Tuesday, January 12, 2021

What the Vogue Is This?

Look, you know I love strong women in suits. Like, I REALLY STRONG LOVE WOMEN IN SUITS. But, and this is very painful but, I do not in any way shape or form love the new February cover of Vogue with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris in a suit. The print edition cover hit the Series of Tubes over the weekend and let me just say, queer women and anyone with eyes should be mad. How mad?

THIS MAD!

What is this utter bullshit? This looks like it was taken for middle school picture day. It does not look like a picture that honors the first woman and first woman of color to be elected vice president in the history of the United States of America.

It’s awkward. It’s informal. It’s awful. The pink draping. The crease in her shirt. Her hands. The lighting. Her expression. THAT DAMN SUIT.

Now, take a look instead at the digital cover.

Same photographer, same editor and set designer. But so much more dignity. Yes, it’s still pretty basic and nowhere near as glamorous as so many of its other covers. But at least I don’t want to hurl it into the sun by comparison.

But I don’t necessarily blame the photographer or team behind the shoot. Instead, I blame Vogue management. According to reports, the blue suit photo is the cover Madam Vice President and photo team had agreed on to be the print cover. Indeed, it’s the digital cover for February. But the keepsake edition, the one everyone will see in grocery stores, it’s that other cringe-worthy photo. And lesbians aren’t the only ones complaining about the cover, not by a long shot.

I know this is might seem small ball – given everything that’s on fire right in our government – to complain about a fashion magazine cover right now. But the history that is about to be made cannot be understated. So anything that doesn’t properly honor the importance of this moment just feels disrespectful.

This is also not the first time Vogue has badly bungled a cover shoot featuring prominent Black women. In short, Vogue is very, very bad at this. And Vice President Straight Bette Porter deserved so, so, so much better.

3 comments:

  1. Carmen San Diego8:28 AM

    That’s a Terrible cover, very bad. if they wanted to highlight the Chucks they could have done the blue suit with blue Chucks

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  2. Every time I see photographs of Vice President Kamala Harris it lifts my spirits.
    I agree completely that it was a terrible decision Vogue made
    to stray from the agreed upon photo featuring our Vice president Straight Bette Porter.
    I am sure that, fortunately, considering the positive similarities of the personalities of Vice President Harris and Bette Porter,
    the publishing world will have a lot of opportunities to publish some truly wonderful cover photos of her in the future!

    ReplyDelete