Juice with Junior

What's been happening in the Vogue offices nowadays? It seems like nothing is going right in my opinion. Ms. Vogue Editor Anna Wintour (above in the inset), maybe it's time for a staff meeting. Oh, sorry I looked you in the eyes. Okay, as usual, let's start from the most recent controversy and work our way backwards.

The most recent deal is that some people are saying that Vogue's latest cover featuring basketball star LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen...


...is racist and draws too close a parallel to that big gorilla, you know the one...


I would have to say that I agree with people who feel that this cover is racist (Annie Leibovitz, how could you!). But what's got me feeling so strange about this situation is that it's not the main thing about this cover that offends me. In a little while I'll talk about why I'm not as offended by this cover as others have been.

Right now, I want to talk about what I'm really offended by, and don't get me wrong, I am offended by this cover's raciality but my offendedness can spread to other things like jam on a piece of toast, mmm toast:

Vogue has been around for more than 100 years and is considered the foremost magazine for knowledge about all things in women's and really the whole world of fashion (like the magazine equivalent of Edna E. Mode, right).

The magazine has employed some of the best photographers in the world and has also served as the inspiration for one of my favorite movies. I say all this to say, with my eyebrow arched as far up as it will go...

VOGUE, YOU CHOSE THIS UGLINESS TO BE YOUR COVER!

Really, Vogue, really! Aside from the King Kong allusion, it's simply AN AWFUL PHOTO!

Firstly, I was offended because they gave James the Jennifer Hudson (below) "black people pictured as teeth-baring animals" cover treatment (André Leon Talley, have you no control at this magazine). Although this bothered me, I'm happy dark people made it onto the cover at all.


But then I was doubly offended by what they did to Gisele, who is a supermodel mind you...


...they made the poor girl's face look like the face Juliette Lewis used throughout the entire two hours of "The Other Sister." The movie where she played a mentally-handicapped woman! How can you even do that to a supermodel?!

If I were the art director at Vogue and Leibovitz's people brought that photo into me and suggested it for the cover, I'd slip my Ralph Lauren glasses back onto my face and say, "No, what else 'ya got."

Like seriously, the fact that someone said "yes" to that photo even being a cover possibility and then said "yes" to it actually being the cover worries me for Vogue's future credibility.

It's not like they didn't have better photos to use.

Look at this photo featured on the inside of the magazine and on their website.


Um, wait, let me find the words... WHAT THE F#@K IS WRONG WITH THIS PHOTO! Doesn't this picture just scream "USE ME FOR THE COVER!"

I'm sorry, Vogue editors, are you having troubling seeing this photo's potential. I'll help.


Nobody looks like a fictional monster; nobody looks tore-up from the floor-up, and I did this sh!t in Microsoft Paint! Plus, I charge a lot less than those guys you're using, Queen Empress of the Size Negative Two Ms. Anna Wintour.

But can I let you guys in on a secret, I've been noticing that the quality of the Vogue covers has been going doooowwwwnnhhhhhiiiillll really fast lately. Like take a look at Drew Barrymore's March Vogue cover:


Is this or is this not the worst photo you've ever seen of Drew Barrymore in your entire life? And she's been on magazine covers since she was in "E.T.". Why, in God's name, does she look like a plastic sex doll (link NSFW)?

While I'm pretty sure this isn't Drew's problem (I call her Drew btw), this cover makes me think of that hilarious cover parody Radar Magazine did recently...


So when I started out in a rage of Rachel Tensions, I ended up furious in a rage of Journalistic Superiority! Why make cover subjects look bad when you have enough well-paid talents at these magazines to make these people look good?!

I haven't bought a bunch of magazines to browse in years, but if I did, it's certainly not gonna be a bunch of ugly covers of people. Get on the ball, editors! That brings me to the reason why I'm not particularly offended by the most recent King Kongy Vogue cover.

Reason 1.a is because the James/Gisele photo was not the only questionable photo that they used.

(Hi Annie Leibovitz. It's Junior. How are you? Um, Jared Rome [right] is a discus thrower. Why are we staging this photo to make him look like a caveman?)

But the more important reason I'm not offended is because I feel like the Vogue company as a whole is not deliberately racist.

Ethnically inclusive?

Hell to the no, and that's something they have to work on and people have to call them out on, but I don't think they intended this cover to be racist. They're just in the habit of making bad covers lately. Really bad covers.

I also have another reason to defend them...


I've read every issue of Men's Vogue starting with the first George Clooney issue (above) from 2005. I actually have a cubby that solely holds my Men's Vogue issues, because I save them. Yes, I'm that person.

I think it's a great magazine and as someone who can't shop because he had monstrous credit card debt, the mag helps me imagine how fabulous I would look in fabulous clothes. (I even tried to get a subscription once but their subscription service is about as poorganized as the photo department right now so I don't recommend it).


The reason I bring this up is because, as some people have noticed, Men's Vogue makes a habit of having great looking photos of black men on their covers all the time (like Denzel Washington, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, and Will Smith above).

They've also had baseballer Alex Rodriguez, whose parents are from the Dominican Republic, on the cover, sporting something very noticeable in the center of the photo (I'll let you discover it, although it's not hard to miss).

My point regarding the Ladies' Vogue LeBron James cover is that obviously someone at Vogue Headquarters knows how to put a black man on the cover and not make him look crazy (when would a player dribble the ball and scream like a maniac at the same time, Ms. Leibovitz, when?).

Clearly, that person just hasn't been working on the women's side like ever, because they just don't get it.

Or maybe this all just proves my point that Vogue Editor Anna Wintour doesn't care about black people, which may not be true but I'll never know until Wintour hires me for that job we both know I should have.

Call me, Anna!

(p.s. I'm aware that this was the longest thing ever but I had to vent and that's what I have the blog and you guys for. You understand, don't you?)