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Readers are not OK with the 'Newsweek’ balloon penis cover

Just nope.

Sasha Lekach

on November 9, 2017

Readers are not OK with the 'Newsweek’ balloon penis cover

The new "Newsweek" cover is being called out as the wrong way to talk about sexual harassment and power. Credit: Steve Meddle/REX/Shutterstock

Newsweek's new cover story is about sexual harassment, power, and women fighting back from a long history of systemic abuse. What better way to show this than with a woman's manicured hand poking a needle into an orange penis-shaped balloon on the cover of a national magazine?

Yes, that's the actual cover image for Newsweek's new story, "How Donald Trump rules America's Garden of Dicks and sparked the #MeToo movement." Have a look:

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So far, the response to the cover has been strongly negative. The image is considered problematic, insensitive, and as Slate put it, "wrong." For survivors of sexual assault and harassment, this is an insult, minimizing the horror of predators' exploitative, disgusting behavior.

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Like many said, the takedown of powerful men like producer Harvey Weinstein isn't about harming men's genitals.

Newsweek missed the mark. Also, just nope.

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Within the online story, the lead image is very different. It features a collage of accused harassers, all men.

Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.