Breasts in Butts out.

Censorship or Artistic Integrity? You be the Judge. Images: Australian Harper's Bazaar and Russian Harper's Bazaar respectively.

By Samantha Aldenton.

Dipped in blue, bare chested and sans cigarette is Lily Allen on the cover of this month's Australian Harper's Bazaar for those lucky few that subscribe to the monthly magazine. The image is an illustration of one of the pictures from a Russian Harper's Bazaar editorial which features Allen in lingerie, noir opaque stockings and a large floaty white skirt without the presence of any bustier or brassiere. The image was illustrated by David Bromley who is featured in the magazine and whom describes Allen as "interesting and fascinating to look at/observe", the feature can be found on page 182 of this months Harper's Bazaar.

The cover image however on closer observation is definitely missing an object from Lily's right hand, a cigarette that is. This is an interesting exclusion by the artist and presumably under Bazaar's direction the magazine also, the question is whether or not this was a consideration of moralities or aesthetics? Due to the cigarettes diminutive size in comparison to the rest of the image it may have been too difficult to extract any detail of the cigarette from the original image however a photo of the illustrator next to two large canvases of the picture in Bromley's profile photo at the front of the magazine shows that it would not have been difficult to imagine what the cigarette would've looked like, when given such a large canvas to paint?

So perhaps it was instead an issue of ethics; whilst cigarette companies haven't been allowed to advertise in magazines for a long time the presence of smoking within the fashion and magazine industry has stuck to the pages which include both celebrities and models posing in a cloud of smoke. In fact the December 2005 issue of Harper's Bazaar featured an editorial entitled "Modern Romance" which included a model yielding a cigarette, and in the June 2003 issue actress Naomi Watts is seen also with a lit cigarette.

The Australian fashion industry is not however ambivalent to the effects these images have on young women and in 2002, Mercedes Australian Fashion Week Chief Executive Officer, Simon Lock, commenced a Smoke-Free Fashion Initiative in retaliation to this glamorisation of smoking within the industry and described smoking's presence in fashion as an "attempt to use [the] industry to perpetuate the myth that smoking [is] cool and glamorous."

Whether or not the exclusion was an intentional display of integrity or a pragmatic approach to illustration it was definitely a conscious choice by both Harper's Bazaar and David Bromley which may in turn be a reference point for the beginning of a de-glamorisation or at least some sort of censorship of smoking within both the Australian and international fashion community; the increasing spread of nudity within the industry however looks set to expand even further with the likes of Allen and other exuberant personalities such as Lady Gaga. But I know that I'd much rather see people dying of embarrassment than cancer any day, so heres to Breasts in and Butts out.

Love Always xoxo,

S.A.A.