Up Front and Personal

You might think I’m being opportunistic here, posting the cover of the latest Marie Claire magazine simply so that we could all revel further in the beauty of Ashley Judd. But for once, you’d be wrong. No, there’s a civic-duty reason for Ms. Judd’s appearance in Limbo. It’s because I just stumbled across this write-up in the Mediabistro blog FishbowlNY:

Is Ashley Judd’s topless turn on December’s Marie Claire cover a first? According to editor Joanna Coles, it appears so. Coles told FishbowlNY that she believes Judd is the first cover subject to go nude--noteworthy considering how feverishly designers jockey to get their couture on Judd--and, for that matter, on Marie Claire.

Clearly, editor Coles has a very short memory. Allow me to refer her to Jennifer Aniston’s topless appearance in GQ’s November 2005 “Man of the Year” issue. And singer Christina Aguilera’s simmering shoot for the June 2006 issue of that very same magazine.

Has Coles already forgotten about actress Demi Moore’s manifestly pregnant-and-proud-of-it cover from the August 1991 issue of Vanity Fair? Or, to go back quite a bit further, John Lennon’s nude snuggling (with Yoko Ono) on the front of Rolling Stone’s January 22, 1981, issue? (OK, so Lennon wasn’t a woman, but Coles didn’t specify sex in her statement.)

Perhaps I have the intention wrong here. Did she mean to say simply that Judd was “the first cover subject to go nude” on Marie Claire? In which case, one must ask: Why is this newsworthy? Or did FishbowlNY editors simply wanted to exploit the Judd cover themselves?