Some people consider magazine covers art. And some art is considered just too hot to handle… 

Personally, I think this cover’s pretty cool. Artistic nudes in general just fascinate me in general, probably because I’ve done them a lot as a model. They’re very fun to do, and they usually show off the beauty of the human body. Any human body at all…


So excuse me if I’m not exactly thrilled that these covers were banned in one way or another. They’re art in my eyes! But a lot of people were offended by these covers (the first was  covered up unceremoniously at a New York newsstand, and the latter was deemed “inappropriate” by customers in Tucson, Arizona), probably for different individual reasons.

This story actually comes on the coattails of a bigger story: The latest cover of the magazine Dazed and Confused has officially been banned in seven countries due to its cover, featuring the rapper Azaelia Banks smoking a condom like a cigar (sorry, I couldn’t find an image). To me, the banning is interesting because DaC is a fashion magazine — probably the kind that you would probably expect to have the most cutting-edge, risqué cover in the aisle. If the covers from these kinds of magazines are banned, how much freedom does the entire industry really have?

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think magazine bans actually work in real life. The covers in this very slideshow were once covered up or restricted from view, and now they’re on the Internet for all to see. If nothing else, people could probably contact friends in other countries and get them to mail them over snail-mail style. Just because something is banned doesn’t mean other people won’t see it. It just means that society, for some reason, doesn’t think people should see it. That’s a pretty ugly picture, if you ask me.

See more controversial covers here!

[via Stylelist.com]

What do you think of these covers? Do you think they’re offensive, artistic, or that it’s all just a matter of taste?