Jessica Alba Is Not Naked In This Month's Playboy

Outraged that Playboy sneakily obtained an Into the Blue promotional photo of client Jessica Alba in a bikini and slapped it on the cover of an issue in which the actress does not expose so much as an ankle, the Scary Hollywood Lawyers of Lavely and Singer have fired off an angry letter to the skin mag expressing their extreme displeasure with their tactics, and in the process, revealed a more than passing familiarity with the magazine's nudie customs. As always, The Smoking Gun has the goods:

...since Playboy's inception, Playboy has established a known custom and practice (and an expectation with and among the public) that any woman whose photograph is featured on the cover appears in a nude or semi-nude pictorial in that month's issue. In featuring Ms. Alba's photograph on the cover of Playboy's March Issue, it is clear that Playboy's intent was to create a false belief and/or expectation among the public that Ms. Alba voluntarily appeared in the nude or semi-nude and that a revealing pictorial of her is contained in Playboy's March Issue. Also, Playboy is old sealed in plastic whereby the public cannot view the actual contents of the magazine absent purchasing the magazine, and, therefore, must rely on Playboy's actual or implied advertising as to the contents of the magazine as presented by the magazine's cover. Consistent with Playboy's practice of displaying a "bunny" watermark logo on its cover girls (who appear nude within the magazine), Playboy has placed the "bunny" logo on the lower right breast of Ms. Alba on the bikini top in the subject photo, thereby altering said photograph and undertaking a blatant and egregious affirmative action to cause the general public to conclude that Ms. Alba had consented to this use and appears nude within the magazine.

We'd like to thank Alba's counsel for pointing out the very subtle bunny watermark hiding on Alba's breast, which we definitely missed upon our first viewing, and which you can see if you click the above image. And for those who might have bought the issue and been disappointed by the lack of Alba-related skin, there are probably enough mentions of "Alba," "nude," and "semi-nude" from which to derive enough jollies to justify your purchase.