So I’m late to the party on this whole Blake Lively hacked nude iPhone pictures story, the absolute tamest of which appears above. Apparently after the first set of photos surfaced (some — smartly? artfully? — with her eyes obscured), the enterprising “hacker” who released these floated a second batch of T&A shots, and a couple fairly indisputable posed, fully-clothed pictures with the same backgrounds. So while a Congressman teeters on the brink of likely resignation for some nude cell-camera snaps (and admittedly idiotic behavior), a starlet with a big summer movie on the horizon watches her Google quotient spike, and probably moves up a couple dozen spots on whatever new hot-chicks-young-guys-wanna-bang list Maxim is currently composing.

Pointing out what probably a handful of others already have, does the timing of all this not seem suspicious to anyone? With Warner Bros.’ mega-budget The Green Lantern about to alight this week, this is certainly one way to share steal the spotlight from Ryan Reynolds. Lively, who gave quite nice supporting turns in both The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and last year’s The Town, isn’t getting much juice in her new movie’s trailers, but complementary tabloid campaigns can most assuredly serve as propellant and boost a career that already has its own loaded fuel tanks of ambition. So… does this really pass the smell test as an innocent accident?

Look, I’m not saying this is some shadow studio promotional gambit. I’m just sure that the PR folks saw them and did some high-fives in the office, because it probably meant they instantly got all the Lively “juice” (stories) they could reasonably expect to attach to the movie and then some, all without her having to submit to a litany of questions about what it was like to (presumably) smooch Reynolds and work in front of a green-screen. I’ve said before that probably the worst thing in the world to be is an 18- to
26-year-old girl with designs on leading actress Hollywood studio parts, because every single day of the week, 365 days a
year, about a dozen new scorching hot aspirant starlets get off the
Greyhound bus or disembark at LAX from their one-way fare from Podunk, Idaho, chomping at the bit to unseat you. So when actresses of a certain breed — those who’ve experienced some success, let’s say, and are eager to still get passed to the Sundance gift suites — see Khloe Kardashian trip her way into demi-celebrity (“Thank goodness my sister made a sex tape with Brandy’s brother!”), well… they’re more apt to take matters into their own hands. And sometimes those matters might be their breasts, that’s all I’m sayin’.