The latest front page from Vogue Portugal creates outrage with a photo of a woman in a mental hospital. The magazine is accused of wanting to aestheticize mental illnesses.
Thursday, July 2, the Portuguese edition of the magazine Fashionable unveiled its front page. The cover photo was taken in a setting reminiscent of a mental hospital. A woman is curled up in a bathtub, staring into space. The model is surrounded by two nurses, one of whom is washing her by pouring water on her head.
The front page of this number, called "The Madness Issue", or "The number of madness" in French, does not please everyone. "It's about love. It's about life. It's about us. It's about you. It's about now. It's about health. It's about mental health", writes the fashion magazine on Instagram. Many people reacted on Twitter, including Emma Hope Allwood, fashion manager of the magazine Dazed. For her, as for many other Internet users, Fashionable made an error. "It's difficult to express in one tweet all the emotion it is to have a loved one interned in a psychiatric ward, but to see a cover of Fashionable aestheticizing the thing shocked me so much. There are ways to talk about mental health without being stigmatizing ", she explains.
"In the end, this cover gives the impression that madness is a costume, when you have photographed covers meticulously staged one after the other for decades, it is impossible to have a subject as important as that that doesn't look like a parody in disguise ", replies a woman on Twitter. British DJ Paulette rebels: "I don't even know where to start. Do they care? Do they want to objectify it? I can't see what the fashion program is here. Deaf writing, at a time when compassion for mental health is more necessary than ever. This cover should be removed and an apology made in the next issue. "
On Instagram, Vogue Portugal clarified these intentions. "One of the covers shows a hospital scene where the model's real mother and grandmother take care of her. […] Our intention is to open up the subject of mental health, and to bring the discussion of the institutions, science and people who are involved. […] Mental health is just one of the topics explored in this issue and is not related to the theme of madness but rather covers a aspect of human emotions and human behavior. We recognize the importance of the subject of mental health and our intention, through visual narration, is to highlight the important issues of today ", can we read.
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