Naked ambition

Nude photos of pregnant celebrities are now more likely to draw a yawn than a second glance but are such images empowering or just tacky, asks Suzanne Harrington

TWENTY or so years ago, posing naked and heavily pregnant on the cover of a magazine would generally have happened only in specialist publications that arrived anonymously through your letterbox wrapped in brown paper.

Then Annie Leibovitz put Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, in an unforgettable image that quickly became one of the most iconic cover shots of the late 20th century. So captivated were we by the sight of naked late pregnancy as commercial art that the issue sold 548,000 copies. But could these kind of sales be replicated, or was pregnant Demi a bit like the first ever Big Brother — a fascinating talking-point, but essentially a one-off?