Bare naked ladies, beware

When is a good time for an actress to appear butt-bald-nekkid, either on the big screen or in some other visual medium?

For some, it depends on whom they're working with. Take Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood issue. On the gatefold cover, young starlets Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson appear wearing nothing but makeup with Tom Ford, that Jeremy Piven-looking fashion designer (and the issue's artistic director). Pale, pouty and strategically covering their naughtiest bits, the actresses were photographed by famed shutterbug Annie Leibovitz, which automatically declares the shot an artful image that's more beauteous than gratuitous.

For other actresses, try never. Rachel McAdams, the rising young actress who has appeared in "The Notebook," "Wedding Crashers" and "Red Eye," was supposed to be the third starlet in the Leibovitz photo, sitting where Ford is. But when she got to the shoot, she backed out. Ford has said he respects her decision, but McAdams' refusal got folks in Tinseltown buzzing. At this year's Oscars, host Jon Stewart introduced her as the "very clothed Rachel McAdams."

McAdams isn't the only young actress standing firm on showing skin in print. Jessica Alba flipped out when she found out she was on the cover of this month's Playboy, showing a promotional photo of her from her last film, "Into the Blue." She nearly sicced her lawyers on the magazine, insisting the magazine was tricking readers into thinking she was nude or semi-nude in the magazine, which she wasn't. But Playboy shot back, noting that it has tacked celebrities on its cover -- celebrities who aren't nude inside -- in the past (Claudia Schiffer, Dolly Parton, Donald Trump), and no one threatened legal action.

It's funny how Alba was ready to sue Playboy for having her on the cover when she spent the past year re-upping her image as a sex bomb by appearing in skimpy clothing in movies and wearing next to nothing on the covers of Rolling Stone and GQ. I guess for some actresses, it's all about the tease.

But it's also about being taken seriously as an actress. In November, Alba was quoted as saying she'd like to play more women who aren't prostitutes or sexy maids.

"I get all those screenplays that start, 'Tawnya is in the shower. The water streams down her naked, perky breasts,' " Alba told gossip site PageSix.com. "Somehow, I don't think this is happening to Natalie Portman." (I'm going to take the high road and not go into why that's not happening.)

Perhaps Alba is going in the right direction, being choosy in her roles. In his column on ESPN.com awhile back, Bill Simmons wrote that actresses who bare all early in their careers suffer a worse fate than just being typecast.

"Anytime a smoking-hot actress gets naked early in her career, and that nakedness was pretty much the only reason they became famous" -- he cites Heather Graham as Rollergirl in "Boogie Nights" -- "then it's only a matter of time before their career goes in the tank," Simmons wrote. "Someone like Charlize Theron can avoid this fate because she can actually act. But if you can't act? You're done. That's why Jessica Alba was so smart not to get naked in 'Into the Blue' -- now she can appear in three or four more movies before everyone realizes that she's a terrible actress. And then she'll get naked and that will be that."

Ouch.

But the issue of actresses and nudity always raises questions. Do most actresses appear nude because they're uninhibited and don't mind shedding their clothing when the time comes, or because they know their good looks are all they have going for them? (You ever notice how every time Pamela Anderson's popularity begins to wane, she does another Playboy layout?) Can an actress appear nude and still be taken seriously as an actress? Or how about this: After an actress seriously proves herself to be one, can she go ahead and show her breasts?