There seems to be a new revolution in fashion magazine publishing...its the diversity revolution. Finally, it seems that fashion magazine editors are starting to realize that their female readers are made up of various races and ethnicities...and that blonde hair and blue eyes on the cover (or in the magazine, for that matter) just isn't going to cut it.
January's Allure cover featured a gorgeous, tawny-skinned Rihanna. In February, the In Style cover features Halle Berry, the Harper's Bazaar cover features Jennifer Lopez and the Elle cover features Jessica Alba (I'm going to forget that Alba once made the comment that she doesn't think of herself as Latina and pretend she's lost her mind).
Even the substance of these magazines are starting to change...in the past few months I've seen Allure do a story on global beauty (Aishwarya and Bipasha were both in there!) and Glamour regularly has diverse women of all sizes in their "fashion-help" sections. While I haven't seen much change in the editorials (with the exception of Liya Kebede in a recent issue of Harper's Bazaar), hopefully the modeling industry will start to embrace diversity as well and fashion magazines will continue this trend of incorporating women of all colors within its pages.
goodness, I sincerely hope that diversity is growing and showing more. I stopped subscribing to magazines at all because I was getting bored with them all and I'm a Journalist! lol
ReplyDeleteI love asian models, african-american, latin, white, all of them! they should all be shown for beauty, not some trend at the moment. If a stunning girl comes in, use her! forget her race
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ReplyDeleteIts sad to hear that you stopped subscribing to these mags bcause of the lack of diversity but definitely understandable.
While the magazines are doing a good job with representing diversity in their "real girl" features, the editorials really have a way to go. African-american models are sometimes featured with white models (usually not for clothes though but for makeup) but I VERY RARELY see latina and asian models. Hopefully the current Eastern European obsession in the modeling industry will end soon!
Kohl Girl