 for two poses to the $400 Deluxe Package: hair, makeup, wardrobe and 3D elements. Prices include finished prints. For more information, call 292-1447 or check the web at www.latschstudios.com
carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca
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