Nowhere else in the world would the simple fact of standing beside a chef in a bikini make you a celebrity. And yet, that's exactly what happened to Ireland's current Model du jour, Georgia Salpa.
The now infamous press call for Food & Wine magazine last August, in which Georgia posed in a bikini beside top chef Neven Maguire, set off a Liveline-led national outrage which ended in an apology on the part of the magazine's publisher.
At the time, Georgia had been back living full-time in Ireland for about six months, after several years spent travelling. Things were going well, but she was still one of a number of girls -- including her good friends Nadia Forde, Sara Kavanagh and former Miss Universe Lynn Kelly -- regularly booked for promotional work.
"I just thought it was ridiculous," the 25-year-old says now. "If I saw girls, even Page Three girls, I wouldn't care. Like the Hunky Dorys ad, they're still moaning about it -- it's just so boring.
"It didn't actually bother me. They asked me to come dressed like a sexy waitress, so I brought a little black skirt and a shirt. And they said to bring a black bikini also. So for the whole shoot I was in my bikini. I think everyone was going mad because they didn't know why I would be," she muses. "And, I mean, why would I be, for no reason, like?"
Why would she be, indeed? By default rather than design, Georgia has become the face of a national conflict, an issue we regularly like to get our knickers in a twist about. Using sex to sell is nothing remotely new, but with the press call, a uniquely Irish phenomenon, we've brought it to its most blatant, most pared-down incarnation: product + semi-naked girl holding it = sales. And then we sit around indulging in orgies of hand wringing, questioning the morality of girls in their bikinis.
On top of that, we elevate these girls to the status of national figures; turn them into household names for the merest triviality, then use them as whipping boys for the triviality, the awful Paris Hilton-isation, of modern society.
Not that any of this is remotely worrying Georgia -- she's far too busy carving out a successful modelling career, thank you very much.
"I think it's so stupid," she says, when I ask her how she feels about criticism of women in their bikinis. "Especially because newspapers and magazines in England or in Greece, they're naked and no one says anything. Here, it's only bikinis, it's not anything. I would never have a problem. And, to be honest, when I'm looking at a newspaper I'd be more looking at the girls. It's really weird," she says of our national sport of agonising over the ethics of women in their underwear.
Becoming the face of a nation's moral dilemma has done nothing to damage her career. Quite the opposite, in fact. Georgia is one of the last full-time Models standing.
