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.
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By: Tell-It-Like-It-Is on 3/22/2008 2:10AM
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.
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By: Anthony Morris on 3/29/2008 8:28PM
Yes, I was just saying that very thing. While standing in the check out line at my local book stor I immediately recognized this beauty and the beast, the racist version, big black buck lusting after the all potency endowing, pure as Sweden's snowfall, glorified European woman. This dynamic is immediately recognizable to all except Lebron. But none of our African American athlete's are aware of the imaging dynamic in this racist western culture. They become blinded by their fame and popularity and their miseducation continues. Some of them haven't picked up a book since they left high school. All the imaging from D.W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation up to and including this shot flipped through my mind like the thumbing of pages in cartoon still handbook. And the sad part is that LeBron hasn't a clue to this historic fact of African black male imaging. He, like so many before him, has been hoodwinked, bamboozled and led astray once again by those descended from colonizers of African Americans. Black men are continuously played like yo-yo's by these money hungry gluttons. The black man serves in the mind of the racist colonizer to be nothing but a menacing, bonehead, boogey man - brute one minute and then the next minute he's being lionized and heroified by the same mean spirited, cruel, deceptive schizophrenic hypocrite that just said he was proud of him. The African American community is sensitive to matters like this for a reason. Because Euro/English descended Americans tried to exist in a vacuum of racial homogeny yet was constantly lured by the African's embodient of all that was in their mind, exotic, wild, bestial, savage, animal and simultaneously beautiful yet the African Americans image has always been recontextualized, recreated and reinvented to be something other than that with which it was suppose to be. The latest of these distorted images has resurfaced on the cover a nationaly and internationaly published Euro/English magazine.
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By: Llaiconna on 3/22/2008 7:03AM
I don't think King James thought of the implication os the look on the cover. Vogue may have intentionally set him up for this. Let us not criticize him so strongly. So many offers are coming his way, he possibly may not be weighing the impact of some of them.
That picture does not do him, his race, or his sport justice.
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By: VERA on 3/22/2008 10:53AM
WHAT SOME WON'T DO FOR MONEY..WORST PICTURE (POSE)I HAVE EVER SEEN OF A BLACK SUPER STAR
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By: darry hicks on 3/22/2008 2:03PM
LaBron Is fine , thats his job b/ball and sales.One more thing she is very FINE.
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By: LORRAINE on 3/22/2008 11:13AM
I WOULD HAVE NEVER IMAGINED THAT TILL IT WAS BOUGHT UP. WOW, ONCE AGAIN PUTTING SOMETHING INTO NOTHING IT'S JUST A COVER. IF THE COVER READ BEAUTY AND THE BEAST THEN MAYBE I WOULD BE UPSET, LET JUST GET OVER IT AND ENJOY HIM BEING ON VOGUE.
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By: Big Ben repping Jerzee on 3/22/2008 12:44PM
well i think its just a cover people always trying to make anything positive to a negative its just a cover
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By: Blue on 3/22/2008 12:46PM
I just thin its a nice vogue cover, who cares, giselle is pretty lebron is talented, its not the pretty perfect girl covers VOGUE has all the time, and who even thought about comparing it to King Kong?, who has that kind of time and imagination, why cant it just be a cover with two beautiful people on the front page, atleast it is multi faceted. I did not even associate anything like agression, beauty and the beast or what ever else people are thinking, too much time on peoples hands to think about this. crap.
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By: jonathan on 3/22/2008 1:47PM
give me a break, sounds like ya'll are reachin, lebron is the King. I think jemele has j.b.g.s(jealous black girl syndrome). I'd like the cover even better if lebron was trying to be king kong because he plays like an untamed gorilla
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By: sean on 3/22/2008 1:57PM
its just a cover. to me its looks as if hes dribbling the ball while holding onto a damsel in distress, like hes superman or something. leave it to some brainiac to come up with the notion of him being compared to king kong. whenever a black athlete is getting attention theres always some jackass who has to throw in the race issue. maybe the person who came up with the notion of the cover being likened to king kong is actually a biggoted racist?
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