Demi Lovato, Mexican-American, Latina Celebrity, Nude, in Vanity Fair Magazine or "Who says Latinas/os in Hollywood don't get enough exposure?"

Some of the images are striking, star Demi Lovato fierce, sans makeup...

...others are provocative, still strong, but also very 21st century edgy, "meta"

...the whole premise of the shoot is Lovato's rawness, strength, spontaneity, but there is something else working there as well, the reincarnation of a trope documented throughout Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America. There, illustrated ad nauseum, is revealed the birth of the sexualized, cinematic "Mexican"--an organism whose sexuality comes before the psyche, in fact, a sexuality that is always already writ large, in the genes and on the forehead.

Patrick Ecclesine's photographic collaboration with Lovato reveals a star in metamorphosis and while we cannot look away (nor should we), we should also understand the dynamics of that glance.

See the backstory, with video, here.