Op-Ed: The real meaning of Vogue’s JLaw-meets-Lady Liberty cover

Don’t be too quick to dismiss the Twitter war launched by Breitbart’s John Carney over the cover of Vogue’s September issue, which features Jennifer Lawrence in a red satin slip dress with the Statue of Liberty in the background. “The Opposition Media [is] attacking us!” wailed Carney — apparently finding any reference to the Statue of Liberty to be an anti-Breitbartian, anti-alt-right (and hence pro-immigration ) political statement.

Predictably, Carney’s complaints were met with derision, He was “reading too much into” the photo; getting “triggered” by the Statue of Liberty. “It’s a magazine cover!” chided GQ’s Jay Willis (translation: ‘It’s trivial fluff!’). Zara Rahim of Vogue explained that the cover had been shot in June, before the Stephen Miller/Jim Acosta/Emma Lazarus kerfuffle over the meaning of Lady Liberty. In other words, it could not possibly be considered a participant in the current debate.

But Willis, Rahim and the rest who dismissed Carney’s point are mistaken.

The imagery in fashion and women’s magazines communicates and creates powerful cultural and political messages, and the intention of the Vogue editors is beside the point. The Lawrence cover appears now, in the aftermath of the Acosta/Miller dustup; it can’t avoid that context.

Annie Leibovitz’s photo glamorizes the subject of immigration, juxtaposing it with celebrity and fashion. Remember when George W. Bush told us to “go shopping” after Sept. 11? There is something of that here too, echoes of using glittering commerce to assuage or soften issues of national unrest, fear about foreign invaders, etc.

So while Breitbart’s philosophy is repellent, Carney is not wrong to feel the power of this image, in which the huddled masses of Ellis Island are subtly evoked, then prettified and homogenized by Lawrence.

That said, Carney missed another aspect of the message (one that might have pleased him could he interpret it): Vogue featured a blue-eyed, blond, thin white woman with the Statue of Liberty and the cover line “American Beauty.” This is not a wildly leftist endorsement of open immigration. It’s the opposite: a throwback to a view of female perfection as it has been defined for centuries, absent any overt ethnicity other than “pretty/white.” Such a vision of beauty is entirely in keeping with an alt-right, Breitbart-style point of view.

What Carney gets right, and his enemies get wrong, is that images like this one have meanings that exceed the intention of their creators. The alt-right pushes buttons. Those who want to push back need to admit that the messages found in fashion magazines contain far more meaning than simply “pretty dress for sale.”

Rhonda Garelick is the author of “Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History.” She is a professor of performing arts and English at the University of Nebraska.

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