What the Heck Happened to Teen Vogue
By Isabelle Redfield
Once upon a time, Avril Lavigne, Selena Gomez, and a young Miley Cyrus graced the covers of Teen Vogue: the mini-sized glossy edition of its older Conde Nast sister, Vogue. Created in 2003, the magazine is now out of print and fully digital. Forget flipping the page to gaze away at tulle dresses and colored converse. Instead, brace yourself as you dreadfully direct your mouse and click on the politics header. Subcategories once dedicated to appropriate advice columns, style, and pre-teen trends have been supplanted by the progressive political agenda. Looking for dating advice and fashion expertise? Look elsewhere; Teen Vogue now teaches its 13-year-old readers how to promote social justice, fight environmental racism, and join the YDSA (Youth Democratic Socialists of America). To add insult to injury, Teen Vogue also offers an anti-American history section featuring articles like "What We Can Do About the 'Wildly Undemocratic' Electoral College," and "Trump Did Not Lose in a Landslide Because the U.S. is Racist." The former print publication has evolved into a rabid internet activist that monetizes progressivism and harnesses oversimplified social and economic commentary to bait our youth into political radicalism.
With its kitschy bio that reads, "A little chaos goes a long way *twinkle star emoji, fist*," Teen Vogue's Twitter profile is regrettably hard to miss. Boasting 3.3 million followers, Teen Vogue spends its time on Twitter belting screechy leftist opinions and "slay queen" sub-tweets. While the magazine's social media presence is off-putting, its online editorials are downright mind-numbing. A toxic combination of blatantly partisan liberal pandering, unintelligible psychobabble, Hollywood worship, and obsessive identity commentary, Teen Vogue's content unabashedly denies any possibility of conservative viewership.
The magazine also does a terrific job of depicting leftist political figures in the most glorious and glamorous light. According to Teen Vogue, the most radical politicians sitting in Congress, from Ilhan Omar to Isra Hirsi, should be your tweens' new idols and role models. Instead of a profile interview covering Selena Gomez's inspiration for her latest album, Teen Vogue pollutes its pages with feature presentations on political figures who vocally despise America and its principles. By highlighting almost exclusively leftist celebrities and pundits, the magazine is sending a clear message to young conservative women: you don't exist, and we don't care. But the problem with Teen Vogue extends far beyond conservatives’ annoyance with a hyper-politicized fashion website. Teen Vogue is sowing the division which it will later prescribe leftist solutions to cure. It symbolizes America’s descent into the political rabbithole.
Teen Vogue's dramatic content shift in recent years reveals a larger issue facing young American women. We twenty-somethings are forcing the problems of the world down the throats of our youth. While there is injustice in the world, we're orienting our youth's worldview through the lens of oppression. Fashion is no longer about looking good but about making a political statement. TV shows aren't for our enjoyment as much as they are vehicles to signal "wokeism." Even the award shows we grew up watching are vessels to advance a political narrative. Our politics is informed by our culture, and our culture is increasingly political.
Today, our public sphere struggles to separate the most mundane topics from politics. I remember the mid-2000s when politics was a niche, stand-alone profession at the intersection of journalism and law. Politicians weren't celebrities, and the news wasn't entertainment. Since the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016, everything has turned political. While the media condemned the idea of TV star candidates like Trump running for the White House, they gladly accepted the lucrative chance to feed off the hype. Meanwhile, as Teen Vogue and other magazines decried the election of a celebrity-president like Trump, they continued to hypocritically venerate liberal politicians as demi-gods. Ben Shapiro always says, "I'm old enough to remember when…” Well, I'm old enough to remember when the media made Obama a celebrity. As AOC on the cover of Vanity Fair indicates, the media is doing it again.
Teen Vogue is teaching the next generation to idolize our government and buy into oppressor/oppressed identity politics. They're empowering young women not with the real strength of critical thinking but with the tools of cancel-culture. Teen Vogue is grooming our teens to perpetuate a cultural-political relationship that is not only arguably anti-American but detrimental to social cohesion and civil discourse.
America, we need to relax. Harken back to your youth for a moment with me. Remind yourself of the luxury of innocence and the once serene isolation of fashion and journalism from partisan politics. There is a time and a place for everything. While I commend Teen Vogue for adapting their content to ride the profitable and popular progressive wave, it's a disservice to American girls everywhere to continue publishing outrageously slanted political spin. Former consumers and conservatives like myself don't feel represented or even recognized by the brand.
As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Teen Vogue and other publication's steady march to the Left has opened new opportunities for conservatives to carve out their niche and provide balance to our country's cultural and political climate. From The Daily Wire entering the movie production business to the emergence of Fox Nation, conservatives are fighting back with alternative media outlets. Luckily, there is even an antidote to the Teen Vogue/Vogue madness. Enter, The Conservateur. We are the antithesis to these progressive editorial houses. Here, your daughters can find solidarity with other strong conservative women, a platform for their voices, and an appropriate dose of traditional American "escape." So in a weird way, thank you, Teen Vogue. We wouldn't be here without you.
Photo via York Avenue Blog
