Kirsten Dunst is in Maxim again with a new photo layout.
Is your Spider sense tingling?
Popularity: 23% [?]
Two Naked Actresses Draw Magazine Buzz
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. 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.
[...]
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.)
Investigative journalism at its finest!
Update: Andrew Sullivan notes that,
Of course, gay media outlets have plenty of male nudes, but that’s because they’re read by … men. Men and women are biologically wired to be attracted to different aspects of the people they lust after. Women, for some reason still opaque to me, are sexually attracted to a man’s soul, his character, his style. Men want to see titties, as Dave Chapelle would say. Gay men and straight men are no different in this. And so the single standard VF is using is a simple one: let’s sell as many magazines as we can. I fail to see how they can be criticized for doing their job.
Of course, gay men don’t actually want to see titties. But his point is well taken.
Popularity: 41% [?]
Idol Singer Strikes Sexy Pose With Twin
“American Idol” contestant Becky O’Donohue just doubled her exposure. The aspiring singer is featured alongside her twin sister, Jessie, in a series of sexy photos on the Maxim magazine Web site. The 25-year-old twins pose in bikinis, unbuttoned baseball jerseys, and glistening with sweat in a sauna-like setting, wearing only towels.
The photos were taken two years ago for the magazine’s online fantasy baseball game, said Jordan Burchette, executive editor of Maxim Online. The images “found new life” when O’Donohue became an “Idol” contestant, Burchette said. “There’s all kind of new buzz surrounding them,” he said. When the twins posed for the pictures, they were models for hire. “They were athletes in college, then models, and now they’re vocalists,” Burchette said. “We look forward to their political careers.”
Maxim provides additional information:
Jessie and Becky O’Donohue
Jessie’s vitals: 5’10″, 32B–24–34
Becky’s vitals: 5’10″, 32B–25–36
Proud to be an American: You first met Jessie and Becky when the stunning twins kicked off Maxim Fallacy Baseball in 2004. They went on to scarf down slop on Fear Factor before continuing their reality TV tour this year on American Idol. Jessie’s musical mission got derailed by throat surgery, but Becky is still subjecting herself to weekly verbal teabaggings by snooty Brit Simon Cowell.
VIDEO: Jessie and Becky bared their pipes for us long before Simon Cowell had a crack at them.
Popularity: 13% [?]
