Vanity Fair ignores women of color, reinforces beauty bias

In the critically acclaimed movie Precious, Gabourey Sidibe plays Claireece "Precious" Jones, a pregnant teenager working through years of parental abuse.

Often, she peers into a mirror and admires the goddess staring back: blond, blue-eyed, Barbie-thin, with porcelain skin.

Only Precious is African American — a few shades darker and quite a few pounds heavier than the mirage of perfection reflected in her abuse-warped worldview.

So I had to wonder if the actress, for an instant, thought she'd slipped back into character when Sidibe, up for an Oscar for best actress, glimpsed the cover of next month's Vanity Fair.

On the cover of its 16th Annual Hollywood edition, the magazine proclaims, "A New Decade, A New Hollywood." But if the cover's any evidence, the calendar may have advanced a few pages, but we're still mired in the past.

Stretched across a three-page spread, Vanity Fair presents nine starlets it touts as the next big things.

And without a doubt, the mag's picks are all very talented, very beautiful, very thin — and very white.

Predictably, Vanity Fair's diversity whiteout has triggered an avalanche of criticism — and cries of racism.

Perhaps Evan Rachel Wood, critically acclaimed for her turn in Thirteen, Kristen Stewart, part of the hit Twilight franchise, and Amanda Seyfried, who gained notices in 2008's Mamma Mia!, and the others — Abbie Cornish, Carey Mulligan, Rebecca Hall, Mia Wasikowska, Emma Stone and Anna Kendrick — will make the world forget Meryl Streep.

But you've got to think the editors could have speed-dialed a couple of up-and-coming minority actresses (Sidibe? Or perhaps Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto?) to broaden the palette.

In explaining the move, a Vanity Fair spokesperson sent DiversityInc magazine this statement:

"Deciding who will appear on the Hollywood Issue cover — and within the issue itself — is a long process, and one we take seriously. For the young actresses on the cover, both films coming out this year and past work were taken into consideration, as were schedules and availability, since we had to shoot all nine actresses in a single day."

An answer that satisfied few critics, fuming over the photographic whitewash.

I don't know if I'm buying what Vanity Fair's selling. But neither do I think the magazine's got John Mayer doubling as its photo editor.

Though not racism, what's at play here is something as perpetual and pervasive: the exaltation of the European beauty ideal: thin features, fair skin and straight hair.

In the write-up accompanying the Vanity Fair cover spread, writer Evgenia Peretz waxes poetic in describing the starlets' aesthetics: "downy-soft cheeks," "button nose," "patrician looks and celebrated pedigree," "dewy, wide-eyed loveliness" and "Ivory-soap-girl" features.

Doesn't sound much like rising actress Zoe Saldana, who starred in Star Trek and the monstrous hit Avatar — she of the caramel-colored skin and almond-shaped eyes.

In that way, there's nothing really shocking about Vanity Fair's diversity lapse. Minorities rarely grace magazine covers anyway.

A recent study in the journal Communication Research found white women overabundant in mainstream magazines, while black and Hispanic women were underrepresented, compared with U.S. Census data.

A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher found fewer than 2 percent of ads in bridal magazines featured black brides. And African-American brides never graced the cover of the 57 randomly selected issues examined over a four-year stretch. Never a cover bride — it was more common to see African-American women as bridesmaids, the study found.

Countless studies have documented the ruinous impact that the dearth of role models in mainstream media has on minority girls and women. Trying to squeeze themselves into bodies and physical attributes they were never meant to wear erodes self-esteem. Bombarded with messages that shout what they bring to the table isn't appetizing, too many minority women, like Precious, stare into the mirror and rue what they see.

Certainly, Vanity Fair will weather the storm. Just as the magazine that often has courted controversy with provocative covers such as the 1991 issue with a nude and very pregnant Demi Moore and the 2008 spread of a sexed-up 15-year-old Miley Cyrus always does.

Or maybe — if we're lucky — the editors will look in the mirror and hate what they see.

from Chicago Tribune; Darryl Owens Commentary