Secondly, immediately upon learning of it, we sought to rectify the situation. The editor has been dealt with in a very serious manner, and the entire staff has been reminded of the magazine’s policies and procedures for making public appearances.

Glamour is proud of its diverse readership and celebrates the beauty of ALL women. We have responded directly and openly with readers to assure them of this fact. We have also apologized to the law firm, and we extend the same apology to you.

Cindi Leive,
Editor-in-Chief of Glamour

Okay, I admit I’m pretty clueless about these things, but what’s the beef against ethnic minority magazines? Half the point of a magazine is that it caters to a specific audience. It’s like arguing that because there are plenty of computer magazines out there, the entire hobby field is covered so we don’t need the ones about knitting or photography.

Not to say that being a minority is a hobby, but …. geez.

What’s interesting to me is that this idea that black women must straighten their hair to be acceptable is very US-centric. My friend from law school, who I mentioned in the post, did a study abroad program in Paris, and was astonished that people pegged her as American instantly. It was because she straightened her hair — at the time, that wasn’t something that black women in France did (of course, a lot of those women are actually from Africa, so there are different issues there).

Which amused me, because when I went to Paris in 1991, I kept getting mistaken for British, even after I’d opened my mouth. Guess the little round tortoiseshell glasses and tweed jacket helped.

If Glamour is a high-fashion magazine and an editor hired by Conde Nast to represent the title says that, then that in itself just highlights the ”closed-door” mentality that big, mainstream companies that towards ethnic minorities and in this case, black people. and I wonder what this editor would say if Naomi Campbell came to a shoot and decided she wanted to rock a gorgeous Afro ? hmm…jury’s out on that one.

i remember once reading a post on the now defunct-miss girl message boards when i was a baby girl in those days. the post was talking about the validity of magazines like ESSENCE. i was so young then, i didn’t have a clue what to say back because i knew i read those magazines being a black girl. even though magazines like ESSENCE have agendas (they barely have natural-headed sisters), they were and are important in a media that still is refusing to show diversity. until this can be obtained, ethnic minority magazines especially beauty/fashion ones will always matter.

what makes this worse 4 me is i even bought US glamour once. i spend most of my time in rainy England and to be honest, british glamour does make a real good effort to include ethnic faces (i remember seeing this black model in a shoot — i was SHOOK. and very pleased to see that).

good post.

They tend, in my building, to get off at the banking and law floors. The fashionistas (we have magazines in the building too) tend to work the more subtle “I don’t do anything, I just look this way” thing, presumably because northeastern WASP aristocracy prefer it.

Republican highlights.

Expensive and blonde.

Janis, there’s a lot of personality-damping in obtaining a corporate law job. The men with long hair in law school cut it off before interview seasons. As I mentioned, skirts were the norm when I got out of law school, and my understanding from Jill is that even though women can wear pants to work now, there’s still pressure at law school to wear skirts to interviews. And, of course, then you have the hose problem — what color hose do you wear? I was steered to taupe hose by a lovely woman at Nordstrom’s when I was stressing in the hosiery department about how to find just the right navy hose to go with my navy suit and my slightly-different-tone navy shoes.

Eventually, I found my way to eggplant for suits. It’s kind of like navy, but it stands out a bit — but not too much. I realized that being one of the navy-suited legions would not help me be memorable, but I didn’t have the academic chops to wear pants back then.

What’s weird is that once you actually start practicing, your wardrobe and hair, as long as it isn’t so obviously DIFFERENT, is very much secondary to your performance. And one thing that I give the Evil Empire props for is that — even if their hiring record isn’t great — once they actually got you in their clutches, your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. was less important than your ability to just take whatever they dished out. Well, at least in the first few years. But that’s when they started bleeding out associates.