Cover of Vogue 2008 featuring LeBron James and Gisele

This piece is the cover of Vogue for April 2008 photographed by Annie Leibovitz featuring NBA basketball player LeBron James and Brazilian fashion model Gisele Bündchen. The work compares LeBron's broad masculine figure to Gisele's slim feminine figure in its “Shape Issue” featuring articles about body building and dressing.

The cover came under heavy fire for playing into stereotypes and portraying LeBron as a “brute” caricature. The cover is frequently compared to the 1917 WWI poster “Destroy This Mad Brute” by Harry Hopps. Jaida Noble in her 2022 paper “JUSTIFYING INJUSTICE: HOW CARICATURED DEPICTIONS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IMPACTED WORLDWIDE PERCEPTION” references the cover and elaborates more on the brute stereotype.

The brute caricature is arguably the most deadly caricature on this list. Depicting Black men as violent and hypersexual rapists of white women, this caricature was used as a way to villainize Black men during the height of the abolitionist movement and reconstruction era… 

In the present day, the brute caricature still makes a massive impact... In 2008… Vogue was under hot water when accused of photographing professional basketball player, LeBron James, with model Gisele Bündchen in a suspiciously similar way to a World War I poster by Harry R. Hopps (1917). The poster depicts Germany as a wild gorilla holding a club and a white woman. The caption above the image reads, “Destroy this mad brute." James is holding Bündchen, who is wearing a similar dress to the woman in the poster, in one hand, while dribbling a basketball in his other hand in place of a club. Depicting Black people as apes is a common caricature meant to humiliate and dehumanize them.

Patrick O'Connell, a spokesperson for Vogue, commented “the magazine sought to celebrate two superstars at the top of their game.” The cover sparked a larger debate on the portrayal of black athletes vs their white counterparts. Black athletes often are portrayed in a beastly aggressive light, while white athletes are pictured laughing, smiling, and champions.

While arguments about its controversial nature vary, its suffice to say this Vogue cover will go down in infamy. Widely, the cover has been regarded by critics as racially insensitive and a failure.