If you haven't heard by now, LeBron James has become one of the few men, and first Black male to grace the cover of Vogue magazine. In the cover shot, King James is posing with supermodel Gisele Bundchen clutching her waist and giving a scowl to the camera, baring his teeth. Some folks aren't happy about the cover, including ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill who said the cover looks too stereotypical.
"Now, maybe the point was to show the contrast between brawn and beauty, masculinity versus femininity, strength versus grace," Hill wrote in her column. "But Vogue's quest to highlight the differences between superstar athletes and supermodels only successfully reinforces the animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes. A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest."
Of course, Hill is referring to the poster of the classic King Kong film from the 1930's. Some fans have said that they didn't even think of the comparison until other people brought it up, others saw the correlation right away. Is this a bad look for LeBron and Black athletes in general? TAN at AOL Fanhouse doesn't think so.
1. This is not a good look for Mr. James,unfortunately. There is the stereotype with African American NBA players and their affinity for "white girls" once they sign that multi-million dollar contract. Is he one of them?
Maybe Mr. James doesn't care about appearing on the cover with her because he doesn't have the affinity? He may not thought about his self image... Who knows? Or maybe he is expressing his underlying feeling toward white women?
My point>> We can't draw conclusions too fast,yet. Time will tell.
Tell-It-Like-It-Is at 2:10AM on Mar 22nd 2008