Newsweek Recycles Porny Stock Image Photo for This Week’s Cover

By Doug Barry | August 8, 2012 | 1:15am

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Does Newsweek‘s indecent asparagus cover photo seem a little familiar to you? If so, it means that you either have something to share with all of us about your relationship with asparagus, or you recognize this picture of two slimy asparagus spears dangling over the sexualized maw of a hungry and anonymous woman from the April 2008 cover of the U.K.’s Observer Food Monthly. Or buried in the pages of the May 2012 Russian issue of Harper’s Bazaar, in which case you deserve a congratulatory pat on the back for being such a worldly magazine subscriber.

Eater has helpfully pointed out not only the many recyclings of this asparagus image, but has also helpfully explained that woman-eating-asparagus is a pretty popular stock image motif, popping up in Getty and Shutterstock so often that you’d have to be a nine-year-old whack-a-mole champion jacked-out on Pixie Stix to catalogue them all. A prevailing characteristic of the asparagus-dangling image is that the women in these photos all sport heavy coats of freshly-applied lipstick, because nothing says, “Fulfill the least-delicious section of the food pyramid” quite like putting on make-up. The internets are giving Newsweek a good razzing, which seems only fair considering the fact that, of all the images to use for “101 Best Places to Eat in the World,” a woman indulging herself with asparagus seems like an exceedingly poor choice.