Jan 25th, 2007
So. Not. Cool.
The latest cover of Advocate Magazine is stunning. But not in a good way.
This is Kristanna Loken, now on The L-Word holding a lit cigarette and smoke coming out of her mouth.
“Smokin’”??
Y’know: cuz smoking makes anybody kewl!
And for an added touch of irony, the top text on the cover (for a different article) reads: “To Our Health.”
One look at this and I was stunned. Speechless.
Our country is fighting an epidemic of nicotine addiction, and the American Legacy Foundation provides evidence that cigarette companies have developed specific marketing strategies to get homeless people and LGBT people to become smokers. (Respectfully coined “Project SCUM.”) What’s more, a higher percentage of LGBT youth smoke compared to their non-LGBT counterparts.
Besides this photo being a display of very very poor judgment at the magazine, it’s comical to imagine the art and editorial departments putting their heads together and thinking it would be necessary to spoon-feed readers a visual pun to get them to grasp that she’s attractive.
Ohhh….I get it. She’s smoking. And she is smokin’.
Very clever.
I hope Advocate is faced with a mountain of letters questioning this reckless misstep.
And a follow-up question: Did Loken think for a minute about her responsibility as a de facto role model to LGBT youth to set an example by — among other things — not glamorizing smoking?
I hope you sent this blog entry to the Advocate.
Funny, this news just came in today:
“A study of Canadian gays shows that members of the LGBT community are twice as likely to smoke tobacco as members of the general population.”
Like you said….
Smoking once in a while is okay. In a truly free country we should be allowed to smoke cigarettes in the same way we should be allowed to choose who to marry or whether or not to have children.
Best,
James
Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little bit?
Personally, I think she looks hot smoking.
Hi, I’m from Mexico, here still exist a lot of “machismo” and prejudices that we the LGBT community have to fight against, and I cant believe that someone would use a magazine cover or smoking to atack the community. Do you have any idea the percentage of “non-LGBT” that are really in the closet? Scared of expresing and living the way they feel because of people who doesn’t have anything better to do than finding the way to criticize diversity. So, am I supposed to believe what your statistics say about smoking when you didn’t even consider how mistaken and unreliable these are. I agree that we all have the right to express our thoughts, but if we are going to talk about something we don’t know, we should at least read a little bit on the subject and consider all the aspects before we share them. Believe me, I respect your way of thinking, and don’t take me wrong, I think you have a really good writing style to be writing about a cover that you don’t even like. I think that more important things are going on in your contry that you should write about.
Thanks for reading my opinion and hope you understand my position.
Bye
Majo
I don’t understand Majo’s issues with Abigail’s post.
Who does Majo think is using “a magazine cover or smoking to attack the community”? and how?
Which of Abigail’s statistics does Majo think are “mistaken and unreliable” and why?
If smoking related diseases are killing hundreds of thousands of people every year, what does Majo think are “more important things”?
cheers,
beach