Teen Vogue Just Got Canceled (By Vogue) | Episode 89

Speaker 1 Guys, I have such awful news for you today. You are not going to be seeing any more a finger tips, no more climate justice from LGBTQ writers, no more black anarchists at Teen Vogue.

Speaker 1 And I know that this is just a huge blow for all of you.

Speaker 1 Now while we're at it, I'm sure that Teen Vogue has also written about huge blows. But anyway, moving on, that is besides the point, I'm sorry that I made that joke.

Speaker 1 We need to talk about Teen Vogue and what is going on over there.

Speaker 1 The iconic young adult magazine, Teen Vogue, is officially being merged in with Vogue.com in a new restructuring that is happening from Condé Nast. And guys, guess what got cut from the magazine?

Speaker 1 The politics section. Guys, in a very literal sense, in my opinion, Teen Vogue is embodying that meme of the friend that just got too woke.
Like, it just is not working anymore.

Speaker 1 The magazine is not landing. Honestly, it's a bit embarrassing and cringe, probably bad for business, for Vogue and Condé Nast at large.
And Condé Nast leadership apparently was not having it.

Speaker 1 Also, you can see I am still in New York, so I am still filming in front of the window with a tiny little mic.

Speaker 1 So, I'm sorry for the subpar hotel lighting and the maybe tinny microphone, but we are making it work and we are bringing you content.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so I am filming this on Tuesday, and they announced the restructuring yesterday.

Speaker 1 And no one really thought anything about it, it didn't really make major news in my orbit until the fired teen vogue writers started tweeting and blue skying, whatever you call that.

Speaker 1 Anyway, one of their top politics editors posted this: Lex McNaman.

Speaker 1 Sorry. I'm not even going to try to pronounce this.
They them. We'll just see the pronouns.
They them. I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers and today is my last day.

Speaker 1 Certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more. But to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.
Hallelujah, everybody.

Speaker 1 It is a new day for young women in America. This is the most amazing, positive thing that could have happened for the next generation.

Speaker 1 Now, another writer also posted on Blue Sky and said, I was laid off from Teen Vogue this week alongside multiple other phenomenal team members.

Speaker 1 At our summit, I was asked how it felt to be one of two black women left and what that meant for representation.

Speaker 1 Now, there are no black women at Teen Vogue, and that is incredibly painful to think about. Guys, don't worry.
I know that you are concerned about these women in these trying times. Do not worry.

Speaker 1 They will be setting up a GoFundMe so that we all can contribute. Ladies, it is called a sub-stack.
Make a sub-stack, start writing. No handouts.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Speaker 1 None of us are donating to your GoFundMe's. Anyway, moving on.

Speaker 1 All of this is transpiring amidst a major shake-up shakeup at Vogue, you guys probably saw, but Anna Wintour, the longtime editor of Vogue, she stepped away.

Speaker 1 She was replaced by a younger millennial woman named Chloe, who apparently has plans for even more of a shake-up.

Speaker 1 And in a company announcement that Vogue made, it seems like they are committed to tying the Teen Vogue brand back closer to Vogue rather than letting it continue to run rogue as it has been doing since 2017.

Speaker 1 It has certainly been running rogue. It has certainly gotten out of hand.
I mean, just listen to some of these article bylines from the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 One of them, I mean, welcome to Adel Sex 101.

Speaker 1 It's about as clear clear as you can get. Here's another one: please talk to your family and friends about politics, even if you're uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Please use your privilege as a white person to protect people of color. Colonizers believed the world was theirs for the taking.

Speaker 1 They saw the masses of people as disposable and believed that nothing mattered more than the currency in a white man's pocket.

Speaker 1 And Tifa grows out of a larger revolutionary politics that aspires towards creating a better world. But the primary motivation is to stop races from organizing.

Speaker 1 That's exactly exactly what they're doing. They're just trying to make a better world as they burn cities around America.
Thank you. Teen Vogue.

Speaker 1 Guys, that is a fashion magazine for 16-year-old girls who is releasing those types of articles. And we wonder why millennial women are some of the most left-wing people in history.

Speaker 1 Well, this is what they've been reading for the last decade. This has been the bread and butter of Teen Vogue since 2017.
And it all started with a woman named Lauren Duca.

Speaker 1 Now, back in 2016, she wrote the first ever political op-ed for the magazine. And it was entitled, Donald Trump is Gaslighting America.
And that was published on December 10th, 2016.

Speaker 1 And that was the day that Teen Vogue changed. That article resulted in her having a now infamous debate with Tucker Carlson on Fox.

Speaker 1 It quickly pushed Teen Vogue into the national political conversation, and they leaned in faster than America accepted imported meat as normal, which is why we need good ranchers.

Speaker 1 I used to think that I knew what I was buying at the grocery store until I learned that over 85% of grass head beef sold in America is imported, yet it is still labeled product of the USA.

Speaker 1 That had me question everything, like, what am I actually eating?

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Speaker 1 That's brett at goodranchers.com, but hurry because this offer ends ends on December 1st. Hopefully you guys can settle in with a steak because we are not done.

Speaker 1 So get comfortable, get eating, because in an old comment section episode from, gosh, I think 2022, I believe, I brought all of this up.

Speaker 1 I did a whole episode on Teen Vogue was talking about the demise of the magazine and how there's nothing left for young people.

Speaker 1 Like there's no real teen magazines or content because everything became so political. But in that episode, I pulled up Teen Vogue's 2018 media kit.

Speaker 1 And you're going to see again that their shift was not accidental. They intentionally leaned in.
They intentionally made a drastic shift in their goals and messaging.

Speaker 1 So it reads, mission statement, this is 2018. Teen Vogue is the young person's guide to saving the world.
Not to fashion, not to beauty, saving the world.

Speaker 1 We aim to educate, enlighten, and empower our audience to create a more inclusive environment, both on and offline, by amplifying the voices of the unheard, telling stories that normally go untold, and providing resources for teens looking to make a tangible impact in their communities.

Speaker 1 Now, all of that is fine. You are totally allowed to have a publication like that.
There should be publications like that in, you know, a world with freedom of press.

Speaker 1 If you want that kind of content, go find it. But this is Teen Vogue.
You were created to be a fashion and beauty magazine. You are the youthful offshoot of Vogue.
And this is what you're doing.

Speaker 1 You're also not even attempting to be an unbiased political source. They leaned into a political ideology.
Overnight, they became a propaganda outlet and they were proud.

Speaker 1 They explicitly stated that that was their goal.

Speaker 1 Articles like seven disabled intersex people explain how they embrace their identities and how Twilight perpetrated harmful stereotypes about Native Americans became the norm.

Speaker 1 I mean, that last article was one from just two days ago. Like, that is insane.

Speaker 1 Now, to give you even more of a taste of where this publication went, here is one of my now favorite clips from their recent Teen Vogue summit, where everything they do online was brought into real life with a series of panels.

Speaker 1 And this is the best clip I saw.

Speaker 2 I've never been quiet since the day I've entered this earth. And I feel like if you're quiet when so many injustices are happening, not just here, but Palestine, Sudan, Congo, et cetera, then

Speaker 2 I literally blocked my brother yesterday. I'm not speaking to my mom, my stepmom, my dad.
I'm collecting them like Pokemon. I'm like, who can I block next?

Speaker 2 And it stinks, but I just think that you have to stand for something.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, nothing that you just saw on that screen is healthy. Obviously, the woman in question is not healthy.
She should not be an inspiration to young women whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Like, that is not what we should be promoting.

Speaker 1 But you were literally encouraging young people to cut off everyone in their lives, their family, their immediate family, their mom, their dad, their brother, for the sake of politics and progress.

Speaker 1 And you could see that people in the audience were even uncomfortable with that because she started off, they were like applauding, yes, queen snapping.

Speaker 1 And then she was like, I cut off my brother yesterday. And everybody was like, oh.
Oh, do we applaud? No, you don't because that's insanity. That is not normal in a good, healthy society.

Speaker 1 And yet that is what Teen Vote has come to promote. Here's one last clip that I want you to see because it ties back to something that we were talking about at the beginning of the episode.

Speaker 3 You've probably noticed that there's now like billboards for cis men to be able to get testosterone access so they can, you know, feel hotter or whatever they want, which like that's totally fine.

Speaker 3 But it's fascinating that like cis people are becoming more and more interested in accessing hormones while trans people are getting it actively banned.

Speaker 3 As of right now, there are 28 states in the United States that have existing youth gender-affirming care bans. Two of them are specifically about surgery.

Speaker 1 So again, this is from a panel at the Teen Vogue summit. These are the types of messages they're putting out in the world.

Speaker 1 Now, by the way, that comparison about men using hormones and gender affirming care, mutilating young people, apples to oranges, those are not the same thing.

Speaker 1 They should not even be in the same discussion. But the reason why I wanted to show you that clip is because that person is one of the people who got fired.

Speaker 1 Lex, who's in that video, is the one who wrote the first tweet that we read.

Speaker 1 Even better than the sad layoff tweets from people like Lex are the reaction to this merger and the layoffs, because the progressive women, the journalists, guys, they are in dismay.

Speaker 1 One person said, depressed at the Teen Vogue news, there's going to be nothing left for youth teens to reach for when they're curious about news and issues, whether it's about fashion or politics or pop culture, or fingering your inner sex bisexual lover.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I had to probably should have said this was not an appropriate episode for the kids in your life, but they did it to themselves. They did it to themselves.

Speaker 1 Another person said, Teen Vogue was one of the first places I ever got to write the kinds of more radical stories about mental health, polyamory, queerness, trans people, and more.

Speaker 1 I helped shape the identity and politics verticals back in 2017, 2018, and seeing it ruined is nothing short of horrific. Oh, God, so true.

Speaker 1 This might be the biggest atrocity and act of violence our generation has ever seen. Also, you said that you are responsible for those verticals in 2017-2018.
You, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 You created a mess in our society. The women that we have in the world right now, thank you, Ellie, whatever your name is.
You apparently did that.

Speaker 1 So thank you for taking accountability and responsibility. Like, please be serious, people.
This is not something to be depressed over. It is a business decision.

Speaker 1 Obviously, you can be upset that people are getting laid off.

Speaker 1 Obviously, you could be sad if the publication you love is changing, but it is a business decision due to the changing political climate, and that is just a fact of life.

Speaker 1 Now, thankfully, most of the people on X were not being as serious and melodramatic as these folks. They were just having way too much fun with the meltdown.

Speaker 1 Mary Morgan from Timcast, who is just hilarious, I love her. She said, Teen Vogue fired me yesterday.
Heartbreak.

Speaker 1 My beat was sex, magic, rituals, period blood arts and crafts, and decentering Eurocentric beauty standards. Real journal journalism is under attack.

Speaker 1 Cash up link in my bio if you want to help me pay my student loans during these dark times. We are literally living in the the handmade stale.
Somebody else said, lost my job at Teen Vogue today.

Speaker 1 I was the staffer in charge of making sure elementary schools were stocked with sex tips for the long COVID Polycules edition.

Speaker 1 Like, guys, they're joking, but this is also basically indistinguishable from what we're seeing.

Speaker 1 It is basically indistinguishable from the types of articles that Teen Vogue had been writing for the last 10 years.

Speaker 1 Now, the Condé Nast union even put out a statement where they said, management plans to lay off six of our members, most of whom are BIPOC women or trans, including Teen Vogue's politics editor, continuing the the trend of layoffs at Condé Nast disproportionately impacting marginalized communities.

Speaker 1 And then they go on and they write, gone is the political cultural criticism of the fashion culture industries by the black women writers laid off today.

Speaker 1 Gone are the insisive and artful depictions of young people from the Asian and Latina women photographers laid off today.

Speaker 1 Gone from the louded politics section is the work that made possible the blockbuster cover of Vivian Wilson, one of Condé Nast's top performing stories of the year, coordinated by the singular trans staffer laid off today.

Speaker 1 Oh, gone is the trans vibrator section. Like, I'm sorry, I had to, but these are literally things that they have been writing about.
So cry me a river.

Speaker 1 Like I'm sorry, but no, I'm not going to be depressed about any of this. Young women across America will be better thanks to this news.
Like I genuinely am excited for Teen Vogue's future.

Speaker 1 I hope that they go back to their roots of fashion and beauty for teens and make teen appropriate content, which is what they were created to do.

Speaker 1 Somebody on X actually pulled their initial announcement about Teen Vogue's creation in their first publication. over 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 And it reads, quote, we are going to do what we do well, which is fashion, beauty, and style, says the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue and the former beauty director at Vogue, quote, a lot of other teen magazines are focused on relationships, boys, sex, and embarrassing moments.

Speaker 1 That is not our equity. Not only did they adopt those embarrassing things, the boys, the sex, the relationships, but they adopted being a straight-up progressive political propaganda outlet.

Speaker 1 That is what they have been doing for 10 years straight. And like I said earlier, they are essentially the friend that got too woke.
It is cringe.

Speaker 1 It is a stain on Vogue's reputation, and the publication will be better if it is stripped down to the core, stripped down to the roots, and they just start And who knows if it'll work?

Speaker 1 It might be too far gone. We'll see if it can actually survive the transition.