Vanity Fair Covers March 2010 (T) and June 1917 (B) 96 years later
The issue of race in America has been a hot topic long before Martin Luther King Jr.’s infamous speech, I Have a Dream.” Speaking to millions on the Lincoln Memorial, he profoundly spoke about the urgency for equality. With the election of Barack Obama thought to be the beginning of a post-racialism in the 21st century, this issue is even more poignant.
March’s cover issue of Vanity Fair sparked a heated debate on Yahoo’s Shine Site, wondering why the cover story of “New Hollywood” only depicted white up and coming actors. As opinions on this matter vary one Yahoo user furiously explained so what! “If BET or some other entertainment related business, magazine and so on did an article or show and it was only about Blacks or Hispanics or Asians there would no uproar from anyone. So what if Vanity Fair put a bunch of white girls on their cover. . . All these PC people need to take a break from their soap boxes.”
As an African-American woman, the lack of relative role models in the media has been limited since before I can remember. Although the cover story didn’t spark extreme emotion I just attribute it to my immunity to living in a “white world.” Instead of uplifting the accomplishments of African- Americans mainstream media choose to glorify the negative images of this community that always seem to make the 6:00 o’clock news. In the wake of Tiger Wood’s sexual scandal, his 2006 photo shoot turned into a headlining cover story for Vanity Fair’s February issue, while break-out star Gabourey Sidibe’s extraordinary accomplishments were shuffled among the many pages of the publication the following month.
As specific television networks and magazine publications target certain ethnic groups, it may be fair to say that Vanity Fair should re-title as Fair’s Vanity.
Posted by Whitney Lanum on March 9, 2010 4:22 PM
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