Naked Actresses - Hot Issue on Debate

A thing that has raised eyebrows is this month's Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair. It contains pictures of two lovely young stars-of-the-moment, Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, posing almost naked. If you open the foldout, you can even see Johansson's bare buttocks.

Rachel McAdams was also supposed to pose, but apparently when she arrived at the photo shoot, she decided she didn't want to take her clothes off.

Her absence led to designer Tom Ford sitting between Johansson and Knightley. He nuzzles Knightley's ear and, though he shows plenty of chest hair, is fully clothed. Probably nobody asked him to take his clothes off.

The hot debate issue is: "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?"

Janice Min, editor of the much-read celebrity magazine US Weekly declared for AP News: "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."

And why aren't there any photos of naked man?

"Men just aren't viewed as sex objects in the same way that women are," Min adds. "Women don't think about men being naked in the same way that men think about women."

"There's an inherent fear in this country of pictures of naked men," says Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, for AP News. "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."

Whether this is right or not, whether it means we still see women as sexual objects a lot more than we see men, the thing is this number of the magazine sold really well. 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.

I suppose it's a question of education, probably in the future we'll learn to appreciate naked men as much.