Is This the Best Magazine Cover of the Past Forty Years?

I don't think so.

I'm a Beatles fan and I always hated that picture. The look of utter indifference on Yoko Ono's face always struck me as strangely anomalous. For those of a more sinister turn, it may seem emblematic of their worst suspicions about Ono, that she was a sort of golddigger. Lennon, of course, was no choir boy and Jack Douglas, the producer of their joint project, Double Fantasy, once reported that Ono was afraid of incurring Ono's displeasure.

The picture is strange in another way. It clearly was meant to allude to the first joint Lennon-Ono project, Two Virgins. On the front and back covers of it, both appear naked. Perhaps Ono rejected suggestions that she appear au naturelle here. (Which is absolutely fine with me, by the way.) But the effect of the naked Lennon next to the clothed Ono is that it gives him the appearance of an almost pathetic dependence, an impression only deepened by his nearly fetal posture. This adds to the suspicion held by many, apparently unwarranted of Ono acting as a kind of Svengali to Lennon.

(An interesting side note to make is that in most Hollywood movies and TV shows, women in love scenes with men are far more likely to be shown naked or nearly-naked than their partners. I don't think it's a great stretch to believe this is so because sexist men like the notion of women being vulnerable and in need of their protection and their "superior" acumen as lovers. So, at least at one level, the Lennon-Ono photo is a reversal of that unfortunate fact.)

Whatever, I always thought the picture was stupid, silly, and self-indulgent.

(Thanks to Althouse for putting me onto this momentous story.)