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Two naked actresses draw magazine buzz
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-23 08:58
Pick up this month's Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair and you'll see two lovely
young stars-of-the-moment, Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, posing
alluringly in the altogether. Open the foldout, and you'll even see Johansson's
bare buttocks.
This photo,
originally supplied by Vanity Fair, shows Scarlett Johansson, foreground,
and Keira Knightley posed nude for the fold-out cover of Vanity Fair
magazine's yearly Hollywood issue, released earlier in February, 2006.
Fashion superstar Tom Ford also appears on the cover photo by Annie
Leibovitz shot exclusively for Vanity Fair.
[AP] |
What you won't see is a third, equally
lovely young actress, Rachel McAdams of "Wedding Crashers" fame. It seems
McAdams arrived at the photo shoot and decided she didn't want to take her
clothes off.
And so, sitting between Johansson and Knightley is fashion designer Tom Ford,
the issue's guest editor. He nuzzles Knightley's ear and, though he shows plenty
of chest hair, is fully clothed. Presumably, no one thought of asking HIM to
disrobe.
Is it arty and fun, or does it say something about sexual politics in
Hollywood? In 2006, four decades after the launch of the feminist movement, does
a serious actress still need to take her clothes off to get attention?
And where, oh where, are the naked men?
The reason female stars disrobe is simple, says Janice Min, editor of the
much-read celebrity magazine US Weekly. "It's tried and true. You show some
cleavage on an actress. You make her look sexy. You make her look hot." She
NEEDS to be hot — because in Hollywood, "you have to be sexy to be a successful
actress. You just have to be."
So where's the nude photo of Brad Pitt? Or George Clooney, who appears later
in the issue, dressed, amid a bevy of women in flesh-toned bras and panties?
Let's face it, Min says: Women do like to see sexy men — just not with all their
clothes off.
"Men just aren't viewed as sex objects in the same way that women are," Min
says. "Women don't think about men being naked in the same way that men think
about women." In fact, she says, at her magazine's offices, when photos come in
of a male star with no shirt on, "We say, 'Gross! Put some clothes on!'"
(Imagine that being uttered about an attractive female.)
For one expert on the magazine industry, it's a little more complicated.
"There's an inherent fear in this country of pictures of naked men," says Samir
Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi. "We've been
trained to look at pictures of naked women, but we haven't been trained yet to
look at pictures of naked men."
A few male stars have blazed a trail. Burt Reynolds appeared nearly nude in
Cosmopolitan in 1972. David Cassidy, in Rolling Stone, the same year. David
Hasselhoff. And Ford, too. But it's a lonely group.
Husni calls the current VF cover the "Playboy" issue, because "you can call
it art as much as you want — it's still naked women." Nonetheless, he says the
magazine has scored huge buzz.
And buzz, in the cutthroat magazine industry, goes a long way. If a magazine
sells more than 30 percent of its copies of a particular issue, it's a success.
Every copy sold above that is money in the bank. And how do you sell those
extras? By grabbing the first-time buyer at the newsstand. The industry rule of
thumb is you have 2 1/2 seconds to grab that buyer. And you do it with the
cover.
"The cover is your calling card," says Will Dana, managing editor of Rolling
Stone magazine, which over the years has produced its share of memorable covers
(including the iconic photo of a nude John Lennon wrapped around a clothed Yoko
Ono — a rare exception to the rule.) "People are making a split-second decision.
It's got to be compelling."
By that standard, the VF cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz, is a slam-dunk.
Society columnist Liz Smith wrote about a dinner party where people were passing
the issue around, declaring it "ridiculous ... egotistical ... absurd."
"So, I ask you, is editor Graydon Carter smart or what?" Smith wrote.
Carter, in an e-mail message to the AP, said "I chose Tom Ford with the
intention of giving him a lot of creative freedom — which I did. And I was
extremely pleased with the results."
The results include a 46-page photo spread in which actresses Sienna Miller,
Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston and Joy Bryant also appear in various states of
nudity. There's also an L.A. plastic surgeon (male and dressed) appearing on a
golf course next to a giant female breast. And actor Jason Schwartzman, dressed
in a suit and tie, posed next to a nude model — with her head cropped out of the
photo.
Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak said it's too early to say how the
magazine is selling, but that it has scored about 3,000 new subscriptions and
almost 5 million web site page views.
Some of that buzz has been negative. "The whole cover just seems faux-racy to
me," says Siobhan Burns, a New Yorker in her mid-30's who reads the magazine in
her office. "And why, in 2006, do women still have to take their clothes off and
look pouty, rather than being heralded for their accomplishments?"
Writing in Salon.com, Rebecca Traister called the cover an "over-the-top orgy
of self-love, misogyny and idiocy" by Ford. Of McAdams, who also starred in "Red
Eye" and "The Family Stone" in 2005, she wrote: "There you have it, ladies,
straight from Vanity Fair. We don't care if you star in three successful movies
in one year; if you won't get naked for a 'threesome,' you can forget your spot
in our pages!"
Vanity Fair says McAdams, 29, was well aware beforehand that the cover
concept called for nudity. "At the last moment, she didn't feel comfortable with
the idea," Kseniak says.
McAdams' manager did not respond to a request for comment. As for Johansson,
21, who's drawn attention for her recent performance in Woody Allen's "Match
Point" as well as having her breasts groped by Isaac Mizrahi on the Golden
Globes red carpet, her publicist, Marcel Pariseau, said she was happy with the
magazine.
No one has suggested that Johansson or Knightley, 20, the winsome,
Oscar-nominated British star of "Pride & Prejudice," were forced into
anything. Yet, Min says, it was a "huge honor" for a young actress to appear on
VF's cover — especially the Hollywood issue: "A lot of people would think it's
better to be naked and on the cover than NOT on the cover."
So buzz-worthy was the VF cover, Min says, that her magazine went out and
asked people what they thought of it.
The answer? Most thought the actresses looked better with clothes
on.
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