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Oh Vogue!
American Vogue’s shoots are staid, the stories filled with insight into how to “stave off hunger” (i…ummm…eat when hungry), and shows me pictures of rarely interesting wealthy women who “can do it all” with several nannies, a trust fund, a husband (preferably soon to be ex) in finance and a beautiful gi-normous flat.
With all the above though, i’ve grown to accept this from American Vogue: i take it all with a grain of salt (ooh bloating!) but move on. But, hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy involving the “whitewashing” of racism is not okay.
The past couple seasons in fashion have been really, really…white. On the runways, there has been very little diversity: in the shows last fall, over a third of shows (101 total) employed no black models. And then, Vogue was called out for the lack of diversity on its covers: clay cane’s blog has the most exhaustive tally i’ve seen, starting with Beverly Johnson’s cover in 1974.
However, Vogue hasn’t had a lot of African American models on the cover: under Anna Wintour’s reign approximately 10 black women have been solo on the cover of Vogue (that’s since 1988), and only 4 since 2000: Marion Jones, Halle Berry, Liya Kebede and Jennifer Hudson. There have been several other black women on the cover in ensemble shoots with white women. Vogue got a lot of s(*&t for not being equal opportunity: and decided to passive-aggressively respond with a hypocritical article “Is Fashion Racist?”
The article starts by telling us about the horrible situation of racism in fashion, primarily trying to shift blame to the runways. At one point the article cites Chanel Iman’s Vogue Cover:
Please note it’s a fold out. Please note which side of the fold she’s on.
Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit Vogue: it’s not just the runway’s fault. The only reason we don’t see beautiful people of every color prominently as models is due to racism and the perceived racism the magazines and lines have of their customer. And Vogue’s 5 page spread of the 3 black models Anna Wintour felt like showing is cheesy and awkward.
i will not be renewing my subscription.
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