Too Bad Octavia Spencer's Gorgeous Elle Cover Won't Be on Newsstands

The Women In Hollywood issue of Elle magazine features a beautiful photo of Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer: Nice lighting, pretty makeup, come-hither gaze, shiny hair. Well done! We’re willing to forget all about that unfortunate Elle cover starring Gabby Sidibe, in which her hair/weave/wig looked awful and her skin was lighter, even though the editor-in-chief denied intentionally doing so.

It’s refreshing to see a non-skinny woman get attention from the fashion mag, and it’s always great when a ladymag interrupts the parade of fair-skinned blondes to highlight a woman of color. That said, The Huffington Post has a point here:

The closeup shot, showing very little of the star’s body, is typical of the fashion magazine covers we’ve seen in the past of curvy stars (see: Adele and Jennifer Hudson on Vogue).

And! More important: There’s a catch: The Octavia Spencer cover is a subscriber cover. Only for subscribers! It’s one of eight total covers; on the newsstand, the covermodel is Sarah Jessica Parker. The other ladies honored with subscriber covers include Elle Fanning, Kristen Wiig, Susan Sarandon, Uma Thurman, Cate Blanchett and Shirley MacLaine.

Elle does this every year — a newsstand cover that’s different from the array of covers for subscribers. We got excited thinking about Octavia Spencer looking smoking hot on newsstands, but we’ll take what we can get: At least she was included.