What People Think About the 'Planet Hillary' Cover

Looking through news and social media this morning, I found it odd that folks were still talking about Time's sexist Hillary Clinton magazine cover from last week. Then I realized — D'oh! — they weren't. They were actually commenting on the New York Times Magazine's upcoming Hillary Clinton cover, which is somewhat less sexist but equally bizarre. Either magazine art directors are collectively losing all gosh-darn editorial judgement, or they're banking on these images to attract far more attention than a plain portrait-style cover would. And since it is probably the latter: Well, well-played, sirs and madames. Because people are certainly noticing and talking about these covers.

Our own Jenny Hollander approves of the latest cover. "We have literally neither seen Hillary like that before. But we quite like it," she wrote yesterday. Other reactions from feminist-minded folks have been mixed.

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair called the cover "a legitimate Dadaist masterpiece." And a lot of folks have already been having fun mocking and meme-ifying the image. Flavorwire has created eight further interpretations of what it calls "the weirdest NY Times Magazine cover of all time," including this gem:

And designer Chris Carlon tweeted this obviously begging-to-happen Planet Hillary/wrecking ball mashup:

Here's perhaps my favorite tweet about Planet Hillary:

Zing! For what it's worth, I'm personally not a fan, but for reasons I can't quite pinpoint. At first I felt the image was too unflattering, emphasizing Clinton's facial creases and wrinkles too much. But what — I'd prefer they airbrush her into poreless oblivion? No, I guess not (male politicians don't get that treatment). The Atlantic offers up the original image the New York Times Magazine was going to use, however, and I think it's preferable, getting the point across without being so inexplicably questionable.

Oh, and p.s. — lest we forget in all this Planet Hillary hilarity — there is actually a story that goes along with the cover image. You can read it here.

Image: New York Times