Cheeky Slate Drives Traffic with Critique of 'Esquire' Traffic Drive

Oh, Slate, you're so cheeky.

In a post criticizing the search engine-gaming header tags Esquire used to enhance traffic for the online version of its peek-a-boo pictorial of Mary Louise Parker ("Mary Louise Parker Naked Photos - Mary Louise Parker Ass - Esquire" the blunt, sexist, and rather artless tag reads) it seems that Slate went and did the exact same thing.

While Slate's headline—Mary Louise Parker Ass—is clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek (no pun intended), it's destined to accomplish pretty much the same thing as Esquire's despite the hectoring tone of the post that runs beneath it: Snag those unsubtle, single-minded Web searches and grow the site's traffic and, one presumes, its bottom line. (Okay, that one was intentional.)

"This is not shocking, of course," writes Slate's Julia Turner, who cites examples of other magazines like New York using nudity to grow their traffic. "But it does signal a certain unseemly desperation on the part of Esquire's editors. They may love these women, but it appears they love the Web traffic more."

It's not just magazines. This weekend The Huffington Post presented Your Boob Tape Is Showing, an incredibly un-titillating slideshow of the adhesives female celebrities apparently use to keep their clothes—and their breasts—in place on the red carpet.

Is there a news value to this sort of content? No, way. But does it stick? Hell, yes.