Naked Celebrity News Update (Or, the Parable of the Prodigal Upskirt)
Posted on | December 13, 2012 | 32 Comments
Because I’m trying not to offend the Pope — he’s on Twitter now, and I’m still hoping to get a “Follow Friday” shout-out — I resisted the temptation to headline this item “Anne Hathaway Upskirt,” although I decided it wouldn’t hurt to use that as the URL. It seems that at this week’s premiere of Les Misérables, Anne accidentally displayed for paparazzi what the New York Daily News calls “the Full Hathaway”:
“I was getting out of the car and my dress was so tight that I didn’t realize it until I saw all the photographers’ flashes,” she told Vanity Fair writer Ingrid Sischy.
“It was devastating. They saw everything. I might as well have lifted up my skirt for them.”
If this incident was important enough to be reported by the New York Daily News, why shouldn’t a Hayekian public intellectual notice it? Meanwhile, in important news from the tech sector, Google has made it somewhat more difficult to search for porn photos, including the suddenly popular “Anne Hathaway Upskirt” photo. (No, that link won’t show it. I’m just linking back to this post to Google-bomb myself.)
Here’s my thought: Guys are going to be searching for that photo anyway, and why shouldn’t some percentage of that traffic lead to my site, where maybe these sick freaks will be inspired to feel some twinge of regret for wanting to see what Anne Hathaway’s naughty parts look like.
Because the Pope’s on Twitter now, guys, and don’t you feel ashamed that you have nothing better to do with your pathetic lives than to Google “Anne Hathaway Upskirt” photo?
Speaking of pathetic lives, Matt Lauer still has a job at NBC:
“We’ve seen a lot of you lately,” Lauer said, prompting the actress to immediately divert her gaze in embarrassment.
“Sorry about that,” she said . . . “I’d be happy to stay home, but, the film.”
Lauer complimented her ability to keep smiling (seriously with the creepy uncle bit, Matt?) and pressed on for any lesson she might have learned.
“It kind of made me sad on two accounts. One was that I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it … sells it,” Hathaway said.
“And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants.”
You’re exactly right, Ms. Hathaway: Your sexuality is commodified when some photographer sells that picture, and when Matt Lauer (whose annual salary is reportedly $25 million) asks about it on The Today Show, and when I make “Anne Hathaway upskirt photo” the URL of a blog post. And this makes the Pope on Twitter very sad.
However, without any intent to excuse Matt Lauer’s sins or my own, why didn’t you wear underwear to the Les Miserables premiere, Anne?
I mean, that gown was slit way up the thigh and you were wearing some weird kind of high-heeled bondage-themed shoes and yet it never once crossed your mind that, hey, maybe a pair of panties would be a good idea to complete the ensemble? Now that we’re having a discussion about a “culture that commodifies sexuality,” can we talk about you posing nude with Jake Gyllenhaal for a magazine cover?
When it comes time to consider whether you were an “unwilling participant” in the commodification of your sexuality, Ms. Hathaway, this kind of stuff matters. You can ask the Pope on Twitter.
We are civilized people and not brutal savages who would require you to wear a burkha, Ms. Hathaway, but there is an obvious and unfortunate element of hypocrisy when a young actress who gets paid millions of dollars a year to look pretty on camera (and who poses naked on magazine covers) decides she’ll attend a movie premiere with no panties and wearing a gown slit up the thigh and then has the incomparable chutzpah to complain about “a culture that commodifies sexuality.”
Don’t blame me for this lecture, Ms. Hathaway. I’ve become somewhat notorious for lecturing young ladies about their short skirts, and as angry as you are about all this, it would ill behoove me to be silent now. That’s what the Pope on Twitter might call a “sin of omission.”
Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver warned us, and this is an unfortunate consequence of your idea not to wear panties Monday.
(C’mon: I just name-checked Richard Weaver in a celebrity upskirt post. There’s got to be some kind of award for that, right?)
Our sinful pride leads us to attempt to rationalize the wrong we do, to engage in the psychological defense of blaming others for problems that are in fact the result of our own wrongdoing.
Pride goeth before an upskirt photo.
Well, that’s enough sermonizing for one day. If Anne Hathaway still feels no guilt for flashing her crotch, maybe some of you guys at least feel slightly guilty for wondering, “Brazilian?”
No, “Landing Strip.” Or so I’m told.
The Pope on Twitter has not yet commented on this incident, and probably won’t, but you should follow him anyway.
And tell him to RT me.
Finally, in order to complete our update, two men in New Mexico planned to kidnap and castrate Justin Bieber.
Unfortunately, they got arrested before they could accomplish it.
Will the Pope on Twitter ever forgive me for that joke? Mea culpa.
Besides, I’m Protestant and he’s a Notre Dame fan. Roll Tide!


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