‘I would have another one tomorrow’

Oof, I genuinely forgot how bad these Vanity Fair Oscar party photos were this year. Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos looked like they were on an operating table for his-and-hers facelifts. Well, Lauren wants some attention right now, just weeks away from the Met Gala. Lauren and Jeff are co-sponsoring this year’s Met Gala, and they’ll be given the full co-chair honors by Anna Wintour. Legacy media is dying, which is why the New York Times agreed to this bonkers profile of Lauren. I’ve read and covered interviews with her before, and as I’ve said before, I understand how she hooked Jeff Bezos. She’s vivacious, flirtatious, hilariously gaudy and self-effacing. She probably worked him like a rib. But of course, you can’t escape the fact that Sanchez and Bezos are giant a–holes. Even if you argue that 95% of that awfulness is on Jeff Bezos, Sanchez still enables him and fluffs up his bullsh-t. I would argue that she makes him seem less serious and more like a vapid wannabe. Anyway, some highlights from Lauren’s crazy NYT profile:

Jeff and Lauren’s typical day: The newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek, an exclusive private island in Miami often called “Billionaire Bunker.” They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before.
From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. “He looks good, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, “He looks good.”

Lauren wants more babies: Mrs. Sánchez Bezos, 56, adores kids. Having them. Raising them. Encouraging other people to have them. Over several interviews, she repeatedly urged me to have another baby. “Do it!” she said. “I would have another one tomorrow. Tomorrow.” I finally asked if she and Mr. Bezos were considering it, as a couple of her friends had suggested to me. “I would have a baby tomorrow,” she repeated, with a coy smile. (A spokeswoman later called to say Mrs. Sánchez Bezos was not having a baby.)

Lauren was a starf–ker long before she met Bezos: [She’s a] modern-day Brentwood Country Mart Babe Paley who counts Kris Jenner, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lydia Kives, wife of the superconnector Michael Kives, among her close friends. “People act like he’s my new friend,” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of Mr. DiCaprio. “No, I’ve known Leo since I was 25. Twenty-five.”

The crazy Italian wedding: Mrs. Sánchez Bezos gets choked up talking about what the public didn’t see: the toasts by all their children; the high school friends of Mr. Bezos’ whom nobody bothered to photograph. Phones were banned from the ceremony and reception. But “no NDAs!” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said, referring to nondisclosure agreements. “They’re our friends! And you did not see one picture come out of that wedding.”

Jeff Bezos’s politics: Mr. Bezos personally intervened to stop a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris by [the Washington Post], according to newsroom employees. (He argued in a note to readers that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” and “create a perception of bias.”) He then attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration last year, seated front and center. Amazon paid roughly $40 million to license “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady — a move that some critics saw as an attempt to curry favor with President Trump… When I asked her opinion of Mr. Trump, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos, who is breezy and agile at pivoting back to the fun topics, waved me off. “I am not talking politics,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no. No way.” People close to Mrs. Sánchez Bezos often argue that it’s not fair to criticize her for her husband’s political and business decisions. The frequent refrain is, “What does that have to do with Lauren?” But that is the downside to being a conjoined organism to a master of the universe: It all has to do with you.

Lauren on the constant criticism: The constant criticism wears on her, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said. “I can never imagine writing something mean on somebody’s Instagram,” she added. “It would actually break my heart. I want positive: You look great. You’re amazing. I want to just give everyone flowers. Why wouldn’t you?” Recently, her eldest son, Nikko, whom she shares with the former National Football League tight end Tony Gonzalez, installed an app on her phone to block her from using social media during the day.

This year’s Met Gala: Mrs. Sánchez Bezos told me that Ms. Wintour had reached out directly to ask if the couple would back the fund-raiser. “Anna called me, and I was like, ‘Anna who?’” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos joked, then called it “such an honor.” When I asked Mrs. Sánchez Bezos about rumors that she and her husband were buying Vogue’s parent company, Condé Nast, she teased, “I wish!” She then said, “No.”

She hired Law Roach to give her a classy makeover: Mrs. Sánchez Bezos has appeared in Vogue twice, including a cover spread on her wedding, and she recently enlisted stylist-to-the-stars Law Roach to help her with her image in advance of the Met Gala. Ms. Wintour was once famously averse to featuring large-busted women in the magazine, I pointed out. Mrs. Sánchez Bezos shrugged. “Maybe she likes them now,” she said. A lot of the snark about her appearance and her clothes feels rooted in racial stereotypes, she argued. “It’s the shape of my body,” she said. “Is someone going to give me a gunnysack and ask me to put a belt on it and cinch it? I’m Latin. I’m Latin. I’m Latin.”

Her outfit at Trump’s inauguration: That’s not to say she isn’t aware of the backlash to her look. Mrs. Sánchez Bezos thought she had dressed conservatively for Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, in a white Alexander McQueen pantsuit. “I was super proud of myself,” she said. When the event suddenly moved indoors, she removed her coat. The blazer opened, revealing a lace bra. Since they were seated directly behind Mr. Trump, the bra was in pretty much every photo of the event. “I get it,” she said. “No lace at the White House. Noted.”

[From The NY Times]

Like, I legitimately believe there’s a racial element to the discourse about Lauren, but I also think the bulk of the criticism is not about race whatsoever, and it’s actually about class in all forms. Socioeconomic class and “class” as in taste, aesthetics, propriety, grace. Lauren looks tacky because she is tacky, and that’s a conversation about her behavior, her plastic surgery, her horrible style and the sad truth that all of the money in the world can’t buy taste, nice clothes or good-quality cosmetic work for someone who doesn’t know the difference. Oh well.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid. Cover courtesy of Vogue.