When the Girl Next Door Has a Lawyer

When I heard that Jessica Alba was going to be in the next issue of Playboy, I was skeptical — an Australian article I read last December reported that she won’t even do Maxim anymore, let alone Playboy, as she has become disenchanted with her status as a sex icon. And as it turns out, she refused do Playboy, despite its offers to pay her; Playboy got around this by obtaining an old Into the Blue promotional photo from Columbia Pictures, which they put on the cover. Now it faces a lawsuit from Jessica if it continues to distribute the issue, as the cover suggests to the unwary that she appears nude or semi-nude in a pictorial, and that she agreed to do the cover in the first place. Jessica also wants monetary compensation for the “immeasurable harm” the cover caused her, and Columbia Pictures wants an apology.