New Rolling Stone Cover: Let's Talk about Sex and 'True Blood'

Rolling Stone has yet another racy cover, this time featuring the stars of HBO’s hit vampire series, True Blood. I care not that actors Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, and Alexander Skarsgard are naked and covered in blood. As a fan of the show, it seems completely appropriate and... well, hot.

Sex, gore, and the developing love triangle between these three characters are what make True Blood interesting and edgy when compared to the relentlessly PG-13 vampire franchises of Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. With True Blood, I don’t yearn for the sex to heat up. It’s in your face.

If you are familiar with the show, this cover is not all that shocking. I am much more disturbed (and fascinated) by some of the vampire sex depicted on the show.

One episode earlier this season featured Stephen Moyer’s character, Bill Compton, completely spinning his “maker’s” head around during fornication. It was somewhere between The Exorcist and Devil’s Advocate.

Rolling Stone loves their naked pictures, and who can blame them? They sell, and often make pop culture history. I’ll never forget Jennifer Aniston’s nude-ish spread from the late 90’s).

But this cover truly isn’t all that crazy or controversial. It is relevant to the show's ongoing themes of sexuality, sexual identity, and the stratification within those spheres. So the question is: do covers such as this one help facilitate a dialogue about sexuality, or merely use it as a marketing tool to sell magazines? Mostly the latter, in my opinion.