Well, what do we have here?
Vanity Fair published their annual ‘Hollywood Issue’ cover and this year it features several (not just one) Black actors and actresses.
The front fold of the cover features Julia Roberts and George Clooney but also Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) and Idris Elba (“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”).
On the second fold, Jared Leto is joined by three Black stars — Lupita Nyong’o (“Slave”), Naomie Harris (“Mandela”), and Michael B. Jordan (“Fruitvale Station”).
The final inside fold features Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in “42,” Brie Larson (“Short Term 12?), Margot Robbie (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) and Léa Seydoux (“Blue is the Warmest Color”).
Salon.com points out:
Compare this to the 2011 cover, in which only two of fifteen cover subjects were nonwhite — none of them on the front fold, or the regrettable whites-only 2010 cover. Last year, the front fold featured Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and Ben Affleck while inner folds featured black actresses Quvenzhané Wallis and Kerry Washington, prompting Jezebel to write: “Vanity Fair has been pushing the black people off of the main cover and over to the right so they’ll get folded up on the newsstand consistently.” This year, that pattern ended.
Progress, people!
