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]
