uh-huh honey.
They’d been trying since they got together– no, not to have a baby, to have a Vogue cover. And yet for years, Ice Queen Wintour made no secret of her distaste for Kim Kardashian or her path and subsequent rise to fame. And for years, Anna denied (like, actually blacklisted) her a golden ticket to the Met Ball. When Kim was finally granted entrée, only on the arm of fashion “been-in-art-school-since-I-was-five” genius Kanye West, in a Mean Girls b**ch move, Vogue cropped Kim out of a photo of her and Kanye on their website. And then the internet ate Kimmy for dinner.
But the duo persevered, and Kanye rapped and waxed, courted and stalked Anna, and made a continual stink about her refusal to put Kim on the cover. (Kim has always remained mum, except for this morning’s Tweet: “”This is such a dream come true! Thank you Vogue magazine for this cover. OMGGGG I can’t even breathe!”)
Speaking with Ryan Seacrest last October, Kanye said: “There’s no way Kim Kardashian shouldn’t be on the cover of Vogue. She’s like the most intriguing woman right now. She’s got Barbara Walters calling her like everyday … and collectively we’re the most influential with clothing.”
He also called out Vogue for the cropping incident (which was in such poor taste), ranting: “I took [Kim] to the Met Ball and they put it up on Vogue.com and tried to say she wasn’t there because they didn’t want a reality show girl there.”
Maybe Anna was feeling the pressure. Maybe she needed to sell more covers. Maybe she ate a bad avocado and had a temporary lapse of judgement (and by that we mean: judgy). Who knows. (That’s not a question, it’s just me shrugging.)
And though everyone is claiming Vogue has now gone to reality hell in a Prada hand basket–that Kim and Kanye don’t “deserve” the cover, that is totally amateur hour over there– there are a lot of great, really empowering features of note:
1. Haters, there is an interracial, unmarried couple with a baby on the cover of Vogue. Take that Westboro (RIP Fred Phelps. That P stands for Purgatory.)
2. They didn’t make Kim Kanye’s prop. She’s front and center, staring straight into the camera, like “b**tch, I earned this.” (Despite what you think of her reality rise to the top.)
3. She doesn’t look crazily airbrushed or white-washed. She looks like, well, herself. Or as much of herself that she can look like at this point.
4. She never let the incredibly vitriolic words of others stop her. To stand up to the popular kids and “win,” is a win. Let’s just say if Vogue wanted to take Kim’s lunch money, there’s no way she would have given that up. Lady is no shrinking violet.
Now, it also seems like Vogue couldn’t help but get a little dig in. Cover wording is quite specific, and the “and surreal times,” doesn’t necessarily refer to “their,” and suggests that even Vogue can’t believe they caved. It’s a bit of double entendre aimed at the duo. To enforce this point, they included a few signs of the times: a hashtag and the word selfie in conjunction with “selfie-made” Kate Upton. There’s a “reality” trend here and maybe it is a bit surreal. Reality TV is not real, after all.
But so what? Let’s just for once relish in the fact that it’s not more of the same.
