Actor and new mom Jennifer Lawrence, covers the October 2022 issue of American Vogue, meeting Abby Aguirre at Tikkun, a small, intimate spa in Santa Monica, for the interview. Tonne Goodman styles the fashion shoot, with photographer Tina Barney behind the lens./Hair by Jenny Cho; makeup by Fulvia Farolfi.

Barney is best known for her large-scale, color portraits of her family and close friends in New York. 10 of her images are at MOMA in NY. The Jewish Museum also owns Barney’s work and describes her in this way:

“Whereas paparazzi photographs of the wealthy focus on glamorous events that take place in the public eye, Barney's pictures capture casual, often private, moments from an insider's point of view. Her subjects include her extended family reading the Sunday New York Times in the kitchen of the summer cottage, her sister and niece dressed in bathrobes in a pink bathroom, and members of her social circle at the beach. These last images recall Lisette Model's photographs of the French Riviera in the 1930s. However, unlike Model's mocking critique of her elite subjects, Barney's photographs offer an intimate, yet coolly neutral, view of prosperity.”

Baby Cy Maroney

Reluctant initially to speak about her baby son Cy, named for postwar American painter Cy Twombly, one of husband Cooke Maroney’s favorite artists, Lawrence speaks instead about her new film ‘Causeway’. She plays an American soldier who returns to her hometown of New Orleans after a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan. Directed by Broadway-world’s Lila Neugebauer in her first film, ‘Causeway’ is the first movie Lawrence has done with her production company, Excellent Cadaver.

Unlike her blockbuster financial franchises like ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘X-Men’, ‘Causeway’ is a small, meandering and quiet film. Lawrence only knew that she was passionate about the script and moved instantaneously to acquire it. ‘Causeway’ was being shot in late 2019 and then hit a Covid wall before resuming in late 2021. Lawrence married her art gallery love Maroney, director of New York City's Gladstone Gallery.

Hollywood Pay Gap and the Leak

The interview zigs and zags around ‘Causeway’, pregnancy and birth and also love and commitment, and politics. It’s pretty choppy interview organization — but also a way of guaranteeing that you will stay around to read it complete, I guess. And we hit the Hollywood pay gap for good measure — with Jennifer Lawrence being one of its fiercest critics.

By now I was pre-searching the text with ‘leaking nude photos’, to save myself making an outline and eureka — they lived together: pay gap and nude photos.

“She knows all actors at her level are overpaid, but the discrepancy is still bothersome. It reflects the pay gap between men and women writ large, and it delivers the same insult: “It doesn’t matter how much I do. I’m still not going to get paid as much as that guy, because of my vagina?” The hacking and leaking of her nude photos felt punitive, as though it was because she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the world that someone thought: Strip her clothes off.”

Lawrence Is Not Smiling on Cue

Online fashionistas are already complaining that Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t look happy enough in the Vogue October images. Even though Jennifer Lawrence is swooning over her family life, she expresses serious concerns about the American future. Talking about her conservative Kentucky roots, we learn that she has recurring nightmares about Tucker Carlson.

People might scream “how absurd” but I was frozen in bed in July 2021, waking up immobilized as I ‘saw’ Sen. Lindsey Graham standing in the dimly-lit, shadowed doorway holding a huge syringe in his right hand. We looked eyeball to eyeball with each other — neither of us flinching — and I knew that he had come to kill me. Struggling to gain consciousness and a way out of this absurd terror, I finally did. But the dream was so real, I swear to a positive lie-detector test in that moment.

Kentucky Roots, Multiple Miscarriages

We learn of Jennifer Lawrence’s miscarriages and her firm understanding with the overturning of Roe that she probably would not receive treatments to save her life in Kentucky. She has never forgiven America for electing Trump, even though she has tried and tried again.

“I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry I’m just unleashing, but I can’t fuck with people who aren’t political anymore. You live in the United States of America. You have to be political. It’s too dire. Politics are killing people.”

She puts the election of Donald Trump in slightly comedic terms — but of course, none of us are laughing.

“It breaks my heart because America had the choice between a woman and a dangerous, dangerous jar of mayonnaise. And they were like, Well, we can’t have a woman. Let’s go with the jar of mayonnaise.” And now, thanks to Supreme Court justices appointed by that dangerous jar of mayonnaise, the unthinkable had happened. “I don’t want to disparage my family, but I know that a lot of people are in a similar position with their families. How could you raise a daughter from birth and believe that she doesn’t deserve equality? How?”

We roll on from the midterm elections to gun control and Uvalde — first day of school is today. This is the passionate Jennifer Lawrence that AOC loves.

By Now Cy Is Laughing

But then we end with the daily miracle of Cy, and the heart-exploding amount of love Lawrence felt for him. He just started smiling a couple of months ago and was now “on the precipice of laughing”. Aguirre writes perfect words, that baby Cy “would smile so hard that the smile itself would become overwhelming and he’d have to roll his little head around to accommodate it. He recently tried avocado for the first time and she couldn’t stop crying. She jokes that her baby is her little voodoo doll, because everything that hurts him hurts her.”

“I mean the euphoria of Cy is just—Jesus, it’s impossible,” Lawrence said. “I always tell him, I love you so much it’s impossible.”

Lawrence speaks earlier of what Cy will say to his therapist about her, when he grows up. I hope Cy says “She’s one hell of a dame, even if she did kiss me on the mouth at six months. It was a small price to pay for such an adoring mama.” ~ Anne