Thursday, February 18, 2010


When I first saw the latest Vanity Fair cover, I was intrigued by the collection of young, beautiful actresses dressed in Easter pastels. How could you not be drawn to such an image? And yet something didn't feel quite right.

It wasn't until I read a snippet of an interview with Precious star, Gabourey Sidibe, that I realized the "whites only" problem. As an editor, I'm surprised by the short-sightedness of this cover strategy. Besides Sidibe, there are plenty of other "young hollywood" actresses of color that deserve mention, such as Zoe Saldana, who stars in some some of the biggest movies this past year and to come (Avatar, Star Trek, Death at a Funeral).

Plenty of folks have written about this, but I just thought I'd put it out there. In my opinion, there is no excuse for an "all white" anything in this day and age (unless it's a turkey platter). The year is 2010, for God's sake. But it could also be an industry-wide problem. A quick gander at this year's Oscar nominees reveals a rather monochrome line up. But that doesn't justify anything for me, just helps me realize this is a bigger problem than just one magazine cover.



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  2. Sidibe definitely should have been in the cover shoot. She was nominated for an Oscar! How many of these women were nominated for recent performances? Kristen Stewart? The only possible reason she would be excluded from the shoot would be either 1) if the editors simply overlooked her, which is doubtful because one would assume they are not fools; or 2) if the editors deliberately kept her out of the picture because she is large (and/or black). The second one is worse, but makes more sense given the magazine industry. In the 3.5 years I was at tennis we only ONCE put Justine Henin on the cover, despite her being the most talented woman player and repeat Grand Slam winner and No. 1 in the world, because she just simply wasn't photogenic enough.