Samantha Fox (born April 15, 1966) is a British pop singer and former glamour model who, in the mid-to-late 1980s, was one of the era's leading sex symbols. Her mention in the context of 1993 is no accident – the novel's characters were teenagers precisely during the period of her peak popularity.
Fox's career began at 16, when she became a Page 3 model for the tabloid The Sun. In 1984, 1985, and 1986 she was named "Page 3 Girl of the Year," becoming one of the most photographed British women of the 1980s, alongside Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.
In 1986, Fox left modeling for music. Her debut single "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" became an international hit, reaching the top 10 in Europe, North America, and Australia, and topping the charts in some countries. In the UK, the song reached No. 3; in the US, No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Her peak popularity came precisely in the second half of the 1980s – when the novel's characters were 14-15 years old. Her posters decorated the walls of teenagers' bedrooms around the world, and the image of the curvaceous, sexy blonde became the era's standard of female attractiveness. Fox even insured her chest for a million pounds sterling, echoing Betty Grable, who had once insured her legs for a million dollars.
By 1993, when the novel's events take place, Samantha Fox's star had long since faded. Her subsequent albums – "Just One Night" (1991), "21st Century Fox" (1997), and "Angel with an Attitude" (2005) – had no commercial success. The fashion for glamorous 1980s pop stars had passed, giving way to grunge, alternative rock, and the emerging rave culture.
Adding a particular edge to her mention in the novel is the fact that in 2003 she publicly came out as gay, confirming rumors that had circulated about her since the 1990s. She was in a relationship with her manager Myra Stratton from 2003 until the latter's death from cancer in 2015. In 2022, Fox married her tour manager, Linda Birgitte Olsen, from Norway.
So the mention of Samantha Fox in Zhorik's speech is a reference to a bygone era, to a time when the characters were teenagers dreaming of an unattainable ideal of beauty. By 1993, such a comparison already sounded anachronistic — like an attempt to return to the naive fantasies of youth amid the harsh realities of post-Soviet life.