Personally, I don’t but it seems that having the Aussie model naked in Harper’s Bazaar magazine is big news, even though Playboy is getting stars to cover up.
Now, nudity is natural and it has its place, usually in one’s own home, or, if the fancy takes you, on your local nudist beach. But please, spare me the sight of Ms Kerr trying to look seductive, while covering her modesty, in a pose that can hardly be described as natural. It looks more painful and contrived than alluring or even interesting.
There’s no denying Ms Kerr, with or without clothes, is stunningly beautiful. You don’t get to grace the covers of top magazines and high-end runway shows if you look like a horse. But in this day and age where naked women are commonplace and it’s difficult to undertake a Google search without being confronted by people’s wobbly bits, is it really necessary to have so much skin on the cover of a high fashion magazine? In fact, is it necessary to have so much flesh on show in any kind of magazine?
When the iconic men’s magazine Playboy announced in October that it would no longer be featuring naked women there was an air of inevitability about the prospect, and very little public backlash. For 62 years Playboy has titillated and excited teenage boys and grown men alike, and anyone who says they read it for the articles was clearly lying. It probably even piqued the interest of women who came across a copy, who wouldn’t find it difficult not to have a sneaky peek? At least there was a little intrigue about what was inside.
But with nudity now nothing new, the publication has moved with the times and while it promises to “continue to publish sexy, seductive pictorials of the world’s most beautiful women, including its iconic Playmates, all shot by some of today’s most renowned photographers”, it will most likely become just another title battling it out for a share of the ever-reducing publishing market.
So to all magazine editors who think it’s cool, imaginative, interesting or artistic, to drape a woman with an unachievable body on the cover, take your lead from the master, and don’t bother.
Will you mourn the loss of the naked Playboy cover girl? Is nudity passé?
