Vanity Fair is a magazine which represents the best in the business of pop culture and the arts. Featuring some of the best writers, and some of the most prolific interviews of a generation, and groundbreaking photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino.
But then for me, they’ve completely shot that reputation in the face by choosing to publicise an interview on Margot Robbie, which was more about how the writer, Rich Cohen, was creaming himself just looking at her than the incredible body of work she has amassed in a few short years.
This article not only completely disregards Robbie’s career, it also entirely insults every Australian who ever lived, by giving possibly the worst description of what it means to be Australian I’ve ever heard. Like, bravo man, you know what a couple of the names of our states are. But you know nothing about the rest of the country. If you don’t believe me, read this glorious description of our people:
Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people. They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney. In the morning, they watch Australia’s Today show. In other words, it’s just like America, only different. When everyone here is awake, everyone there is asleep, which makes it a perfect perch from which to study our customs, habits, accents.
Now, I have problems with this for a few reasons, aside from the hideous generalizing of us. The first being “they live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth”.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a single person that actually watches soap operas anymore. Home and Away is the only Aussie soap we still have that has managed to remain in the prime time slot, so I think that shows we don’t care too much about them, let alone ‘live and die by the plot turns’. I think he must’ve forgotten to research Robbie’s previous work as the star of one of these soaps that her throwback people are so fond of.
To me, it seems like Cohen has found out what a couple of Australia’s capitol cities are and then heard we have a tv show called Home and Away and just assumed that’s all we do. It’s laziness at best, and insulting at worst.
He uses phrases that would’ve gotten us dressed down in any high school English class for being simplistic and broad. And for a magazine like Vanity Fair, it should never have gotten past the editors.
Aside from that, the interview is void of any mention of Robbie’s work other than work that seemed to titillate the interviewer. Frankly, it’s inappropriate. We all have eyes, we all know Margot Robbie is beautiful.
She is #goals. As a heterosexual woman, I can confidently say she’s genetically blessed in all ways and she is, by all objective views, hot. But she’s also incredibly successful, and for a 26 year old, her CV looks better than most!
She has worked with some of the greats in Hollywood, both actors and directors, and has quickly become one of Australia’s biggest actors. She has been nominated for BAFTA‘s and appeared in films that have been nominated for Academy Awards, and all that Cohen can manage to talk about is that she’s hot, and comes from a simple and backwards country. His description of her isn’t even well done. It sounds, honestly, like he’s had a wet dream and wrote down what it felt like.
America is so far gone, we have to go to Australia to find a girl next door. In case you’ve missed it, her name is Margot Robbie. She is 26 and beautiful, not in that otherworldly, catwalk way but in a minor knock-around key, a blue mood, a slow dance. She is blonde but dark at the roots. She is tall but only with the help of certain shoes. She can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character.
Cohen, and the editors at Vanity Fair really need to take a good hard look at themselves. This shit isn’t good enough. Not for journalists, not for their magazine, not for the name that represents dozens of other phenomenal talents, and certainly not for Margot Robbie. She is a talented young actress who deserves more than to be reduced to a collection of body parts that induces desire in lesser men. And Australians deserve more than to be reduced to a simplified stereotype, and dismissed as a simple people.
Sorry Rich Cohen, but we aren’t buying it.