The Cover That Changed the Conversation
In November 1992, Elizabeth Taylor appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. Although she had been featured on many magazine covers before, this one stood out for a controversial reason: this time, she was holding a condom. The accompanying spread, titled "Liz’s AIDS Odyssey," was ten pages long and true to her character: frank, committed, and completely unbothered by the controversy it would stir.
Image: Firooz Zahedi
By the time the issue hit newsstands, Elizabeth had already spent nearly a decade raising awareness as an AIDS activist— at a time when most of Hollywood was still keeping a careful distance from the crisis. Together with Dr. Michael Gottlieb, she helped found the National AIDS Research Foundation, which soon merged with the AIDS Medical Foundation to become amfAR. She served as its founding national chairman, testifying before Congress, lobbying the White House, and raising millions at a moment when the federal government's response was still dangerously slow. In 1991, she went further, establishing The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to provide direct care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair was an extension of that work, and a way to make the cause visible. The photographs for the feature were taken by Firooz Zahedi, a longtime friend of Elizabeth's. The idea for her to hold the condom in the cover photo came from the magazine, a request that Firooz ran by Elizabeth and to which she agreed with no hesitation.
Image: Firooz Zahedi
The image was immediately controversial, and the reactions came from multiple directions. For many readers, the cover itself was the problem — a condom had never appeared on the cover of a mainstream American magazine in the hands of a figure of Elizabeth's stature. The complaint, at its core, was one of propriety: that Hollywood royalty had no business discussing sex so openly, in such a public forum. What those reactions revealed, perhaps more than anything, was exactly the kind of silence Elizabeth was trying to break. In 1992, AIDS was still deeply stigmatized, and still thought of in much of mainstream American culture as a disease that belonged to other people. The discomfort the image provoked was the point.
Holding a condom on the cover of a major publication was a deliberate act, one designed to push safe sex and sex education into a broader societal conversation that many people, especially public figures, were still refusing to have. As the article exclaimed, Elizabeth had put a face to AIDS activism — not just any face, but one of the most famous faces. And she had done so long before it became, in the magazine's words, "the charitably correct disease."
The controversy this cover caused only confirmed how necessary the moment was. One look at the ease with which Elizabeth appears in this cover photo, and you know that she believes in this message, wholeheartedly. The entire piece is archived on Vanity Fair — read it in full here.