The Glee star, 24, earned rave reviews for her rendition of “America The Beautiful” at Sunday’s Super Bowl, but has raised the eyebrows and ire of one “concerned” mom and her confused 12-year-old after posing in a boob-baring photo for the cover of the March 2011 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. The offending image features Michele, a Broadway alum, in a low-cut black dress with a tagline that reads: “‘Glee’s’ Good Girl Has Some Naughty Secrets.” “Scandalous,” cries which New York mom Kim Trefcer, who believes the somewhat saucy image “confused and offended” her preteen son, a devoted Gleek.
In the words of the divine Charlie Brown: “Oh Good Grief!”
“I think Lea Michele is sending the wrong message. She plays such a ‘good girl’ on ‘Glee’ and a lot of kids look up to her persona. Then she poses very provocatively on two magazine covers which makes my almost-13-year-old son very confused and offended,” Trefcer told FOX News shortly after Lea’s Cosmo cover hit newsstands last week. “I find it frustrating as a parent who is trying to teach right from wrong to their kids and then you have things like this happen which is showing middle schoolers things like sex sells and all that goes along with that.”
The remarks stirred a splash on the Interwebs over the weekend, prompting Cosmo editors to leap to Lea’s defense in a brief statement issued Monday.
“We’re thrilled to feature Lea Michele on the March cover of Cosmopolitan magazine and think she looks stunning. Michele is a grown woman and Cosmopolitan is a magazine is for adults. Enough said,” a spokesperson for the mag remarked.
As you devoted Gleekers out there will likely recall, Lea set off a similar firestorm when she and co-stars Dianna Agron and Cory Monteith posed for GQ’s Oct. 2010 edition in their underwear. The blogosphere went wild with fans of the Emmy-winning show both defending and condemning the actors. Media watchdog group the Parents Television Council branded the images “borderline pedophilia.”
