BIG LOOK FOR
QUEEN BEY

Interesting take on the celebrity interview in the fashion section of today’s New York Times, triggered by Beyoncé’s appearance on the cover of the Vogue September issue. This is not just any issue, as the story points out—at 832 pages and four pounds, three ounces, it’s the Godzilla of print mags.

What’s noteworthy about this cover is that the standard accompanying Q&A with the subject is nowhere to be found, the piece points out. The absence of the obligatory interview “may be unusual for Vogue, whose representatives declined to comment, but it is no longer unusual for Beyoncé. At some imperceptible point around 2013 to 2014, she appears to have stopped giving face-to-face interviews…

“Daphne A. Brooks, a Yale professor who teaches a class on black women and popular music culture that includes Beyoncé’s music (she is on sabbatical, finishing a book that will, in part, discuss Beyoncé), views her inaccessibility as a hard-won privilege, a reclamation of privacy not historically accorded to African-American women. ‘She’s been able to reach this level of stardom in which she’s managed—in a way that I really think is unique even among other black women entertainers—hyper-visibility and inaccessibility simultaneously,’ Professor Brooks said.

“She called it ‘refreshing’ to think that Beyoncé’s reticence in the news media would challenge her listeners ‘to think about the art first,’ as opposed to fostering a presumption about ‘getting closer to the entertainer.’”

Now that’s heavy. Never has such significance been attached to the cover of a fashion mag.