Vogue Portugal has been blasted online over one of the four covers for their upcoming July/August 2020 issue.
For "The Madness Issue", one cover shows a woman naked in a bathtub, having water poured over her by two women in nurse uniforms. The publication has since been criticized for perpetuating a regressive and upsetting stereotype of mental illness and psychiatric hospitals.
Model, Sara Sampaio, commented on the Instagram post: "This kind of photo should not be representing the conversation about mental health! I think it’s very bad taste!"
Explaining why the publication decided to devote an issue to the topic of mental health, a tweet about the cover stated: "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, the model featured in the cover, took to Twitter to reveal that she was related to the nurses who posed with her. "My career highlight," she wrote, "made it to Vogue cover with my mum and my grandma!!! 3 generations on Vogue cover."
When photographer Elliot Morgan commented, "Disrespectful and missing the point", Kirchnerova replied, "Explain".
Speaking to The Guardian, Clinical psychologist Dr. Katerina Alexandraki said: "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."
This comes after model, Ayesha Tan Jones, spoke out about the use of straitjacket-like coats in a Gucci show. Writing on Instagram, they asserted: "Presenting these struggles as props for selling clothes in today’s capitalist climate is vulgar, unimaginative and offensive to the millions of people around the world affected by these issues."
