Kamala Harris covers the digital issue of Vogue, discusses her love of Venn diagrams

Kamala Harris covers the November digital cover of Vogue Magazine, with the cover photo and editorial taken by none other than Annie Leibovitz. I saw the cover pop up on my social media feed early on Friday, and I honestly thought it was some fan-made cover. I did not realize it was real until I saw it for the sixth time – “oh, Vogue seriously did that?” A lot of people think the cover is beautiful and powerful. I think Kamala Harris is beautiful and powerful. But the cover itself is not great, in my opinion, and this is what you get when you hire Annie Leibovitz to photograph a woman of color. Without analyzing every single little thing wrong here, I’ll just say that it’s giving Princess Kate’s Mother’s Day frankenphoto. If the palace had released a photo this heavily manipulated, there would be widespread outrage. But when it’s Vogue, people shrug, I guess. The biggest issue is what they did to her head, but the angle of the shot makes it look like she has giant hands and a broken arm. The proportions are a mess.

The Vogue cover story is really well-done – you can read the full piece here. There’s a lot about Harris’s background, her beloved mother, her close friends and her inclusive political and personal life. One quote from VP Harris sums up everything in her life: “People, at this point, have memes about my love of Venn diagrams. You’re never going to have a complete agreement on all the issues. But you can find common ground—and expand that.” Vogue also retells the classic story of Doug Emhoff being stranded in LA that weekend when President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his VP. Emhoff was in SoulCycle with a friend, having left his phone in the car. When he finally got back to his phone, there were hundreds of messages, including one from his wife saying “where the f–k are you??” It’s a great story. They also retell the story about what VP Harris did right after Biden’s endorsement – she was on the phone for hours that day, putting together the Harris coalition and calling in every IOU chip she had gathered over eight years as a senator and vice president.

The Vogue piece also highlights something interesting which has been spoken about on the edge of this campaign cycle, but will be analyzed more heavily once all of the votes are tallied. Harris is not running as a wide-eyed idealist or a generational political unicorn – she’s running as a pragmatist from the middle class, a worker who will put her head down and get sh-t done. It’s also notable that she’s not really leading with “I could be the first female president” or any kind of identity politics. Also: Nancy Pelosi is still backtracking in this Vogue piece – she’s now insisting that even if she had gotten her wish for an open primary in July and August, she had every confidence that VP Harris would have won! Sure.

Cover courtesy of Vogue, additional photos courtesy of Cover Images.