The first known item girl was T.R.Rajakumari; though glamour was non-existent during her era, she was still considered sexy by the prevailing standards of that time. And for a while there were no big names that gained popularity, till three voluptuous ladies popped up from nowhere to daze the fans. They were Jyothilakshmi, Jaya malini, and Anuradha. Their existence was known to be the period in Tamil cinema when the item girl was just as important as the main cast. They were primarily in the movies for an item song or as a side kick to the dreaded villains. The famous trio’s legacy got passed on to another trio of ‘Silk’ Smitha, ‘Disco’ Shanthi and Kuyili who went on to become as famous or if not more than the lead heroines of those days. Here again, the primary responsibility of these girls were the item numbers. Even the big directors had to relent to include one such number in their otherwise realistic movies, whether it dealt with the relationship between a man and a girl suffering from amnesia (Moondram Pirai) or a turbulent story about an ordinary man rising to become Nayagan of the population. There was no escaping the item girl till the early nineties when a change came around.