Teen Vogue has emerged as one of the most progressive mass-media forums in an age of Trumpism and its official misogyny and racism -- it's a Conde Naste magazine aimed at teen girls with a labor reporter who regularly dissects capitalism's failings and writes explainers on the need for a general strike.
Teen Vogue executive editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay explains her approach to Jacobin's David Palumbo-Liu in a fabulous interview in which she embraces her right-wing critics who call her magazine "The most insidious form of teen communist propaganda" and worries that Tucker Carlson is waaaaaay too interested in teen girls.
I think one of the things I’m really proud of that we did last month was we did an entire package on fat bodies. I actually wrote a personal essay for that, about being a public person who’s fat, and my evolution of growing up in public — being this public person where people will comment on your body all the time. For a fashion magazine with Vogue in the title to explicitly do something that really criticizes the industry and elevates this unique point of view — we shot a size twenty-four model for one of the main features.
I was very excited about everything we did for Covering Climate Now. We were part of that initiative. We put Greta on the cover, which I thought was fantastic. And we did that cover in literally fifteen minutes. She’s a very, very busy young woman. We got a very small amount of time with her. Lucy Diavolo, who you’ve already talked to, did a great job writing the feature for that.
We also started two columns that I really love this year. One is about masculinity and kind of how young men are engaging with ideas of masculinity. And that’s by writer Thomas Page McBee, who’s a phenomenal kind of trans writer, just really, really talented writer. And then we also have a sex column called, “Down to Find Out,” which is a play on DTF. I think one of the things that we get criticized for a lot is that we’re very open about recognizing that young people are going to try and have sex.
Teen Vogue Is Good [David Palumbo-Liu/Jacobin]
