The Lady Gaga/Katy Perry Boobular Arms Race

From Luke Lewis, "Does Katy Perry really have to strip off to get on the cover of Rolling Stone?"

Lewis says no but I say yes, that is, if Katy Perry wants to compete in the strategic arms race with Lady Gaga. Nudity is mainstream nowadays. The latest cover of Vanity Fair features Gaga nude. Katy Perry was recently featured semi-nude on the cover of Esquire. The first conclusion of course is that this sells magazines — with the prominence of virtually no-holds-barred web publishing, dead-tree magazines are going nuclear to keep up. As for Gaga and Perry, it's a strategic (boobular) arms race, and there's a theory for that:

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During the Cold War, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries also developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.

In the boobular arms race neither side has developed a strategy of deterrence, since the threat of mutual assured destruction has yet to appear inevitable at the top-tier of celebrity competition. But as this is an existential superpower rivalry between Gaga and Perry, second-tier stars are hoping for an arms (boobs) reduction treaty to bring the world back from the brink of boobular annihilation.

The superpowers have eschewed strategic restraint (see, "Katy Perry Strips Down for Rolling Stone: Photos From Her Sexy Cover Shoot"), and the danger of a boobular holocaust has forced the issue to the heights of transnational cooperative efforts for reductions in force and norms against boobular violence (see, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women" and "Pornography Is a Civil Rights Issue".)