We've all had that dream. You're sitting your university finals, or attending a job interview. Everyone else is dressed normally. You, without explanation, have arrived with no clothes on. It's awkward; you feel vulnerable and embarrassed. Why are you the only person who's naked? And how can you possibly hold your own when you don't even have a place to hold your keys?

Stress dreams aside, any situation where you're nude and others are clothed feels very weird. Your clothes are your armour; they're what stops everyone in the office from knowing that you have freckles on your tummy or a scar on your thigh. They allow you to exert some control over how much information you give away and what you receive in return. There's a reason why nervous public speakers are told to picture the audience naked: the fully dressed party is always more at ease.

And yet, year after year and issue after issue, magazines love to conjure up this exact situation. This month, for example, True Blood actor Anna Paquin appears on the cover of US magazine Entertainment Weekly. She's naked, which is not massively surprising in our culture – but the glaring weirdness of the situation is that her co-star Stephen Moyer is fully clothed.

Unless you're a teenage boy distracted by the half-glimpse of Paquin's bottom, you'll probably find it hard to look at this image without wondering: why? Why would the team behind it choose to style Moyer in jeans and a T-shirt, like he's on his way to a Sunday brunch, while they summon his wife to the set in nothing but her wedding ring? There's no plot significance, no reason, and no explanation offered. It seems that he's clothed because he's a man and therefore he must look like he's in control; she's naked because she's a woman and her purpose is to be sexy.

This mismatch is one that's repeated everywhere from music videos to upmarket culture magazines. Regardless of the setting though, it is usually women who take the naked role – a tradition that hit a new low in last year's video for Blurred Lines, featuring Robin Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. surrounded by topless female models. 

There are many more examples: David Gandy's recent Vanity Fair Espana cover, for which he posed with a naked, submissive Charlotte Pallister; Chris O'Dowd's GQ shoot with a bikini-clad Jessica Hart; and the famous image of Tom Ford – in a suit, because the man always wears a nice suit – canoodling with a naked Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson. This is the gender balance in the vast majority of instances.

But not all of them. There is, in fact, a very famous example of a naked man photographed with a clothed woman: the iconic image of John Lennon wrapped around Yoko Ono on their bed (click through to the gallery to see it for yourself). She wears jeans and a sweater; he is starkly, unglamorously naked. He reportedly loved the photo, and it's obvious why: his nudity and the pose express his exposed, unreserved devotion to his wife.

On a somewhat less heartfelt, glossier note, there's also the recent Vogue Espana cover that shows a proudly naked Cristiano Ronaldo posing with Irina Shayk, who wears a strapless gown. Ronaldo isn't submissive or vulnerable – he's standing centre-stage with his hand on his hip – but nevertheless it's refreshing that he's the one without any clothes on.

The thing is, there can be something sexy about the clothed-unclothed exchange, whichever side of it you're on – being naked while the object of your affections is clothed, or being fully dressed while someone you lust over is naked. It's undoubtedly a power play, and one that, in the right circumstances, might be quite fun. An ill-advised Google search during the research of this feature led me to discover an entire Wikipedia entry about CMNF – 'Clothed Male, Naked Female', which is apparently an erotic genre.

So for readers picking up the latest Vanity Fair or Entertainment Weekly or GQ, it's titillating to see two attractive people tapping into this power imbalance – and there's nothing wrong with a little titillation. It would just be nice to see the tradition turned on its head more often. I hesitate to say it, but perhaps the magazine industry could learn a few lessons from Cristiano Ronaldo.

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