Website Bitten and Bound has an interesting story about Britney Spears’ latest magazine cover. Brit’s going to be on the December issue of Australian Cosmopolitan. The title of the article is “How a Broken Britney Bounced Back.” How nice and supportive. It features a super hot picture of Britney that we’re obviously meant to assume is recent – the implication being, “Look at how great and put together she looks now!” However the picture is over five years old and was originally taken for an Esquire photo shoot.

Britney Spears graces the cover of Australian Cosmopolitan magazine’s December 2008 issue. The photo is hot and according to our friends at TMZ, it’s five years old. The image was lifted from a 2003 Esquire magazine photo shoot.

This isn’t the first publication to use deceptively old photos. Check out Britney’s OK magazine’s April 2008 cover here. The photo was from a 2003 Glamour photo shoot.

[From Bitten and Bound]

It’s kind of sad that so many magazines are doing this. It’s like they’re saying Britney’s improved enough to be a story, but not enough that she actually looks good. Which isn’t true. She looks great, but she looks five years older than she did… five years ago. It’s just a “duh” point. She’s not going to look the same. Everyone ages, and Britney’s late twenties body probably won’t rock in quite the magazine-friendly way that her early twenties body did. But why can’t they show her like she is – she still looks great!

If I were Britney, I’d feel like this sent a real mixed message. “We’re going to write about all the improvements you’ve made and how great you look – but you don’t actually look great enough to show you how you really are.” It would make me feel like I’d never be good enough. And frankly at best, it makes the magazine look unprofessional and dishonest.

The header photo is from Brit’s upcoming Cosmo Australia cover – the photos below are from the 2003 Esquire photoshoot.