Why I am disappointed by Vogue magazine.

R. J. Cutler’s documentary The September Issue, opening nationwide tonight, is only the latest manifestation of America’s ongoing fascination—and dissatisfaction—with Vogue. In 1950 Mary McCarthy called it out on its aristocratic condescension. Gay Talese once wrote that the women of Vogue “speak in italics and swear in French.” Fast-forward to 2003 to The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger’s bestselling roman à clef about her former boss, current Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Steady mockery from Gawker.com and the 2006 release of the movie version of Prada only fanned the flames.

The problem with these critiques is that they treat Vogue like any other women’s magazine, attacking it mainly for frivolity. But Vogue is not just another women’s magazine—it would never have attracted this much attention if it were. Vogue has a history and a cultural weight that make it impossible to dismiss, and it has always had more serious ambitions than its rivals. It was one of the first magazines to publish photographs of concentration camp victims, taken by Lee Miller at Buchenwald in 1945 and printed under the headline, “Believe It!” This is the magazine that in 1972 ran a dialogue between Kathleen Tynan and Germaine Greer in which Greer states, “Women have no property because nearly everything in their houses belongs to their husbands.” It has profiled the female presidents of Chile and Liberia, female media moguls in India, and, in August, Google executive Marissa Mayer.

All of these stories seem chosen to attract a thinking reader, and the fashion spreads themselves are often provocative as well as beautiful. See this month’s revised vision of the Red Riding Hood fable, Red’s gray coif challenging our sense of her as the child victim. What do we make of the wolf palming an apple as he accosts her? Is he about to offer it as a lure, à la the Edenic serpent, or is this Adam about to proffer the forbidden fruit to Eve, reversing that fateful setup that women have yet to live down?

A better way to critique Vogue is on its own terms, on how well it fulfills the dual mission it has set for itself: covering both surface and substance. Then we get a clearer sense of where it has failed.

In many ways the feminine ideal Vogue exalts today is even narrower than the confining one Betty Friedan criticized women’s magazines for promoting in the early '60s, an image of the fulfilled woman as “young and frivolous, almost childlike. ... In the magazine image women do no work except housework and work to keep their bodies beautiful and to get and keep a man.” To Vogue’s credit, it has never been very much about getting a man—maybe it assumes that’s no challenge for its readers. Unlike the magazines Friedan wrote about, it also has never celebrated the hausfrau. Instead, it continues to exalt women who have no career inside or outside the home.

Tags: Anna Wintour, Betty Friedan, Gay Talese, Germaine Greer, R.J. Cutler, the Devil Wears Prada, the september issue, Vogue

Margaret Wheeler Johnson is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

Comments

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Forget Fashion Week. Style Starts With New York’s Cast-Offs.

Instead of following the runway, I’m exploring what real women are throwing away.

Erika Kawalek
|
September 10, 2009

The Real Reason That Ann Taylor Hates Plus Sizes

It has nothing to do with fat phobia.

Virginia Postrel
|
June 9, 2009

How to Save High Fashion

Make copycat knock-offs illegal.

C. Scott Hemphill and Jeannie Suk
|
September 11, 2009

Arts

Why Vogue Continues to Disappoint Me

Comments

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