02 November 2006

Cindy Margolis, DRM and the Playboy Empire


Once touted as the most downloaded woman on the Internet, Cindy Margolis is making her nude debut in the December, 2006 issue of Playboy Magazine. At the not-so-tender age of 40, Cindy is undoubtedly beyond the physical prime that once accounted for her online popularity. Yet, as many aging actresses and imminently forgotten female celebs have done before her, she’s decided to pose nude in what must be the hopes of a last hoorah. Playboy has an incomparable track record of wooing female celebs onto its pages. Part of the allure for prospective celeb centerfolds must be that Playboy promises to make them look good, sometimes better than they ever looked before, even if it takes a little airbrushing and mood lighting to achieve the desired effect. As fans we are generally happy to have whatever glimpse of them we can get. For the female celeb, especially if there is already a large amount of extant photography (as in Cindy’s case), the Playboy images may become the definitive images of their career — displacing less flattering or controversial images from the public attention. It is naive of Playboy, however, and a tragic shortsale of the potential benefit to the model, to try to preserve these images exclusively in the medium of print. It is impossible to prevent their digitization and rampant dissemination upon the Internet. It is also far beyond the capacity of even the most well-funded and determined of companies to police the unauthorized duplication and use of images upon the Web — especially when they have been so widely distributed in print... more about Cindy Margolis in Playboy