Article excerpted from sassybella.com
We understand that there’s a little model-vs-celebrity tension when it comes to magazine covers these days. And magazines need to sell so that those magazine girls can keep their day jobs. But do models really have to try and trump the celebrities by stripping down for their cover shots?
British Vogue kicked off the current trend of magazine covers featuring naked models with the June 2009 issue, with Natalia Vodianova on the cover. “Vogue generally deals with how we choose to clothe our bodies, but for this special issue we have diversified and looked at how we feel about those bodies, whether clothed or naked,” says Alexandra Shulman in her editor’s letter.
Continuing the body-revealing trend is Helena Christensen on the cover of Citizen K’s Supermodel issue, sporting hair bigger than her waistline. Miranda Kerr took it all off for the cover of Australian Rolling Stone to raise awareness for the environment (ironically on the cover of a print publication). We get it – models have nice bodies and with the Northern summer now in full swing, it is bikini season. Maybe we are supposed to be motivated to work out harder.
But isn’t the high fashion element we expect from Vogue lacking when Natalia is on the cover sans clothes? And even if Citizen K is French, nudity doesn’t really shock the French, so will they even sell more magazines? As for Miranda on Rolling Stone and Bar Rafaeli on the cover of Esquire’s July 2009 issue…let’s just write these off as men’s magazines getting a little extra publicity for their cover model choices (Rafaeli’s publicist must be working over time).
“I haven’t seen anything like that ever,’ said Rafaeli of the decision to wear nothing but words from Stephen King’s new short story on the cover. “So I wanted to be the girl who did it.”
Yeah, just do it. While it might be a Nike slogan, perhaps that’s what the magazines were really thinking. After all, who needs stylists and clothes when you have a model wearing nothing?
