Tomorrow’s February 1st — which means it’s time to dig out that yearly “Is Vanity Fair racist?” headline. Yes, the magazine has unveiled its 2012 Hollywood Issue, and the cover isn’t pretty. No, strike that. It’s a lovely photo, filled with gorgeous, talented starlets. But while there are two women of color — Pariah‘s Adepero Oduye and Paula Patton from Mission Impossible — among the 11 actresses featured on the fold-out cover, all four of the ladies on the left panel that readers will see on newsstands are white. As Jezebel reminds us, this is no fluke: It’s been going on since the ’90s, with some Hollywood Issues excluding non-white actors entirely. Flavorwire editor Caroline Stanley, meanwhile, notes that this isn’t a photographer problem, as several different photographers have shot the cover over the year — it seems to be an editorial decision.
So, what’s going on here? Even if VF was, at one time, unaware of what it was doing, a few years of scrutiny should have gotten its editors thinking about who they aren’t showcasing. Now, we’re left to wonder whether the magazine thinks the risk of putting a non-white actress on the newsstand is so high that it’s worth enduring widespread annual accusations of racism. Readers, what do you think is going on in the VF boardroom?
In the wake of all the SOPA/PIPA fury in recent weeks, we were excited to see this infographic detailing Hollywood’s long, storied and totally inadvisable crusade against technology. We particularly like this statistic: that in 2010, 65% of industry revenue came from sources that the studios had, at one time or another, claimed out put them out of business. Time to learn from your mistakes and evolve with the times! Click through to see the whole infographic, and let us know what you think in the comments! [via BoingBoing]
For the third year running, the editors at The Advocate have put out a list of the “Gayest Cities in America,” an alternative to traditional roundups that focus on popular locations like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles in favor of subjective criteria that awards 1 point for each of the following: LGBT elected city officials; WNBA teams; International Mr. Leather competition semifinalists; Imperial Court chapters; softball teams that competed in the Gay Softball World Series; LGBT bookstores; nude yoga; transgender protections; and concerts by Gossip, the Cliks, and the Veronicas. Click through see which cities made The Advocate’s top 15, and head over to their website for more on the reasoning behind all of their picks.
Another year is drawing to a close, which means it’s time to make 2010′s roundup of the year’s most controversial magazine covers an annual thing. As usual, 2011 brought plenty of outrage over starlets showing skin, but that’s hardly the only transgression that had parents, pundits, and censors worked into a lather. Meet the grocery store chain that thinks gay families are as explicit as Penthouse, learn why it’s not cool to put Kim Kardashian on the cover of Turkish Cosmo, and take one last, long look at Michele Bachmann’s crazy eyes, after the jump. Read More »
In these divisive times, there’s one thing Americans of all ages, genders, races, and political affiliations can agree upon: We love the Muppets. At least, that’s what we assumed. But according to the heavyweight cultural thinkers at Fox Business, The Muppets is nothing but liberal, anti-capitalist propaganda. In an unintentionally hilarious segment titled “Are Liberals Trying to Brainwash Your Kids Against Capitalism?,” Follow the Money host Eric Bolling goes bananas on the Muppets’ unjust persecution of the movie’s villain, a greedy oil magnate named Tex Richman. Bolling calls the film “class warfare,” and pundit Dan Gainor, of the conservative Media Research Center, concludes, ”What they’re telling our kids is what they told you in the movie The Matrix: that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth.” That is not exactly what we got out of the feel-good movie of the year, but, amazingly, things only devolve from there. Occupy Wall Street is invoked. A pretty, liberal straw woman is repeatedly shouted down. Barney Frank’s appearance is compared to that of a Muppet. We recommend watching the entire, seven-minute segment with your mouth hanging open. Read More »
Occupy Wall Street and the deaths of Osama bin Laden, Steve Jobs, and Amy Winehouse may have been among the year’s biggest news stories — but not on Facebook. The social networking monolith has published a list of 2011′s 40 most shared articles, and none of those topics makes the top ten. While the #1 story — The New York Times‘ satellite photos of the Japan earthquake — is hard to argue with, the rest of the list includes two pieces on the “new zodiac signs” hoax, three animal curiosities, something called “Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps,” and, of course, “You’ll freak when you see the new Facebook.” Puzzle over the ten most-shared stories of 2011 after the jump, then visit Facebook’s blog for the entire top 40.
We’ve found the Sophia Petrillo of social media. She’s related to Chacho Puebla and is the subject of his new photo series, Grandmother Tips. It’s a fun collection of advice and tips about various forms of social media and Internet hangouts like Vimeo. Although there’s a lot of timeless advice about money and relationships that our elders try to pass down to us, the times are a-changin’. Puebla’s tips include the humorous worries of a new generation. Click through to find out what your grandmother never told you. Read More »
If you’ve visited a newsstand in the past decade or so, then you know it’s impossible to escape digital retouching — and we’re not just talking about the covers of fashion magazines. Tired of all of the “impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models” overrunning the media, researchers Hany Farid and Eric Kee of Dartmouth College have created a new algorithm that mimics human perceptions and can detect when a model’s face has been retouched using Photoshop with 80% accuracy. “The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body-image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children,” they write in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They believe that if viewers know how much an image has been altered, it might help. Read More »
Yanko Tsvetkov’s Mapping Stereotypes project looks at the world’s misguided opinions about their neighbors far and wide. The Bulgarian-born, London-based designer entertains what Americans — who exist in the “civilized world” — really think about the rest of the map. (Hint: California is loaded with “fake boobs and oranges” and Alaska is land of the hockey moms.) Tsvetkov’s works also poke at Europe’s stereotypical worldviews, adding what the Vatican feels about those “frigid women” and where gay men go to drink “posh beer.” Click through for some amusing impressions. Read More »
Mapping thirty years of Apple products ranging from 1983′s Apple IIe to this year’s iPhone 4S, Pop Chart Lab has released The Insanely Great History of Apple infographic print. Sorted according to type and graphing the connections between form and function, it’s clear to see that Apple has created some stellar — and dare we say, sexy — products over the years. Bask in the rainbow-licious glow of Apple’s full-size history over here. We think the print still holds up at a distance from a design perspective (must be that lovely retro wave), but if you need more personal time with it, pick up a print on PCL’s website before this limited edition run sells out.
