1) To look hot and to get guys to buy them.

2) To send a political message and generate controversy.

3) To show off their pregnant selves.

4) To not look hot, generate controversy, and show off their bigger body – not because of pregnancy, but because it’s simply how a woman is built sometimes. Crazy, huh?!?

Whatever the case may be, naked magazine covers sell, and Beth Ditto of the band The Gossip definitely sells on the cover of NME, a British music and gossip magazine.

It’s been getting tons of attention, from Americans especially, (because for most Americans, this is blasphemy!) and it’s being passed around the blogosphere for obvious reasons. Beth Ditto does not have the stereotypical body you’d necessarily want to see unclothed before your eyes, and she knows this. The cool thing is, and the cool thing about her is, she doesn’t give a flying f*ck!

In the article, she talks about the Skinny Celebrity Syndrome, saying, “The Beckhams are part of the machine; Paris Hilton is part of the machine. There’s that thing Paris Hilton said about Lindsay Lohan – ‘You’re poor, ugly and fat’. It’s always women who are victims of that machine and the messages the machine gives out.”

Her NME cover certainly says a big “screw you” to that machine. And what really separates her from the thinner celebs who are just famous for being richer and thinner than the rest of us, is the fact she actually has talent and she rocks out on stage. That’s what matters most.

She even writes her own (and really good) advice column for The Guardian and talks openly about growing up as a gay, overweight feminist in a small town and how she got to be as confident and comfortable with herself as she is today.

The real question is, would an American magazine ever use Beth’s naked image for a cover?

I think not.