Glee’s GQ Spread – It’s Really Not That Serious

GQ magazine is known for racy spreads featuring Hollywood’s hottest – so why was it such a huge deal when Lea Michele, Dianna Agron, and Cory Monteith (of Glee fame) joined the ranks of celebs who have graced the cover?

By Zara

The backlash from the November issue has been overwhelming. Yes, the show’s female stars flock Monteith, clad in skimpy outfits, and yes, it’s sexy. But how is it any different from when, say Megan Fox, does the same thing?

According to the people who have spoken out about this shoot, GQ is taking advantage of young girls in the shoot – Tim Winter, the president of PTC even went so far as to call it borderline pedophilia. Um, hello – all three stars are well over 18! Winters claims that GQ is exploiting Michele and Agron, both of whom are 24 and, ironically, the same age as Megan Fox. What people (namely Winters) fail to realize is that their lives aren’t confined to the teenage characters that they play.

That is a TV show. And not even a reality TV show.

To me, the photo shoot is their response to the pressure that comes with being tokenized as a “role model”; it features all the characters paying tongue-in-cheek homage to their characters, posing in the hallways of a high school.

It’s frustrating to see how the standards of behavior are tilted the moment a star begins to draw a young fan base. Take Lea Michele, for example. She was virtually unknown before the show, and this allowed her to star in the super-racy Broadway show Spring Awakening. In the show, a younger Lea appeared topless in a steamy love scene; she played fourteen-year-old Wednla Bergmann, a character who is even younger than Glee’s Rachel Barry, but because she didn’t have a band of thirteen-year-olds watching her every move, it was never an issue.

I completely understand if a parent doesn’t want his or her young child to see such scandalous photos, but whether or not the children have access to this particular spread lies entirely in the hands of the parents. So many seem to place the blame on the stars or the execs at the magazine, but to them I say this: why are your children their responsibility?

I think Dianna Agron (who plays Quinn Fabray…who got KNOCKED UP on the show, in case you don’t remember) said it best (homegirl really knows how to make a speech):

“In the land of Madonna, Britney, Miley, Gossip Girl, other public figures and shows that have pushed the envelope and challenged the levels of comfort in their viewers and fans … we are not the first. Now, in perpetuating the type of images that evoke these kind of emotions, I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention. And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our ‘GQ’ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?”