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Why wait until the end of January for Graydon Carter's inevitable exercise in The New Hollywood? Why wait for the inevitable backlash that Vanity Fair is racist for forgetting all the non-white actresses on its cover? It's all starting early now that the "Actress Roundtable" at Janice Min's revamped Hollywood Reporter already has everyone upset about the same thing.
The current complaint is that THR failed to feature any actresses who aren't white talking about personal struggles — a look at the comments on the latest cover story will remind you there are actresses like Beasts of the Southern Wild's Quvenzhané Wallis and Skyfall's Naomie Harris who could have been included in the roundup — not to mention perennial Oscar powerhouse Viola Davis. And, yes, the new issue includes groan-worthy first-hand accounts from Amy Adams, Helen Hunt, Sally Field, and Naomi Watts (who's latest role is a story about the 2004 tsunami's impact on rich white tourists) about the fights they've braved in landing big, important roles.
The thing that caught our eye, though, was that we've heard this complaint before, and seen this cover before. Haven't we? Haven't you? If it does look familiar, it's because Vanity Fair has been doing this — putting caucasian actresses on their "This is Hollywood!" cover year-in and year-out — and somehow managed to generate thousands of conversations on the race topic... without really addressing it. Here's how THR captured the conversation — or at least the cover sales: