The Naked Hug

It's the Kama Sutra celebrity style. Face to face, side by side or from behind, stars have taught us everything we need to know about selling sex.



This week, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway offered three more positions in the name of promoting their new movie "Love & Other Drugs."

They're on three different covers of Entertainment Weekly in various nudist romantic embraces. The response from critics and bloggers has ranged from overly-excited to crying "awkward." But no one is looking away.

And that's a good thing for a flailing magazine industry, according to Christopher John Farley in a recent post on WSJ.com. "The magazine industry has been in trouble for a number of years now, which may be one reason why we’re seeing a rash of disrobed stars on the front covers of various periodicals."

It's one thing to disrobe for a cover, it's another to engage in the hug. To put it lightly, the hug is like calling in the big guns.

Back in 1976, Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson embraced for a remake of the "A Star is Born." Arguably, it was not the best remake, but it sure was the biggest, thanks in part to the album cover and movie poster image: Babs and Kris, in the buff. The movie topped the box office and the album sold upwards of 15 million copies.





Soon, the magazine industry hopped on the bandwagon full-speed ahead creating iconic images of couples (John and Yoko anyone?) in various states of undress. It's a way of inviting an audience into the bedroom, and promising a revealing look that doesn't always hold up inside the magazine pages. Regardless, when the stars align in naked positions, it always makes us look.


Article by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff(shine.yahoo.com)


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