The monthly Vanity Fair cover story is a cherished pop-cultural institution. But the furious negative response to Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Rich Cohen’s fawning Margot Robbie cover story shows no sign of abating. Cohen penned an effusive piece on the Tarzan and Suicide Squad star (pictured above at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party) headlined “Welcome to the Summer of Margot Robbie” only to get bombarded with widespread abuse on social media that he was a lecherous creep… and worse.
Cohen breezily wrote about the 26 year-old Australian starlet: “I don’t remember what she was wearing, but it was simple, her hair combed around those painfully blue eyes. We sat in the corner. She looked at me and smiled.”
Cohen’s conclusion to the feature really set haters off : “We sit for a moment in silence. She was thinking of something. I was thinking of something else.”
thanks @VanityFair for letting America’s Greasiest Creepy Uncle profile Margot Robbie. it was illuminating if not for the reason you planned
— Patrick Cosmos (@veryimportant) July 6, 2016
The Vanity Fair article on Margot Robbie is beyond offensive. Someone actually got paid to write this shit? pic.twitter.com/qpFRAa6Qyq
— Pearl Parker (@pardonpearl) July 12, 2016
I’m a @VanityFair subscriber, but that is the biggest piece of sexist crap introductory paragraph I’ve ever seen. Disappointed #MargotRobbie
— Emmy Potter (@emmylanepotter) July 6, 2016
Australians were outraged at what Cohen — who himself is still smarting from HBO’s recent cancellation of the HBO Martin Scorsese drama Vinyl which he co-created — wrote about their country: “Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people.”
The Australian newspaper thundered: “If there’s one thing Australians will not stand for, it is being ridiculed by America.”
This paragraph is a declaration of war https://t.co/Cve3eq9r24 pic.twitter.com/iSpO72gzKV
— David Mack (@davidmackau) July 6, 2016
Not only is #RichCohen‘s article on Margot Robbie & Australia horse manure, @VanityFair published it!! #misogyny https://t.co/H9Y3GMB4pb
— Em (@MNarang2513) July 8, 2016
The reaction appears to have caused Cohen to stop tweeting. But SJWs and Australians, don’t you know this is the Vanity Fair cover we’re talking about?! Over-ripe odes to beauty and exaggerated cultural stereotypes are to be expected, even celebrated.
Stars don’t walk in a VF cover special, they shimmer. Actresses simultaneously sell sex and innocence. They both represent the future and serve as custodians of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In addition to being normal down-to-earth girls next door, they are celestial beings momentarily beamed down to earth to take our cash for their films before returning to Planet Celebrity.
Yet if the Margot Robbie backlash is anything to go by, what was once the ridiculous fun of the Fair is clearly now regarded by many as being inappropriate and misogynistic.
Concerned that VF might soon put a stop to its wildly over-elaborate profiles, Heat Street compiled 12 of the most egregious examples of the language in the cover stories being as ornate and over-the-top as the outfits.
If you find anything below creepy or offensive, don’t leave a comment below but instead write to Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007.
Taylor Swift
September 2015
Writer: Josh Duboff
“My friends and I text every day,” she tells me, looking almost regal in a Saint Laurent smoking suit, sitting at a medieval table in a stately room at the hotel. ”
Scarlett Johansson
May 2014
Writer: Lili Anolik
“On either side of her and behind her, the buildings of Midtown surged up out of the ground and into the heavens in ecstatic phallic salute. As they should have. She looked ravishing, radiant, sublime, good enough to eat…she’s seducing the camera and thus, by extension, you, since you, again by extension, are on the other end of that camera. It’s sex between intimates and it’s sex between strangers. It’s sex in public and it’s sex in the mind. You can’t resist her and she knows it without ever acknowledging that she knows it.”
Lindsay Lohan
October 2010
Writer: Nancy Jo Sales
“Shimmering through her worry and stress and whatever else was currently affecting her mood was her all-American beauty, finer and more delicate in person than in pictures. She still looked like a movie star. She smelled of cigarettes and exotic perfume.”
Jessica Simpson
June 2009
Writer: Rich Cohen
“She didn’t want to talk about her weight so, of course that’s all I could think of- it gilded each question in my mind: What are you working on now [that you’re fat]? Do you see yourself as part of a class, with Christina and Britney [or are you too fat?] Do you feel that your relationship with Tony Romo has affected his performance as a quarterback [because you are fat]?”
Gisele Bünchen
May 2009
Writer: Leslie Bennetts
“Everything about her is so elongated and slender- those impossibly attenuated limbs! the swan-like neck!- that she seemed almost preposterous, like a cartoon figure…the tanned, athletic Brazilian beach babe who seemed born to wear a bikini has become the world’s most successful supermodel.”
Amy Adams
November 2008
Writer: Michael Shnayerson
“[Amy Adams] shimmers in with the happy, hammy air of an actress who riffs at the drop of a hat…she has aquiline features and perfect porcelain skin, but it’s the way she moves—dramatically, with that sense of theatuh, as she would say—that really marks her as the actress she is.”
Madonna
May 2008
Writer: Rich Cohen
“In the end Madonna will be remembered as a minter of images. Think back on her career. It’s not songs you remember, or not primarily, nor films, nor videos, it’s the scenes or little tableaux…Madonna on the Cross, like Jesus, but better because did Jesus ever come down from the Cross to sing a song?”
Kate Moss
September 2006
Writer: A.A. Gill
“She is most unself-conscious and unconcerned without clothes. Every other model who ever gets her kit off, however classy and slick the shot, however ironic the setup, there’s always a hint of cheesecake, a whiff of old Hef. But never with Kate. It’s always utterly, naturally, completely her. and winningly, omnisexually attractive. It’s like Eve before the apple. Not a lapse of modesty but an absence of prurience.”
Kirsten Dunst
May 2002
Writer: Michael Shnayerson
“We stand surrounded by serpentine sofas and old industrial clocks at a Los Angeles furniture store…she had the angelic face, the Pre-Raphaelite hair, and an uninhibited charm.”
Gretchen Mol
September 1998
Writer: Ned Zeman
“Her publicity pack consists of a mere half-dozen gooey, Tiger Beat-ish blurbs in which Mol is described, without a whiff of shame, as a “pearl-like Prussian dish” with “Jesus H. Christ cheekbones”and “a face like a tournament rose dipped in whipped cream.” (Actually, those are all from one article. Appallingly, they happen to be accurate.”)
Renée Zellweger
September 1997
Writer: Kevin Sessums
“A pixie, perhaps, but one who can handle a pick-ax. Zellweger, is in fact the newest version of America’s sweetheart.”
Uma Thurman
January 1996
Writer: Alex Shoumatoff
“This exquisite creature seems to have it all: she’s frighteningly intelligent, funny, sweet, unaffected; she has the poise and glamour of the young Bacall, the smoky mysteriousness of Garbo.”