Racy Ray.

Rachael Ray Doesn't Regret Racy Photo Shoot - US Magazine

Rachael Ray's mother was furious when she stripped down for a racy 2003 FHM photo shoot, but the 40-year-old talk show host has no regrets. "I think I was 35 at the time," she tells ABC's Nightline in an interview airing Monday. "And I thought about it for a while, and I said, 'You know what? This magazine has as young as 17, 18-year-old's in hottie bikinis, and these are all actresses, models, pin-up girls. I don't belong to any even remote club of theirs.'"

Mom was Furious. Really. She "stripped down?" I'm having trouble seeing the stripped down part. Get a grip, mom.

First, never listen to anything your mother says about something you did as an adult. That's an important rule of life to remember.

Second, I love Rachael Ray. I like her TV show and her raspy voice. I like her dopey Dunkin' Donuts commercials and those 30-minute meals she cooks on TV. There, I said it. Now, let's move on.

Next, let's examine the term "racy." To the right are three of the racy photos. I'd guess that they could show up on a calendar or maybe even in a high school yearbook, if you went to a really progressive school. You might think that top photo is racy if you didn't automatically know that those were soap suds on her leg.

Otherwise, it's kinda tame, even by magazine standards.

The strawberry one is interesting, but it's a strawberry. It'd be different if it was some guy's body part, but it's a fruit. Or are strawberries a vegetable now? I think it's a fruit.

What's next? Oh, she's holding a pie in some kind of cut-off Daisy Dukes thing. Cute. Racy? Not quite, unless you live in Utah. Hey, that pie is hot!

Describing these photos as racy reminds me of what some people think is pornography or "X rated" subject matter. Anything that exposes a breast or utters the word fuck is pornographic or X-rated to large numbers of people who have never seen pornography or been around a lot of people who use the word fuck as an adjective.

"Oooh, that's X-rated," they say, and deep down inside you know they have no idea.

It's the kind of thing that got Howard Stern in trouble and long ago got Lenny Bruce arrested a few times.

Girls sucking strawberries, holding pies and spilling soap suds on themselves are somehow racy to large numbers of people. Put her in a skimpy outfit and you've added an exclamation point to the whole ordeal. Now, it's borderline pornographic.

"I'm an all-things-in-moderation kind of person," she continues. "I do eat a warm donut occasionally. I especially enjoy a cider donut when I'm apple picking. I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

Oh, Rachael you crazy nut. A warm donut. Is that a euphemism or do you really like donuts? And why is she forced to defend eating donuts?

Ray reportedly earns up to $18 million a year and says "it makes me a little sick.""It makes my stomach flip. I'm not comfortable with it ... because I don't like to think of my life as that far away from me," she says. "People that make that kind of money - it's just too foreign of an idea."

It makes a lot of us sick, Rache, but you don't.

Says Ray, "I'm not a chef. I haven't created any new technique in the kitchen. I'm not a rocket scientist."

No kidding.