Michelle Obama on Magazine Cover as a Nude Slave; Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?

It is so easy to get mixed messages across cultural lines. However People of African descent in America don't see anything positive about our nation's ugly history of slavery. How could the editor at the Fuera de Serie magazine think it was a good idea to place a picture of First Lady Michelle Obama on cover looking like a slave with her right breast bared?!?

The image is a unauthorized version of a classic French painting and although the gesture was meant to be a positive nod to Obama's public persona ... it didn't work!

Buzzfeed writes:

The image appears on the August 2012 cover of Spanish magazine Fuera de Serie. A number of sites have called the cover inappropriate because it depicts First Lady Michelle Obama in imagery closely associated with slavery.

French artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist completed the "Portrait d'une négresse" by the year 1800 — six years after the abolition of slavery in France (and two years before it was partially reinstated by Napoleon Bonaparte). Critics generally regard the painting as a show of support for feminism and Black rights.

Art historian James Smalls writes that "the artist responded to early nineteenth-century French racialism and the less-than-desirable treatment of women," concluding that "her painting may be seen as a voice of protest, however small, in the discourse over human bondage."

The magazine used the photo to run alongside a story about Obama's popularity and strength in the White House, stating, "Behind every great man there is a great woman." While the Spaniards may understand their own message behind the image, none of us here in the Electronic Village are having it.