"Hottie of the day" Michelle Trachtenberg at the 10th Annual InStyle Summer Soiree held at The London Hotel on August 10, 2011 in West Hollywood, California (not photoshoped this time).

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/692/120804478.jpg/

Sorry!

chris66 | August 15, 23:15 CET

What's your point, chris66?

The One True b!X | August 15, 23:30 CET

Simply that i hate when magazines take us for fools by photoshoping their photos to the extreme. A little correction is fine but they have no limit.

Nothing personal against Michelle Trachtenberg.

chris66 | August 15, 23:37 CET

chris66 it is impossible to compare photos taken at a different angle, with vastly different poses, clothing, lighting, hair, and makeup and leap to the conclusion that this is a photo shop travesty. Michelle looks absolutely gorgeous in both photos.

IrrationaliTV | August 15, 23:42 CET

Michelle T. is a very talented actress, and from what I've seen of her in interviews, a nice person as well. It makes me angry that beautiful young women like her must allow themselves to be sexually exploited in order to get ahead in the business. She is young enough to be my daughter, and I would not want a daughter of mine posing in clothing like that. I have a lot of respect for Michelle, but not a lot of respect for a media industry that thrives on objectifying women.

Amrita | August 16, 01:20 CET

Think I must agree with b!X, there's no point here. Try, try again. We are ears here, but only real stories.

Madhatter | August 16, 02:34 CET

I love how they say she was in "such films as ...Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Really? I must've missed the seven-year-old Michelle in that flick.

I really don't care for those "open mouth is supposed to be sultry" pictures. Nor do I like the eyeshadow she has on in the...fourth picture. She looks like she got punched in both eyes.

Sighs. She's so pretty on her own - WHY must photo shoots play the sex angle so much? Even our guys get treated that way, but I'm not sure if it's to the extent that the women get it.

Go ahead and Google image search anyone from the shows - count how many pictures on the first page of results are natural/candid/taken at a convention and how many are staged photo shoots where the actor (or actress) is portrayed as a sex object. It'd be interesting to see which type of picture predominates.

ShadowQuest | August 16, 07:18 CET

The girl is easy on the eyes.

dispatch | August 16, 07:24 CET

Amrita, I wonder, does it still count as 'objectifying' if she's making thousands upon thousands of dollars to sit and have pictures taken of her for a few hours? I mean, she's a grown woman, she's 25 years old, not 15, and she clearly chose to portray herself in such a way.

Why is it so taboo to be sexual? I say good for her - she looks beautiful.

CaptainTightpants | August 16, 15:31 CET

It's at least partially because the ptb are deathly afraid of doing just the opposite - showing a celebrity as being not sexy when everybody knows that celebrities are always sexy.

brinderwalt | August 16, 16:37 CET

CaptainTightpants- of course there is money in it; there's money in prostitution, too. It's gotten hard to tell the difference.

Of course she could say "No". But how many young women succeed in the business who say "No" to photoshoots like that? Look at the women in "Glee" and the heavily sexualized photoshoots they've done lately. Look at all the stories about Christina Hendricks that refer to her breast size. Or, look at all the stories about Christina that don't refer her breast size... are there any? [Edit]: I'm not saying Christina seeks out that kind of attention, but that media rarely wants to focus on anything but her breasts.

The young women who do photoshoots like this don't just wake up one morning and say, "Gee, I really want to take off my clothes and dress like a whore and get my picture taken. Who can I call to do this?" No, their agent calls them and says, "They want you for a photoshoot. You'll have to take off your clothes or dress like a whore (I'm sure they use prettier euphemisms) but it'll pay well and be good for your career, so I think you should do it."

Back in the 50's and 60's there was a beautiful actress named Leslie Parrish. She gave up her film career because all the scripts she was offered wanted her to be in a state of undress. She felt like since she wouldn't take off her clothes and have sex in her own living room in front of her friends, why should she have to do so in front of strangers?

[ edited by Amrita on 2011-08-16 18:32 ]

Amrita | August 16, 18:27 CET

I agree with CaptainTightpants, I've got no problem with it. I don't understand why some people get so upset about things like this. Being sexy is a good thing and something to be celebrated. It's not like she's doing a photo shoot for Hustler, or even Playboy.

We're in 2011 now folks, these hang ups about sexuality are very outdated. Doing a sexy photo shoot for Maxim doesn't make people automatically assume you're a whore. Plus, there are plenty of successful female celebrities who've never done anything like this, so it's silly to assume that you have to take sexy pictures to be successful. It's a choice, and if Michele wants to show off her sex appeal more power to her. She was already getting work before she got offers like this. She doesn't have to do it if she doesn't want to, but if she does. So what? It's her choice. At the end of the day she's making money and people are thinking about how gorgeous she is. I can't see why anyone would want to pass on that.

I'm not a woman, but if people wanted to throw money at me and make me a sex symbol, I'd be all for it

Arkham258 | August 17, 05:03 CET