Scandal star, Kerry Washington will be on the cover of the August issue of Vanity Fair.

And, as Dodai Stewart at Jezebel points out, this is actually remarkable.

The last time a black women had a solo Vanity Fair cover was in 2005!

 

In February, we questioned why Kerry Washington had yet to be featured on a major magazine cover. She’d done Essence and Ebony — great! — but since Scandal was a ratings juggernaut and she’d added an Oscar-nominated film (Django Unchained) to her resume, she should have had more love from the mainstream mags.

 

In May, Washington was featured on the cover of Elle. As Jenna wrote then, this was:

 

Nine years after starring in the Oscar-nominated Ray, seven years after her role in the Oscar-nominated The Last King of Scotland, thirteen months after becoming the first black woman to be cast in a lead role in a network drama since 1974, five months after the release of her latest Oscar-nominated movie, the blockbuster Django Unchained, and six weeks after her show topped 8 million weekly viewers.

 

Since Vanity Fair is obsessed with pop culture, politics and current affairs, you’d think that the star of Scandal — a show set within the intricate machinery inside the D.C. beltway and the White House — would eventually make the cover. But the truth is, Kerry Washington’s cover is quite a surprise, considering VF’s history.

 

The last time VF had a black woman on the cover was in January 2007. The woman was Beyoncé, and she shared the cover with Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx. (There have been black men featured more recently; in June 2010 footballer Didier Drogba (posing with Cristiano Ronaldo) was on the cover; in Februrary 2010 Tiger Woods was featured; in September 2009 the late Michael Jackson was honored. The March 2009 issue had Barack Obama. A small gallery of back issues is here.) To be clear: It’s been SIX years since Vanity Fair had a black woman on the cover, and the last time a black woman had a cover to herself was Beyoncé in 2005.

Read the entire article here.

 

So, what do you think of Kerry Washington’s appearance on Vanity Fair?

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