Obsequiousness towards the rich and famous is Vanity Fair‘s whole deal, so it’s really no surprise that the February edition of Vanity Fair Mexico features a lavish feature devoted to US first lady Melania Trump.
Nonetheless, they were probably trying to provoke a reaction when they chose the cover image, which shows her dripping in one-percenter opulence and eating a string of jewels like spaghetti, and they have definitely done so.
Relations between the US and Mexico are already fairly fraught right now, to the point where president Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled a meeting with US counterpart Donald Trump over his plans to build a wall on the border.
While a Vanity Fair cover story is not going to provoke any international incidents on that scale, it probably adds insult to injury in a country where almost half the population of 120 million lives in poverty.
Author Guadalupe Loaeze was one of many prominent Mexicans to criticise the cover, fuming:
“It’s a lack of sensitivity on the part of the publisher. I started reading this and I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want to know anything about the wife of our country’s number one enemy.”
Them’s certainly fightin’ words.
Political analyst and columnist Denise Dresser took to Twitter to say: “Thank you [Vanity Fair Mexico] for putting Melania Trump on the cover. Great example of sensitivity, empathy, patriotism and editorial intelligence.”
Gracias @VanityFairMX por poner a Melania Trump en la portada. Gran ejemplo de sensibilidad, empatía, patriotismo e inteligencia editorial ?? pic.twitter.com/uTeiySJXfl
— Denise Dresser (@DeniseDresserG) January 26, 2017
The feature on Melania, which originally ran in GQ last year, concerns “her (turbulent) family past, the tactics for dealing with her husband and how she plans to turn herself into the new Jackie Kennedy.”
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Twitter.
