What’s going on here?
I’m not an O Magazine reader, but when I ran across this cover in my local grocery store, I did a double take.
This is the first time Oprah has shared her magazine’s cover with someone else, and it’s just plain weird. Don’t get me wrong, Michelle Obama is a fine choice and she looks great. Michelle always looks great.
But Oprah looks so funky, at first I thought this was a parody.
It’s not about her weight, which ranks just slightly ahead of lesbianism in her public obsessions. It’s about really bad hair and makeup choices, and the strange expression on her face.
What’s this about? Is Oprah afraid of looking like a dyke?
Ironically, when she turned 50, she looked classier and more elegant. Now, four years later, she looks like an aging prom queen.
There was a familiarity I couldn’t quite put my finger on… drag queen? Glenda the Good Witch?
No, Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
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Wow. Wow. I can’t believe that isn’t a conscious parody of something, and yet I also can’t believe she’d parody anything while sharing the shot with Michelle Obama.
My friend and I had a little discussion about it yesterday while visiting the book shop in Santa Cruz. She expressed the opinion that’s what’s on Oprah’s face is the naked realization that she’s been dethroned from her long reign as America’s most powerful and fussed-over black woman.
Oddly, looking at it as an outsider, I would SWEAR Oprah wants to take a bite out of Michelle. Maybe this is actually yet another tribute to her obsessive lesbianism craze…