Vogue's LeBron James Cover Evokes Negative Imagery

A few days ago, Barack Obama delivered a speech on race and politics in America in Philadelphia. He urged us to look to our better selves, pointing out that without willingness on all sides to embrace our commonalities and reject efforts to divide and conquer, there was little we could look forward to in terms of real change. While the solutions to the race issue are complex and far from easy, Obama's challenge was straightforward and clear. Apparently the powers that be at Vogue magazine did not get the message.

Looking at the cover of Vogue magazine featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen (Vogue, April 2008), one wonders what Anna Wintour and her editors were thinking of, or if indeed, they were thinking at all. Commentary on the cover ranges from James as King Kong, bearing his teeth whilst grasping Bundchen in one hand, to James putting on his game face while an obviously unthreatened Bundchen smiles benignly.

The King Kong reference is the one that seems to have resonated with many observers and touched off a controversy that quickly made its way into the media, including MSNBC Sports, and therein lies the problem. If a magazine cover featuring a talented young black athlete and a beautiful white model evokes negative imagery, it's not a matter of whether James intended to come across as threatening or merely intended to exhibit his game face. The issue is why did Vogue choose that photo to grace its cover? Without a doubt, the photo shoot produced hundreds of shots of James and Bundchen.

Photos that appeared within the pages of the magazine portrayed both in striking, attractive, and positive images without King Kong or Beauty and the Beast filtering through the psyches of the average reader. But that undoubtedly would have been too tame for Wintour and Vogue to place on the cover. In publishing, it's a sine qua non: the edgier you can be, the more controversial you can be, the more magazines you will sell. Period. End of story.