Emily Gould "Shocked" By Her Cover Photo
It's Day 8 of the Emily Gould saga, the former Gawker editor whose first-person blogging narrative that landed the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Our coverage of her is nothing personal, just business—she's officially a "person of interest"! Today's installment: some people, including Gould herself, seem to be offended by the article's accompanying photos, shot by fine art photographer Elinor Carucci. They're "intimate," like the text, but "intimate" also reads as "sexy," and God knows we can't have that. (Gould called them "vaguely cheesecakey" in a NYT Q&A.) Although the Observer wrote today that "the writer was involved in winnowing the photos to a dozen... 'when I saw the cover, I was shocked,' Ms. Gould said on the phone. Did she feel a tad exploited?"
"Ms. Gould paused. 'Yeah, I really don't want to talk about it,'" she told the Observer.
Photographing the young, attractive female writers of first-person narratives has become something of a tradition in New York media. Of course, the accompanying backlash—how dare a photographer or writer acknowledge her sexuality!—is left to the writer to deal with. Everybody else gets to cash their checks and go home.
Carucci, Gould's photographer, is an accomplished fine artist, and the impulse might be to do what she says. (To stretch comparisons... Miley Cyrus also got confused in this way!)