Teen Vogue— the magazine akin to that of Tigerbeat and Seventeen— has made a noticeable shift in its content. They used to publish celebrity drama, ‘who wore it best’ and makeup tips. Now, they publish articles on why capitalism is destroying the world. Which, by the way, is *Trump voice* wrong.
One of Teen Vogue’s most recent articles, Who Is Karl Marx: Meet the Anti-Capitalist Scholar, included an interview with defamed former professor, George Ciccariello Maher. He landed in hot water when he tweeted, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” He later resigned.
Clearly blatant racism doesn’t affect the credibility of sources at Teen Vogue.
When they’re not publishing articles on the merits of socialism and communism, they’re teaching teenagers how to make their orgasms ‘magical’ or how to get an abortion without your parents finding out.
These are troubling, not necessarily because of the content, but primarily because of who they’re targeted to.
Teen Vogue was started in 2004 as a ‘little sister’ to Vogue. It “used to focus on the standard cocktail of fashion must-haves and celebrity worship” according to its editor, Elaine Welteroth.
The target audience of the magazine is in the name. Teens.
This type of content is wildly inappropriate for most teens, since the majority of them are not adults. Sex is an adult thing. Abortion is also an adult thing.
Sex education isn’t being taught frequently enough or well enough. With that being said, it’s not Teen Vogue’s job to step in with pseudo-scientific information and rated-R suggestions.
One of the most troubling recent articles was titled Why Sex Work Is Real Work.
Many people do believe sex work should be decriminalized. The opposition to this article is not necessarily an opposition to the legalization of sex work, but to the exposure of it to impressionable, confused, teenage girls.
There’s been an awful lot of work put into promoting STEM fields for young women, only for Teen Vogue to turn around and tell teens that sex work is an option too.
Sex work can be dangerous and is often tied to mental illness, not to mention the obvious exposure to diseases. This is not something that should be normalized for young girls.
You can think someone shouldn’t go to jail for it, while still believing they probably shouldn’t take part in it. And maybe it shouldn’t be advertised specifically to teenage girls as a career. Food for thought.
On the 4th of July, Teen Vogue made a calculated move to rain on patriotic, celebrating Americans’ parade. They published an article with the caption, “Racism and patriotism go hand in hand.”
This was an outrage to many Americans.
The article promotes the removal of historical anthems like God Bless America on the basis that the singer also sang songs featuring racially insensitive language in the 1930s. Yes, the 1930s.
It also supported the changing of building names, removal of historical statues, and so on. All on the basis that everything is racist, regardless of historical norms and standards.
What’s particularly scary about this mass removal of history, is the old saying, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” We learn about Slavery, the Civil War, and the Confederacy, so that we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. This history is not a celebration of racism, but a reminder of what we’ve overcome.
Teen Vogue’s shift was purposeful. They claim their “readers consider themselves activists.” They aren’t wrong when they claim the social media generation is interested in being politically informed. The problem is, they aren’t informing.
Teen Vogue curates a far-left sequence of articles for their readers, while claiming to be non-partisan. Their feed includes massive amounts of articles supporting figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Bernie Sanders, both self-described Democratic Socialists. Furthermore, articles mentioning the word ‘Democrat’ are overwhelmingly positive and supportive, while those mentioning the word ‘Republican’ are almost always negative and full of fallacious, strawman arguments.
Teen Vogue is not informing young people, they’re attempting to mobilize them for their own misguided political agenda.
Julia Johnson
Julia is a senior at The University of South Carolina studying political science and journalism. In addition to writing for Lone Conservative, she is also a student reporter for The College Fix.
The views expressed in this article are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Lone Conservative staff.
@juliaajohnson_