Beth Ditto Gets Naked For NME

Did you know Beth Ditto is actually the frontwoman of a rock band? Did you? We had no idea. We thought she was just some girl NW Magazine began trotting out a few months back whenever they decided to do a celebrity ‘curves’ themed issue, but we were very wrong and have chastised ourselves for not keeping our finger on the pulse of the music world.

Anyway, the woman Keira Knightley once admitted had a body she only wished she could have been born with has posed naked for the cover of the latest copy of British music magazine NME, according to No Rock & Roll Fun.

This week’s NME features Beth Ditto as naked as Avril Lavigne on the cover. For confused but well-intentioned reasons. Those of you with long memories will recall the last time a semi-naked woman was on the front of the NME, it was Lesley Rankine and Silverfish, who were in turn parodying the Polly Jean Harvey cover from a few weeks before. PJ and Beth Ditto were both on the cover as a riposte to traditional ideas of female beauty and societal nomrs – both had hairy armpits, for example.

The trouble is, it’s all a bit muddled. Because NME, for all its other faults, doesn’t usually have FHM-style covers, so the value of putting Ditto on the front, without pants, is a little lost. Kate Jackson, it’s fairly safe to say, hasn’t been lined up to slip out of her corset for the next Long Blondes piece, because that would bring a stream of letters calling them for trying to flog magazines with sexist pictures. Likewise, the Twang don’t turn up with only a well-positioned tree to preserve their modesty.

So, is NME they saying it’s okay for Beth to be on the front nude, because she isn’t ‘conventionally attractive’? And if that is the case, isn’t that simply endorsing the idea of there being ‘conventionally attractive’ in the first place?

Or does the paper feel that a naked Beth Ditto is, from its reader’s point of view, every bit as desirable as, say, a naked Amy Winehouse? In which case, isn’t it a little bit Felix Dennis to be selling music magazines with female flesh?

Certainly food for thought.