By Jay DeFoore  (images added by media educator Frank Baker)

http://pdnonline.com/photodistrictnews/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000855318

Buxom babes and cleavage-bearing models have always been a bankable newsstand commodity for men's magazines, but a recent spate of salacious covers suggest the practice is spreading beyond the usual suspects.

A look at the last several months of covers proves it: men are out and women wearing bikinis (or less) are definitely in.

	Over at Outside, a magazine for men who love the great outdoors, buxom babes have supplanted cover mainstays Lance Armstrong and Laird Hamilton in the two latest issues. The magazine dispatched James White to photograph the April "Women of Rock" cover, which features a nude Sara Carlson climbing around the rocky terrain of Joshua Tree National Park. That's gotta hurt.
	Esquire raised eyebrows with its February cover of a busty Scarlett Johansson. Editor David Granger and Co. returned males to the cover in March and April, but with a twist: Esquire now teases out its sexy "A Woman We Love" pictorial on the cover. Meeoow!
	GQ's April cover and photo essay of nubile actress Jessica Alba in her panties--shot by Mark Seliger--has people wondering if a spread in Playboy might be next.
	Giant, an entertainment magazine launched last year by former Maxim publisher Jamie Hooper, featured a woman on the cover for the first time with its April/May issue. The move corresponds to a report in Mediaweek that the magazine's sales are slumping, a charge Hooper denies. The cover features a fully-clothed shot of actress Rosario Dawson photographed by Judson Baker, with saucier shots inside.

So what's behind all the skin? It could be a sign that spring is right around the corner, or more likely, editors at the magazines have decided that men just don't sell well on the newsstand. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter admitted as much in a recent interview with Women's Wear Daily: "The simple fact is that women tend to sell better than men on our covers," he said, explaining away a 22.5 percent drop in the magazine's newsstand sales over the last half of 2004.

Carter may have hoped to stop the newsstand slide when the magazine dispensed Patrick Demarchelier to shoot supermodels wearing teeny weeny white bikinis on the cover of its April issue.

Outside creative director Hannah McCaughey says artistic inspiration rather than newsstand calculation is responsible for her magazine's recent spate of scantily clad covers.

"We always meant to shoot [Carlson] with the garden variety rock climbing clothes on but ... I was worried I'd come back with super bland film," McCaughey says. "For whatever reason it just felt so pedestrian and not like a cover should feel. Then the photographer tried some things with just her shirt off and it instantly became something beautiful and pure, just her skin and the texture of the rock made such a gorgeous contrast--the dopey spandex clothing seemed to interrupt all that."

McCaughey says the cover has galvanized readers, with most coming out in favor of it.

"As a woman I find it so much more appealing and tastefully done than the boobs-in-your-face-stuff Esquire's always doing," McCaughey says. "I love it and think it's just a normal part of us delivering surprises and beautiful photography to our readers."

Nancy Jo Iacoi, the photo editor of Esquire who counts McCaughey among her friends, doesn't take offense at the boob charge. Iacoi says Esquire's recent covers have held true to the magazine's standards for balancing sexiness and sophistication.

"Scarlett didn't fight us on any of that," she says. "She was willing and collaborative and it makes a difference. It's just a matter of [being sexy] in a tasteful way."

Iacoi says the black-and-white shot of Johannson might not have appealed to everyone, but she says there was at least one eyewitness account of someone picking the magazine off the newsstand and kissing it.

"I don't think there's a formula here. ... If you have a man on the cover it's nice to have a balance," she says, explaining the cover "chips" teasing out the "Women We Love" pictorials.

From the looks of things, it's going to be a long, hot summer as the magazines skate the line between sexiness, tastefulness and newsstand success.

Links
Outside Photo Gallery
Esquire Cover Gallery
Vanity Fair's Supermodel Video
GQ's Jessica Alba Slideshow
Giant Magazine