What do a suspected terrorist, the pyramids of Giza, and a very pregnant Demi Moore have in common? They’ve all graced what are now considered some of the most controversial magazine covers of all time. On Wednesday, Rolling Stone released a preview of its upcoming issue, featuring what many perceived to be a glamorized portrait of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Still fresh from the April attack, many Americans were furious. The issue was quickly banned from stores across the nation, and many threatened to cancel subscriptions to the music magazine. But there’s nothing new about a rabble-rousing magazine cover. Here are some that have thoroughly ruffled our national feathers.
With those shaggy curls, piercing gaze, and casual lean, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have been a rock star. Only he’s not: the 19-year-old is a suspected terrorist awaiting trial on charges that could carry the death penalty and allegedly responsible for the killing of three and horrific injury of almost 300. When Rolling Stone released the cover, there was an immediate outcry, with many saying it glorified the teen. Some noted a resemblance between Tsarnaev’s portrayal and a 1991 cover featuring Jim Morrison of the Doors. Thousands took to the Internet to protest and boycott the cover, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino wrote a scathing letter to publisher Jann Wenner, lambasting the iconic magazine for rewarding “a terrorist with celebrity treatment.” Menino ended with a zinger: “The survivors of the Boston attacks deserve Rolling Stone cover stories, though I no longer feel that Rolling Stone deserves them,” he wrote. If Rolling Stone was hoping to move more copies, the plan backfired: before the issue was even released, four major chains, including CVS and Walgreens, pledged not to stock it in their stores. The magazine responded with a statement, saying, “The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.” Despite being mainly a music magazine, Rolling Stone certainly isn’t immune to controversy. It raised a similar fury for its 1970 cover of cult leader Charles Manson.
Rolling Stone
Well, if that isn’t a double entendre, we don’t know what is. The July 2013 cover of Bloomberg Businessweek noted the discrepancy between the notoriously cash-flush perception of hedge funds and their less-than-expected performances with two very strategically placed arrows. “Could be up to the reader to decide,” a spokesperson for the magazine said, “but we do take great care to be very precise when creating our covers.”
Bloomberg Businessweek
What was supposed to be a dignified, professional headshot of outgoing President Bill Clinton, who had just been subjected to an impeachment vote for his dalliance with intern Monica Lewinsky, hit the stands like this in 2000. “Mr. President, will you show me the love?” photographer Platon asked Clinton after a series of plain old shots. Critics and the public were horrified at the revealing depiction, decrying it as lewd and disgusting. The photo was the last official portrait of Clinton’s presidency.
Esquire
When Obama was in the midst of his 2008 presidential campaign, The New Yorker lampooned fears of the candidate’s so-called Muslim origins with a picture of a militant Barack and Michelle fist bumping as an American flag burned in the background. Editor David Remnick defended the cover as satire, saying the image “holds up a mirror” to the ridiculous rumors spreading about Obama’s terrorist affiliations, but Obama and Republican candidate John McCain’s teams both decried it as “tasteless and offensive.” The public was similarly outraged, and many threatened to cancel their subscriptions.
The New Yorker
A wide-eyed Michele Bachmann gazing upward from the cover of a 2011 edition of Newsweek hit a chord for critics of the media’s supposedly liberal slant. The presidential candidate’s portrayal was criticized as sexist and partisan. “Can anyone really say with a straight face that the mainstream media is not totally biased against conservatives?” one blogger asked. “Michele Bachmann’s intensity is galvanizing voters in Iowa right now,” editor Tina Brown explained. “Newsweek’s cover captures that.” But the intense gaze of Bachmann was Internet bait, and it soon took on a life of its own, morphing into a widespread meme and even a Halloween mask.
Newsweek
America can take a joke when it’s on the cover of a magazine called National Lampoon, right? In 1973, the humor rag came out with this now-classic photo of a nervous dog with a pistol to its head. There wasn’t really an outcry, but some animal cruelty vigilantes were unhappy with the photograph.
National Lampoon
It hardly seems incendiary now, but when this Annie Leibovitz cover shot of a seven-months-pregnant Demi Moore was released in August 1991, many were outraged over the “offensive” picture, and Vanity Fair even wrapped the issue in a white envelope upon release to lessen the backlash. Some stores added their own brown bag cover. But the issue, said to be seen by an estimated 100 million, sparked many copycats in the coming years. Moore later said she saw the cover as a “feminist statement,” and just a year after the controversial issue, she was back on the cover of Vanity Fair to commemorate its anniversary, again nude, in a full suit of body paint.
Vanity Fair
A 2012 Time magazine cover on breastfeeding older children featured a real-life mom and son: 26-year-old Jamie Grumet and her 3-year-old, Aram, who posed for the exposing picture. Critics both praised and bashed the photo, taking to Twitter to call it ridiculous and overdone—or bold and empowering. But Grumet knew what she was in for. “The statement that I wanted to make was this is a normal option for your child and it should not be stigmatized,” she said of the controversy. The editors at Time agreed with her, saying the passion and debate it ignited within the newsroom was enough to make them want to bring the conversation to a national audience.
Time
In 1982, National Geographic released this classic photo of the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Only catch? The magazine, renowned worldwide for its photography, had manipulated the shot, moving the structures closer together to fit the vertical framing better. While photo editors at the time said they had no qualms about adjusting the picture, purists were outraged at the deception. Even the former director of photography for the magazine didn’t agree with his contemporary counterparts, saying it was “like limited nuclear warfare. There ain’t none.”
National Geographic
In a custom-made Playboy chair, model Darine Stern made history in 1971 as the first African-American woman to grace the cover of Playboy magazine. The cover was considered controversial at the time but soon became known as one of the magazine’s most iconic images. Almost 40 years later it was recreated in an homage by none other than Marge Simpson.
Playboy
