Not As Good As I Want It To Be

Look, I drew a picture of Kelly Brook in her underwear:

It, or rather the lingerie, didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked, but I don’t know that I have the capability to do any better, so there it is.

Kelly will actually be appearing in an upcoming issue of Playboy.

That should be good news – and, honestly, it is – but I fear that, as with this picture, it won’t be as good as it should be.

Why do I say that? I’m glad (I said that) you asked.

Playboy has a pretty uneven history when it comes to celebrity (For a given value of “celebrity.” Sorry, Kelly, but you’re not exactly a household name. At least, not here in the States.) pictorials. With that history in mind, I give you…

Why Kelly Brook Posing For Playboy Might Suck:

She might not be nude.

This is something that happens altogether too often these days. Playboy, like magazines in general, is seeing reduced sales, and is pretty desperate for anything that might boost sales. One would think that would mean that they’d be sure to give potential readers what they want (such as a nude Kelly Brook), but while that makes sense, they’re also desperate enough to get “names” to pose for them that they’ll cave in to unreasonable demands such as, “I don’t want to be photographed in the nude.”

It happened with Olivia Munn. It happened with…what’s her name. Heidi Montag? Something like that.

This is, quite frankly, unacceptable. I don’t care how desperate you are, Playboy. There’s only one acceptable response when someone agrees to pose for a pictorial but does not agree to pose nude: “Okay, well, here’s the number for Maxim. Give us a call when you want to pose for Playboy.”

Grow some balls, for crying out loud.

When she posed – non-nude – for Playboy, Olivia Munn talked about what an “honor” it was to be on the cover without having to pose nude inside.

This is an “honor” shared by people like Paris Hilton, for god’s sake.

Edited to add: When Paris was on the cover, she not only didn't appear nude in that issue, she wasn't the subject of a pictorial. There was a picture of her in there - I believe it was their annual “Music and Sex” issue - but it wasn't one that she actually posed for specifically for them; it was some picture that Playboy purchased the rights to. There actually was a celebrity pictorial that month: Debbie Gibson. That seems like adding insult to injury for poor Debbie Gibson. Not only is your career in the crapper, but you pose nude for Playboy - fully-nude, I believe - and you not only don't get the cover, you lose the cover to Paris Hilton, who, again, didn't even pose for the magazine.

Hell, Sally Field got the cover, and she didn’t appear in a pictorial at all; she was that month’s Playboy Interview subject.

They even went so far as to put Jessica Alba on the cover when she didn’t appear in the magazine at all.

Quite frankly, I’d rather that celebrities not appear in the magazine at all than appear non-nude. I mean, it’s freakin’ Playboy.

She might just be topless.

Don’t get me wrong: Kelly Brook topless = teh awesome.

But..I’ve seen that before. I mean, I will happily see it again, it’s just that I’d like to see the whole package, you know?

Again, this is all too common with celebrity pictorials, and, is unacceptable. Don’t follow in the footsteps of people like Charisma Carpenter, Kelly; follow in the fully-nude footsteps of people like Tia Carrere and Kristy Swanson.

As an aside, a while back Playboy did a pictorial featuring some of Kelly’s fellow busty Britons such as Keeley Hazell and Lucy Pinder. They appear topless all of the time, but never fully-nude, so I’d hoped that the Playboy appearance would be the exception to that rule.

Turns out it wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t even a proper pictorial at all; Playboy simply bought some existing topless pictures of Lucy et al. that had appeared in other magazines. That’s not quite, as they say across the pond, cricket, as far as I’m concerned.

Playboy celebrity photographers hate women.

Or maybe they hate the readers of Playboy. Whatever the case, it’s clear that they have no interest in making the women they photograph look their best.

Being a photographer for Playboy should be one of the greatest jobs ever. And with someone like Kelly, most of your work has already been taken care of for you, as the main function of your job is to make your subject look beautiful and sexy.

You don’t need to be an artist, because your subject is already a work of art.

Unfortunately, the last thing a celebrity pictorial photographer tries to do is actually make his subject look beautiful and sexy. In fact, he will try his hardest to make her look absolutely terrible. He’ll cover her from head to toe in dirty crankcase oil, or mud, or will tar and feather her and put her in clown shoes.

Whatever it takes to detract from rather than enhance her natural beauty, that is what the photographer will do.

And, because he’s an “artist,” as a finishing touch he’ll use the grainiest black and white film he can find, because who would want to see pictures of someone like Cindy Crawford, as an example, in vibrant, full-color? Some of the pictorials I’ve seen look like they were taken with a Civil War-era daguerreotype.

The photographer may not be in the same Zip Code when taking the pictures.

When Tara Reid appeared in Playboy – merely topless – it seems that the photographer was so terrified that the notoriously wild starlet might have some sort of STD that he was afraid to breathe the same air as she was breathing. In each picture she was so far off in the distance that it seemed that the pictures were taken from the International Space Station.

With Kelly, there’s every chance that the photos will actually be that little message you get on Google Maps when they don’t have an image of a particular area at a suitable resolution.

So that’s why Kelly Brook appearing in Playboy may not be as good as it should be. If she’s dressed like a Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia and drenched in pig’s blood, with photos taken using one of those boxes for viewing an eclipse, taken from a distance so far away that it will take 10,000 years for the light reflected off of her to reach us, I’ll be very surprised.

Ultimately, I guess what I’m saying is that, a good percentage of the time, Playboy sucks, and I don’t think the odds favor them not sucking this time.

Up next, the thrilling conclusion to Homecoming 1 & 2. Will Jon complain about the U.P. some more? Will he make it back to Virginia? What startling adventures lie in store for you? Check back soon and find the answers to these questions and others that you wouldn’t have thought – or cared – to ask!