French Playboy October 2008 : Lily Cole by Xevi Muntané

[SusanSuperstar]

what a lovely cover.....looks amazing!

[quijano]

Great concept! The cover sure does look vintage. Can't wait to see the editorial!

[ponytrot]

Lily looks fantastic!

[Chaky]

This shoot has generated some strong opinions in the British press this week. This from Barbara Ellen in the Comment section of today's Observer newspaper:

That's enough pictures of Lily

Does model Lily Cole truly believe that her shoot for French Playboy (starkers save for ribboned pigtails, little girl socks and a big, fluffy teddy bear jammed between her legs) is 'art'?

According to Cole: 'Nudity has always existed in art ...' (blah); 'It celebrates the human body ...' (witter); 'It doesn't necessarily debase ...' (doze). Absolutely, Lily, and I'm writing this stark naked, twirling nipple tassels. An unpleasant image, I grant you, but sometimes shock tactics are necessary. Anyway, Cole can talk. On the Playboy cover, she looks dangerously close to something Gary Glitter would use as a screensaver.

Marks & Spencer defended Cole's Playboy appearance and so they should. You can't take the moral high ground when another of your models, the beauteous Noémie Lenoir, spends entire campaigns running around in her scanties.

But Lily, gorgeous, alien-faced, high-end Lily, what on earth possessed you? Was it because it was French Playboy (she'd have thought twice if it meant coming into proximity with Hugh Hefner and his rancid dressing gown)? Did they tempt her with the ultimate model-apple of 'edgy'? Whatever the incentive, Cole looks ridiculous.

Ironically, there is an art to glamour modelling just as there is to catwalk, which means that interlopers such as Cole will always run the risk of being FWTKO (Famous With Their Kit Off). This is why I feel sorry for Cole. In the Playboy shoot, she doesn't look edgy, wild or 'out there', she looks like what she is - a silly, middle-class girl out of her depth.

The whole thing reminds me of when Gail Porter posed for FHM all those years ago and ended up with her bottom superimposed on the Houses of Parliament: the same confusion between risk-taking and exploitation, the same self-justifying embarrassment. Lily should wise up. This sort of caper isn't art, it's soft porn, just as sleazy in its own way as the hard stuff and best left to experts.

Observer

Here's arguments for and against in the Independent: Is Lily Cole's appearance in Playboy really art?

Also some campaign group called Christian Voice is calling for a boycott of M&S over this. Obviously they are unaware of her shoot for Paradis magazine last year which I'm sure they'd find far more offensive.

[tigerrouge]

That's my objection to it - it's a lazy shot, which goes for a shock factor and doesn't speak of anything other than a recycled idea, with nothing new added. I honestly thought, from what I'd heard ahead of the magazine's appearance, that they were going to do something great with the concept, and this is not it.

If you're going to be transgressive, don't be all 'pastel' about it and hold back - the art of a good cover is to create a simple image that says a lot more than it seems.

But instead, we have Lily Cole, who we already know has a face like a doll and a body for sin, pulling a pose that everyone expects from her. Wow, my eyes have been opened to a whole new side of Lily that absolutely no-one has talked about before. How outré.

The laziness of it, they're hitching a ride on sensitivities without bothering to put anything truly thrilling into the image, and that is cheap. Proper sexual imagery grabs you in a lot more places, rather than merely aiming to grab headlines in the Daily Mail for its feeble use of underage imagery.

It's one thing to explore the Lolita stereotype, and another to use it so uselessly - so tamely that most people are actually liking it and calling it 'lovely'. Water it down, so people can find it easy to like, get a bit of publicity off the back of suggested paedophilia, but because it's a fashion model, no-one will take offense, because we all know such photography has nothing to do with reality, it's entirely harmless, just a bit of fun.

[sethii]

I agree with some of the journalists' points about the poor cover, but I find their motivation in writing about it a little dubious.

Barbara Ellen - observer

In the Playboy shoot, she doesn't look edgy, wild or 'out there', she looks like what she is - a silly, middle-class girl out of her depth.

What an awful comment - so typical of the British press. She seems to be suggesting there should be a division of labour in nude photography, in which lower class girls belong in The Sun/Playboy etc, and good middle/upper class girls should only go nude for VOGUE/Bazaar etc.

[kurt vonnegut]

well does she have an editorial within the magazine? i'd rather judge her performance in the shoot on an ed than simply a cover.

[Luxx]

Originally Posted by sethii

What an awful comment - so typical of the British press. She seems to be suggesting there should be a division of labour in nude photography, in which lower class girls belong in The Sun/Playboy etc, and good middle/upper class girls should only go nude for VOGUE/Bazaar etc.

Couldn't agree more, it's absolutely repellent how classist the British press can be sometimes.

[deschanel]

In the Playboy shoot, she doesn't look edgy, wild or 'out there', she looks like what she is - a silly, middle-class girl out of her depth.

^ That line stuck with me the most as well. I'm all for freedom of speech, but journalists need to shape up and drop the classism. I can't tell, did reporter Barbara Ellen see the entire edit? She doesn't go into anything in-depth apart from "pigtails".

I cannot WAIT to see the entire edit! Way to go, Lily!

[jaben]

Barbara Ellen's reaction to Lily's Paradis nude spread will be very amusing reading.

Deschanel, I'm sure she is basing her opinion on the cover.

[cato.]

Uhm ..

[Miss Dalloway]

Originally Posted by Luxx

Couldn't agree more, it's absolutely repellent how classist the British press can be sometimes.

I third that, but it is to be expected from UK press i have seen worse things published, it just boggles the mind!

[wishbone]

Originally Posted by jaben

Barbara Ellen's reaction to Lily's Paradis nude spread will be very amusing reading.

Deschanel, I'm sure she is basing her opinion on the cover.

Apparently most of the online media sites are unware that Lily has already "gotten her kit off" in her Paradis editorial.

[cosmocat]

Couldn't agree more, it's absolutely repellent how classist the British press can be sometimes.

I have to say I think this 'classist' nature of the media only reflects a society which is obsessed with the idea of class. I feel Lily is well fairly known in the UK as being 'the intelligent model', for example paparazzi shots of her attending her first day at Cambridge appeared in the newspaper just yesterday. I think this is why they are looking at from this perspective.

I completely agree with tigerrouge, it is such a stale cover and I much preferred previous French Playboy covers. I think this cover is closer to my original view of Playboy..tacky.

[tigerrouge]

It must be factored in that Lily is a high-profile face for M&S in the UK, a store where your mother shops because she feels she can 'depend' on it. The M&S association adds to her public profile, it adds dependability, morally healthy values, almost a sense of staidness (reported as what saw Lizzy Jagger leave the campaign).

For Lily to whip her clothes off for Playboy, it would seem to some as if she's kicking back against that public profile, trying to add some edge - which is what I interpret the 'middle-class' comment as getting at - the nice middle-class girl with opportunities aplenty, who picks such a trite way to rebel, without really sparing a thought about the potential seriousness of underage imagery in a soft-porn context, when it's not a supermodel in the shot, but someone actually underage. Some people might see Lily as being thoughtless about the deeper dimensions of her editorial, no matter how ironically styled.

I have read Barbara Ellen's work for years, and she is not a mean-spirited, class-obsessed writer - nothing of the sort. She's quite wry in her observations, and aware of how flawed we all are.