Feminist and writer Germaine Greer has praised The Gossip's Beth Ditto for appearing nude on the front of the NME. Writing in today's Guardian, Greer says "Ditto knows she can knock 'em dead because hers is the kind of body that is supposed to be kept hidden."
She added that Ditto's actions reminded her of a notorious photoshoot Greer herself did in the '60s. "Her motives are pretty much the same as mine when, nearly 40 years ago, I got a friend to photograph me stripped to the buff, looking at the lens through my thighs," she writes.
"Face, pubes and anus framed by vast buttocks, nothing decorative about it. Nothing sexy about it either. Confrontation was the name of the game. Not so much kiss my arse as kiss my arsehole - a different matter entirely."
Greer added that she looks forward to the day when women can go even further with provocative pictures: "For a cover girl there are still pretty definite limits," she says. "Ditto's breast is not allowed to hang free, but is pushed up in her hand, out of which it rises nippleless, like dough. The odd frond of hair peeps from her underarm but there is no hint of anything between her legs. You wouldn't even know she had two legs. I look forward to the day she lets it all hang out."
