Vogue Portugal has been criticized for insensitive treatment of mental health on one of its latest magazine covers.
The image — one of four covers created for its July/August “Madness” issue — features model Simona Kirchnerova crouched in a bath flanked by two nurses, with one pouring water over her head.
The cover has been criticized both for attempting to glamorize mental illness and for the use of the outdated term “madness.”
Portuguese model Sara Sampaio commented on Vogue Portugal’s Instagram page: “These kinds of pictures should not be representing the conversation about mental health! I think it’s very bad taste!”
“Promoting the aesthetics of mental health is very problematic. It’s never a fashion, that is so invalidating. Not to mention the history of women and mental illness. There are hundreds of stories of abuse where women are at their most vulnerable,” clinical psychologist Katerina Alexandraki said.
As for why it had decided to do an issue devoted to mental health, on its official Twitter account the magazine said: “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. #themadnessissue. It’s about time.”
Kirchnerova on Instagram revealed that the nurses who posed with her were her close relations: “My career highlight made it to Vogue cover with my mum and my grandma!!! 3 generations on Vogue cover.”
Discussions around mental health in fashion have been controversial.
In September last year, Ayesha Tan Jones, a model who prefers to use the pronouns “they” and “them,” in a Gucci show protested against the use of straitjacket-like coats in the collection, with the note “Mental health is not fashion,” written on their hands.
Jones donated their catwalk fee to mental health charities.
“It’s encouraging to know that the public will no longer stand to see mental illness used as a gimmick,” said Jo Loughran, director of the mental health anti-stigma campaign Time to Change. “When people feel empowered to call out stigma, it can send a powerful message to the world — that stigmatizing mental health problems is never acceptable.”
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