News-Record.com

Well...not here, of course.

But the pictures are out there.

It seems Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron's brainy love interest in the popular High School Musical franchise (and demonstrably less brainy love interest in real life) took some nude photos of herself. And, of course, they leaked onto the Internet.

Where I found them in about three minutes.

Would get fired (and possibly sued) for linking to them from here but I will note a few things:

1) There are a series of photos of her in progressively less clothing, in provocative poses, until she's posing naked and smirking for what seems to be a camera with a self timer.

2) She's doing so in what is clearly a bedroom and not (as has been reported) a bathroom. The curtain behind her just looks like a shower curtain. There's a bed and dressers in plain view.

3) The sort of creepy part about this (I mean -- besides her being the star of Disney films) is that, though she's 18 years old, the bedroom looks very much like the bedroom of a very girly high school girl. Christmas lights are strung along the ceiling of the room. Stuffed animals are visible on the fluffy bed on which she poses on all fours in what appears to be her sports bra.

4) Though she's turned out the big lights, turned on the string of Christmas ones and lit a series of tea candles on the dresser to "set the mood" she's left a half-finished plastic bottle of Dannon water (exactly like the one I'm drinking out of right now, eerily) on the dresser right beside her. This sort of kills the teenage girl faux romanticism of the scene and gives it a creepy, "I'm going to need to stay hydrated" porno shoot vibe. While the photo is undeniably aesthetically pleasing (in the strictest anatomy-drawing class sense, of course) the room and the way she's set it up sort of torpedoes any potential sexiness and just sort of makes my skin crawl. Mostly.

5) Female friends of mine who are hostile to the idea that every woman needs a Brazilian wax to be sexy have a new hero in Vanessa Hudgens. She makes their argument forcefully.

The number of news stories on these photos this morning is sort of staggering -- and many suggest that this is going to ruin her career with Disney, maybe even take down the entire High School Musical franchise. But as I look at them I wonder -- can that be right? It's not like she's doing anything really awful in them. They don't even rise to the level of misbehavior of some recent beauty pageant contestants. She just did what some (maybe an increasing number, and we can talk about and be disturbed by that if we're so inclined) 18 year old girls do when they're young and beautiful -- she privately documented her nudity for her boyfriend. I don't think it was for mass consumption -- though with Paris and Lindsay as warnings along the path of young fame she probably should have known better.

Let's hope this mistake doesn't doom her.