Kamala's Vogue cover controversy is the laugh we all need

This week is starting out no better than last week. Consider this post a palate cleanser and a chuckle we can all use. There is a hissy fit happening on social media today over the cover shot of Kamala Harris on the February issue of Vogue magazine. I doubt I’m the only one finding it amusing.

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First, let’s acknowledge that this is the first of many, many women’s magazines covers that Kamala will grace over the next four years. I would wager to bet that she will be on several every month for at least her first two years as vice-president. When she takes over for Sleepy Joe after that, Katie bar the door. Her photo will be everywhere, 24/7. While she waits in the wings for her starring role in the White House, her team will do all they can to make sure the right woke image of her is front and center at all times.

When I first saw attention being paid to the Vogue cover, I thought her people were upset over the color of her pants suit. Yeah, don’t expect this story to be full of deep thoughts. We’re talking Vogue here. It’s known as the premier women’s fashion magazine. It usually runs an interview with a liberal celebrity or public official, too. Apparently the upcoming issue is all about Kamala. Her team feels “blindsided” by Vogue’s choice of cover shot.

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An ice-blue pantsuit? Do you mean a pantsuit the color of Melania’s dress and Jackie O pillbox hat on Trump’s inauguration day? Oh my. There isn’t a woman that pays even a little attention to fashion that doesn’t remember that outfit. Melania was stunning in it, as she continued to be in all her wardrobe choices. Women’s magazines ignored her because of her last name despite her killer haute couture wardrobe. Anyway, that was the first chuckle I got from this mess of a story.

You can see that the blue pantsuit photo looks much better than the other one. C’mon. Kamala looks like a 56-year-old woman desperately trying to come off as a forty-something aging hipster. Those Converse sneakers may be cute and practical on the campaign trail as she bounces on and off private jets and moves around a stage at a rally but they aren’t the shoes worn by a serious woman in a professional photo. If she didn’t want to wear heels (and I don’t blame her at all for that) she could have worn flats.

But, wait, there’s more. It seems that poor lighting has made Kamala’s light skin tone even lighter. Instead of a light-skinned black and Indian woman she looks more like a white woman. “Kamala Harris is about as light skinned as women of color come and Vogue still f—ed up her lighting. WTF is this washed out mess of a cover?” Twitter user E. Vaughan said.

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This woman is right – the cover shot is confusing. Apparently, the pink and green backdrop is a nod to her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

One cover will be used for digital publication and the other on the newsstand. What amuses me is that Kamala is such an unlikeable politician, as her own presidential run proved, that they wanted to go with a “fun” shot of her in her sneakers. All of this online grousing about how unprofessional and sloppy the photograph makes her look takes away from excerpts from her interview inside the magazine. She speaks about race and unity, of course, and that is always interesting, given her continual race-baiting and GOP-bashing.

In the interview, conducted weeks before the riot at the U.S. Capitol to protest election results, Harris spoke about hate and unity.

“At the risk of oversimplifying it, you don’t meet hate with hate,” Harris told Vogue. “You don’t meet one line of division with another line of division. We believe that the vast majority of American people don’t agree with that approach, don’t accept it, and don’t like it.

“We can agree that we have more in common than what separates us,” she added. “And agree that it’s not in the best interest of who we are as a nation to have any one group suffer for who they are.”

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Team Harris isn’t happy. There are calls from Twitter users for the firing of Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue since 1988, and Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast. She is notorious for changing out cover photos at the last minute. Team Harris thought they had a deal on which shot to use. One critic blamed Wintour for consistently disrespecting women of color in photographs.

Vogue is doing a bit of clean-up.

Vogue in a Sunday morning tweet revealed that Harris would be profiled in the February edition, in a post that included two photos of the California Democrat. The full profile, titled “Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on the Road Ahead,” includes one photo that refers to Harris, wearing a light-blue Michael Kors Collection suit in front of drapes with a gold hue, as “Mrs. America.” The other picture, that of Harris in front of pink and green drapes, a homage to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, is captioned as “Cover Look.”

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Kamala is going to “help heal a fractured America—and lead it out of crisis.” Good one. It doesn’t matter what pantsuit she is wearing, that isn’t going to happen, not by her.

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David Strom 10:00 AM | April 16, 2024
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