10:15 AM: Anna Wintour Talks Feminism

“IT FIGURES, doesn’t it? Women are turning their backs on femininity just as it’s becoming a big profit center.”

—Harriet Rubin

Monday morning rituals consist of a bit of pilates and two cups of green tea, scalding hot followed by scouring the Twitter feed for news updates. Direct from WSJ’s blog, a few days late (as per usual) is the snippet from interview with Anna Wintour on Tokyo’s Fashion Night Out that caught my eye; interviewer Yoree Koh asks Anna Wintour her take on the controversial Vogue Japan feature of Renho, minister of government revitaliation, in an editorial last year that took place inside Japan’s Parliament building:

Ms. Wintour: “When women are in positions of power, and they’re featured in a women’s magazine like Vogue…they tend to be incredibly unfairly criticized. It’s an incredibly old-fashioned approach. Just because you’re in a position of power, and you look good and you enjoy fashion—does that mean you’re an idiot, or that it’s not seemly to be in a woman’s magazine? If a man is in GQ, they don’t get the same kind of criticism.”

Amennnn (!).

It’s all very Elle Woods—being torn between wanting to be recognized as “serious” and embracing femininity. We’ve undertaken a patriarchal view of what it means to be powerful: in order to achieve and gain respect as a leader, one must abandon  and forsake all aspects of woman-ity and take on masculine definitions of what power looks like.

The situation also reminds me all too well of Anna Wintour’s response to ex-Senator (now Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton turning down Vogue’s request for a photoshoot in 2008 (?):

“Imagine my amazement, then, when I learned that Hillary Clinton, our only female presidential hopeful, had decided to steer clear of [being photographed for] our pages at this point in her campaign for fear of looking too feminine. The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. (…)

How has our culture come to this? (…) This is America, not Saudi Arabia).”

Here’s to Anna Wintour.

.   .   .

For further reading, I suggest this article by Harriet Rubin.

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