YOUNG women should be very, very careful about not letting nude photographs of themselves leave their hands - as Kristin Davis and Audrina Partridge both learned this week.
They are just the latest female celebrities - following in the bare footsteps of “High School Musical” star Vanessa Hudgens, model Carolyn Murphy, and even radio talker Dr. Laura Schlessinger - who left intimate shots of themselves in the hands of ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands, only to see them end up on the Internet.
A rep for Davis, best-known as Charlotte in “Sex and the City,” denies Davis is the dark-haired woman in a handful of X-rated photos that have popped up online. The photos show the brunette posing naked, in the bathtub, and performing various sex acts with a man whose face is never shown.
In an effort to unravel the mystery, Page Six convened a panel of experts who thought the woman in the photos is either Davis or an identical twin - which she doesn’t have.
The photos were reportedly taken by Eric Stapelman, a boyfriend of Davis from the early ’90s. Stapelman, who is now the executive chef at Trattoria Nostrani in Santa Fe, was apparently mad at Davis when he sold the pictures to a third party, from whom they were later stolen. A restaurant rep told Page Six Stapelman was not there yesterday afternoon and was headed out of town.
Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no doubt that the photos of Partridge - the faithful perky sidekick of Lauren Conrad on “The Hills” - are 100 percent real. Partridge posed for the pin-ups in 1994, after graduating from high school in the hope she could score some space in Playboy.
The images, including one in which she posed as a topless Catholic-school girl, were rejected, but now have mysteriously surfaced in cyberspace to haunt her.
In a mea culpa statement, Partridge said: “I took these photos years ago when I was just out of high school and beginning to model. I was young and very trusting of others and I didn’t know to protect myself. It is a lesson learned, for myself, and hopefully for the young girls who look up to me.”
