Dazed Magazine [IG] makes South Sudanese model Nyajuok G a cover girl for their Autumn 2024 ‘The Impossible’ issue. Nyajuok emerged as a new face of Gucci in Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci Ancora Spring 2023 campaign.

One in a larger model gaggle, Nyajuok has emerged as a winner, based on a quick scan of the models’ post-campaign bookings.

Ib Kamara styles Nyajuok G for the Dazed story lensed by Mikael Jansson [IG]. / Hair by Ali Pirzadeh; makeup by Jamal Scott

Joan of Arc and Christian Nationalism

Changing gears, Dazed online has an excellent read ‘Joan of Arc’: a symbol of fascism or feminism?’ by Halima Jabril. It will be added to AOC’s upcoming ‘Worthy Reads’ list — or whatever Anne calls it. All the metallic and medieval references in these fashion images underscore the reality that Joan of Arc is a symbol as grounded in right-wing, Christian nationalism as it is in ‘woke’ culture as a LGBTIQA+ heroine.

Let me say that I read this article with a skeptical mindset — to be transparent with you about my attitude going in. My fears were beyond eased upon completion.

Jabril’s writing is fair and factual, probing all the ways Joan of Arc has been used as symbolic fodder for wide-ranging views on social justice activism and the place of monotheistic religion in our civil societies.

Whatever your perspective, Jabril’s essay is worth reading and she poses all the important considerations in her analysis of what is quickly becoming one of the core issues of our times: Christian nationalism — the good, the bad and the ugly.

In this unnerving moment in American history — one where everything is on the line in the United States — I’m slogging through the critically-important new book ‘OPUS: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church’.

AOC didn’t just hop on the train of concern about OPUS DEI and non-Catholic religious fundamentalism— not after Anne’s four-hour, 2010 one-on-one phone convo with Jeff Sharlet, writer of the 2008 book ‘The Family, The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power’. The book later became a Netflix documentary.

Good job on all fronts, Dazed. Enuf said. ~ Anne