Friday, February 22, 2008

Lindsay Lohan's nude photos are an Internet sensation

Lindsay Lohan's racy nude photo shoot mimicking Marilyn Monroe has become a worldwide Web sensation.

New York magazine, which commissioned the photographs, is now threatening cease and desist orders on big name Web sites including major newspapers who are using the images without permission.

Meanwhile, the magazine's own Web traffic soared 2,000 percent.

"When you put up beautiful photos of a celebrity like this, you expect this kind of reaction," said a New York Magazine spokesperson. "But we try to be vigilant to protect our content."

But the actress' father is not one of the millions swooping to ogle the pix of her with only a sheer silk scraf covering her modesty.

Lohan's father has reportedly refused to look at the pictures. He told Us Weekly: "I'm not going to look at the photos - that's my daughter!"

"I pray there are no parallels to her and Marilyn Monroe's destiny."

Mother Dina Lohan, however, backed her daughter's exposure, believing it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

The magazine reported 20 million page views on Monday and Tuesday for its Lohan photo gallery, compared to between two and three million for other content.

The 21-year-old actress, who has had a dark history of arrests and rehabilitation, stripped for photographer Bert Stern to recreate one of Monroe's most famous photo shoots, done shortly before she died.

Stern famously shot Monroe in 1962, six weeks before her death, in what is now known as "The Last Sitting." He photographed Monroe in 1962 at the Hotel Bel-Air in California, six weeks before she was found dead from an overdose of barbiturates. Those images for Vogue magazine feature Monroe in next to nothing, posing nude with some scarves and jewelry as her accessories and sipping champagne.

Almost 50 years later, Stern re-creates his iconic photographs, pose for pose with his new muse, Lohan, at the same hotel. Though the star of "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday" is rarely compared to the screen legend, Stern told the magazine he agreed to do the recreation because he suspected Lohan "had a lot more depth to her" than one might assume from "those teenage movies."

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