Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue Lacks Both Color And Newness

In case you haven’t heard, this year’s Vanity Fair Hollywood issue is extremely monochromatic. Over the years, VF has often included at least one, sometimes two, people who can check an ethnic box other than Caucasian, but not this year. The lack of color in the cover story is surprising, and — to be honest — pretty disappointing. Not the least because….well where is Gabourey Sidibe, whose jaw-dropping, and now Oscar-nominated, debut performance in Precious floored just about everyone. Really? Getting an Oscar nom your first time out doesn’t merit a cover nod?

The article opens by describing Abbie Cornish’s “cupid’s-bow lips, the downy-soft cheeks, the button nose.” As  Joanna Douglas on Yahoo’s Shine blog pointed out, there are a slew of non-white actresses (Avatar’s Zoe Saldana? Slum Dog Millionaire’s Frieda Pinto?) who could have shared in the pastel-clad glory on sun-soaked grass.

But that’s not the only curious component to the current VF issue.  Two of the actresses in their “New Decade: New Holly” article were actually  featured in 2008 as “Hollywood’s New Wave.” Yup. Some of yesteryear’s up-and-comers are…still up-and-coming?  Behold:

That would be Kristen Stewart on the left and Amanda Seyfried on the right, both of whom also landed this year’s cover.

So what difference does two years make in budding-starlet time? A lot. In 2008, Amanda Seyfried was best known as the girl in Mean Girls whose breasts could tell the weather, and now, she’s established herself as a presence on HBO’s Big Love, as well as the go-to-girl for remakes of Nicholas Sparks books (Dear John and Letters to Juliet–not Nicholas Sparks but eerily similar–come out within the next few months.)

And as for Ms. Bella Swan? Well, despite the fact that she’s raked in millions and obtained an astronomical level of fame that will allow her to land almost any role she desires, she looked much happier back in ‘08. Twilight had yet to break, and in these photos, she seems much happier with her nascent level of fame. Or perhaps it’s because she got to fondle Blake Lively’s derriere:

Either way, the fact remains that both Seyfried’s and Stewart’s careers have skyrocketed since Vanity Fair first pegged them as faces to watch. So why have they once again been named a face to watch? Was there such a lack of talented, actresses that Vanity Fair felt compelled to feature these starlets twice?

share this post

filed under