Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Vanity Fair Joins the anti-feminist, anti-lesb ian/gay counter-revolution


This is a very disturbing photo and I am reproducing it only to help make a point.
First let me be very clear, it is not the nudity by itself that concerns me. In fact, I agree, for the most part, with fashion-industry icon Tom Ford - the man in the photo and the artistic director of this year's Vanity Fair Hollywood issue - who, according to columnist Liz Smith, said, "...I find people better looking without clothes than with clothes."
It's the anti-feminist and anti-lesbian implications that underlay this photo of a clothed man and two extremely vulnerable naked young women on the cover of a major magazine that I find so disturbing.
The anti-lesbian/gay implications are fairly obvious once you know the story behind the photo. According to the New York Post, the photo was originally supposed to include three young naked female actors. But when Rachel McAdam reneged because of the nudity and left the magazine with only two nude young women (Scarlet Johannson and Keira Knightly), what did photographer Annie Leibovitz say to Ford? "Three girls in a bed is a bed full of girls. Two girls in a bed are lesbians." So, at Leibovitz's suggestion, Ford slipped himself into the photo. Obviously the classic menage-a-trois male fantasy implications of the resulting photo didn't bother any of these people - or Ms. Smith, who effuses in her column about the photo and Mr. Ford.
But the problem with the photo is even broader than that. It goes to the heart of the deep-seated anti-woman aspects of the current right-wing counter-revolution. Ten, or even five, years ago Vanity Fair would never have published such an anti-feminist photo, particularly on the cover.
Just look at it. Two young women at their most vulnerable with a fully dressed man - obviously older - in a position of power. What a striking contrast. Just in case the sexual implications of the photo are not missed Ford is "nuzzling" Ms. Knightly. I guess the anti-woman and anti-lesbian implications of this cover don't make much difference, when your your faced with competition for newsstand space with Playboy, Maxim and their anti-feminist brothers.
So Tom, what happened to people looking better without clothes?

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