dailybeast | Usually, a first lady looking radiant on the cover of Vogue is a PR coup for any presidential administration and a carefully-cultivated statement for a magazine that primarily covers fashion but also insists on its seriousness and depth.
respected first lady + tasteful Vogue treatment = mutually beneficial. And it would have been for first lady Jill Biden, who looks equal parts chic, powerful, and beatific in a Suffragette-white tuxedo dress in front of a cream-plaster backdrop, her name in font so large it is dwarfed only slightly by the Vogue logo, and augmented by a quote that was meant to be a feminist rallying cry: “We will decide our future.”
Except the cover dropped just days after her husband gave a debate performance so disastrous that there is widespread talk of replacing him on the ticket, and as Jill, Joe, and the Biden family gathered at Camp David to hash out next steps. “We will decide our future” suddenly takes on a different implication—not that voters generally and women specifically will decide the nation’s future, but that a small, tight-knit family will decide for the rest of us.
Jill Biden has largely been a well-liked and uncontroversial first lady, but in the aftermath of the debate and her family’s wagon-circling, she’s been under more scrutiny. And that scrutiny has expanded now to Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who is a Biden friend and political donor.
Some conservatives have whined that Melania Trump was never given a Vogue cover while her husband was in office, while Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, and Laura Bush were all featured in the magazine (Melania did grace the cover when she married, but she was identified not by name, but as “Donald Trump’s New Bride”). Generally, the accusation seems to be that Wintour is playing favorites with Democrats because of her own political persuasions.
This is, of course, extremely silly from a variety of angles. Vogue is an aspirational magazine aimed at sophisticated, city-dwelling women who care about high-end fashion and lifestyle but also choose to read longer-form articles about politics and culture–not exactly Trump’s voter base, and not exactly a cohort that admires or aspires to be like Melania.
College-educated city women are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. And these same women have vested personal interests in many of the matters the Democratic Party promotes and the anti-feminist Republican Party attacks, including access to abortion, contraception, and IVF, not to mention paid family leave, affordable childcare, and a general vision of women as free and independent.
Women’s magazines have a duty to inform their readers and to be fair to their subjects. But they also have a duty to be honest with their audiences about how elections and the winning party might impact their lives, and not just stick to shoes and handbags as some demand.
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