Colorful words. Beefcake and cheesecake. Interesting. Odd. One is guys with most of their clothes off. The other is girls. But what about cheesecake makes you think of women? Maybe guys can be beefy, but can’t they also be porky? Why not porkcake? But I digress.

In this case, we are in the beefcake realm.

The magazine Vanity Fair decided to get the World Cup onto its cover, and did so in a provocative way:

With, as the magazine puts it, the players wearing their nation’s colors … and not much else. Well, boxer shorts. Short boxer shorts.

Who is included?

Would you believe Landon Donovan?

Yes, America’s World Cup Hope, Landon Donovan. Wearing a small U.S. flag. Quite a small one. If you’re a fan of Landon, maybe you will be thinking “stars and stripes forever!”

In the first photo, in you followed the link are, from left Sully Muntari of Ghana, Landon, Kaka of Brazil, Samuel Eto’o of Ivory Coast and Pato of Brazil.

On the cover, a bit further down on the Vanity Fair page, are Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal.

Inside (and if you watch the video at the bottom of the link, you can see most of them) but not available in a still photo on this link are Michael Ballack of Germany, Dejan Stankovic of Serbia, Gianluigi Buffon of Italy and Carlton Cole of England.

As the story details, photographer Annie Liebowitz flew all over the world to get these guys’ photos. (Assembling them at one spot would have been massively expensive and probably impossible.)

So, there are your lads. Beefsteak! Uh, beefcake!