\n<\/p>\n
In late 2016, just a few weeks after Donald Trump won his first presidential election, <\/strong>Teen Vogue published a story that set the internet ablaze: \u201cDonald Trump Is Gaslighting America.\u201d<\/p>\n The story garnered more than 1.3m hits, making it the magazine\u2019s most-read story of the year. Elaine Welteroth, then the editor-in-chief, told NPR that the day it published, Teen Vogue sold \u201cin that month, more copies of the magazine than we had that entire year\u201d. It was a transformative moment for the publication: proof that a magazine long associated with Disney child stars and headlines like \u201cProm Fever!\u201d could shine light on the political dimensions of young people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Over the following years, Teen Vogue deepened its coverage of politics and identity, becoming an unlikely hearth for progressive, even radical, feminism within the manicured offices of its publisher Cond\u00e9 Nast.<\/p>\n Now, nearly a decade since that \u201cGaslighting America\u201d story, Trump is once again in the White House and Teen Vogue as it was once known is gone.<\/p>\n <\/span>Elaine Welteroth helmed Teen Vogue through a politically turbulent time.<\/span> Photograph: Monica Schipper\/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images<\/p>\n Earlier this month, a Vogue Business article announced that Cond\u00e9 Nast was folding Teen Vogue into its flagship property, Vogue, to \u201cprovide a more unified reader experience across titles\u201d. Although the article promised that Teen Vogue would \u201ckeep its unique editorial identity and mission\u201d, it also said the outlet would now focus on \u201ccareer development\u201d and \u201ccultural leadership\u201d while its editor-in-chief would be stepping down. Cond\u00e9 Nast also laid off six unionized Teen Vogue employees, including its politics editor. Most of the laid-off employees were \u201cBIPOC women or trans\u201d, according to the Cond\u00e9 Nast union.<\/p>\n After Cond\u00e9 staffers questioned the head of HR over the layoffs, the company fired four of them, prompting pushback from the union and a pledge from New York\u2019s attorney general, Letitia James: \u201cCond\u00e9 Nast, I\u2019ll see you in court.\u201d<\/p>\n A Cond\u00e9 Nast spokesperson told the Guardian that changes to Teen Vogue were driven solely by business concerns, not by politics, and added: \u201cThe employment terminations were lawful and based on clear violations of company policies.\u201d<\/p>\n Teen Vogue\u2019s unraveling comes at a time of intensifying turbulence for journalism, particularly of the progressive variety. Many of the blogs that once studded the feminist media universe and made \u201cgaslighting\u201d a mainstream term \u2013 Jezebel, Feministing, the Hairpin, the Toast \u2013 now lay dead or dying. Several of their staid older sisters, the women\u2019s magazines, have started publishing fewer print issues a year or going digital-only. Youth-oriented websites once believed to be the future of media, like Vice and Vox, have shed jobs at astonishing rates. (Note: I worked at Vice for years before quitting in 2023, after the company laid off wide swathes of the newsroom and filed for bankruptcy.)<\/p>\n These outlets frequently focused on the people whose lives have fallen under the glare of the Trump administration\u2019s microscope: <\/strong>women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, anybody to the left of Ben Shapiro. Taken together, their downfall can feel like an industry-wide retreat from covering long-marginalized voices.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople change their policies based on reading the vibe in the room, if you will,\u201d said Christina Bellantoni, director of Annenberg\u2019s Media Center at the University of Southern California. (Bellantoni is friends with Teen Vogue\u2019s outgoing editor-in-chief.) \u201cWe\u2019ve got three more years of this administration making clear its priorities do not lay with having newsrooms that are reflective of the diverse world we cover.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles on 2 December 2017.<\/span> Photograph: Vivien Killilea\/Getty Images for Teen Vogue<\/p>\n The dismal economics of trying to make money off the internet have decimated outlets of all political stripes. Between 2008 and 2024, 74% of newsroom jobs vanished. Cond\u00e9 is a part of that trend, having endured multiple rounds of layoffs over the last several years.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a unique set of pressures that have been responsible for crushing feminist publications. During the reign of the 2010s #girlboss, the feminist blogosphere generated takes on everything from Christmas songs to Edward Snowden\u2019s girlfriend. Women\u2019s magazines took note and started publishing uncomplicated odes to \u201cthe notorious RBG\u201d and the Wing, a now-shuttered women-focused club and co-working space.<\/p>\n That type of coverage evaporated after the 2016 election, which saw most white women vote for Trump instead of voting for Hillary Clinton to shatter \u201cthe highest and hardest glass ceiling.\u201d During that same time, social media algorithms became increasingly opaque, sending feminist media\u2019s online traffic plummeting at the same moment that Trump\u2019s policies started to threaten long-held feminist victories.<\/p>\n Now, under Trump 2.0, all journalism is more fraught, particularly for women. Earlier this month, Trump told a female journalist: \u201cQuiet, piggy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese glossy magazines are generally wary of political coverage, because they say advertisers don\u2019t want to sponsor it,\u201d said Amy Odell, an independent journalist who runs the fashion news Substack Back Row and closely covers Vogue.<\/p>\n <\/span>Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Palm Beach, Florida, on 14 November 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cThis cuts deep with women\u2019s publications because they probably get that feedback more than men\u2019s publications do. With women\u2019s publications, it\u2019s like: \u2018Just do lip liner tutorials and we\u2019ll sell those to beauty advertisers\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Cond\u00e9 outlets like Wired, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair have continued to cover politics; Glamour, a Cond\u00e9 women\u2019s magazine, also sometimes covers it. But some ex-employees have said that they felt company brass undermined Teen Vogue\u2019s political coverage. Alma Avalle, a Bon Appetit journalist fired after the confrontation with Cond\u00e9 leadership, told the New York City local news outlet Hell Gate that she had heard that \u201can executive said something to the effect of: \u2018The company is trying to avoid the attention of the Trump administration, and trying to avoid the attention and the scrutiny of the right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Allegra Kirkland, Teen Vogue\u2019s former politics director, wrote in Talking Points Memo that ahead of Trump\u2019s second inauguration, she was told that Anna Wintour \u2013 Cond\u00e9\u2019s global chief content officer and artistic director \u2013 didn\u2019t want to hear the word \u201cpolitics\u201d during Teen Vogue\u2019s annual strategy meeting.<\/p>\n In response to questions for this story, a Cond\u00e9 spokesperson said in an email: \u201cTeen Vogue has faced ongoing challenges around scale and audience reach for some time. Rather than continuing to operate independently, bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution and more resources.\u201d<\/p>\n They added: \u201cThis was a business decision, not a political one.\u201d<\/p>\n Some staff from folded feminist publications have gone independent, writing for platforms like Substack. But many of the most popular outlets covering the intersection of politics, identity and women are now on the right.<\/p>\n As feminist and progressive outlets have receded, a conservative \u201cwomanosphere\u201d has blossomed, peopled by podcasts like Culture Apothecary, a Turning Point USA production hosted by Maga influencer Alex Clark, and the wannabe \u201cconservative Cosmo\u201d magazine Evie, which recently put tradwife royalty Hannah Neeleman on the cover. The denizens of the womanosphere tend to thread their talk of style, wellness and beauty with antifeminist rhetoric and support for traditional gender roles.<\/p>\n <\/span>Daniel and Hannah Neeleman at the Time100 Creators launch party in New York on 10 July 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Craig Barritt\/Getty Images for TIME<\/p>\n One recent Evie email blast, entitled \u201c5 Ways Single Girls Are Repelling Good-Hearted Masculine Men\u201d, advised: \u201cAn empowered woman who is overflowing with joy about her career, and knows that it won\u2019t ever be as important as being a wife and mother, does not need to turn a date into a staff meeting where she is respected for her ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n Shara Crookston, an associate professor of women\u2019s and gender studies at the University of Toledo who has studied Teen Vogue, said that the rise of the womanosphere is easily explained: \u201cI read that as a backlash to feminist progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Crookston fears that it is young people, Teen Vogue\u2019s core audience, who seem set to pay the highest price for these changes in media. Not only are they the inheritors of whatever the Trump administration leaves behind, but they are increasingly and uniquely restricted by the harshest of rightwing policies, such as bans on gender-affirming care, access to internet porn and interstate travel for abortions.<\/p>\n \u201cI worry that young girls are going to have less options for media content that helps them explore different aspects of their life, and I think that could be pretty damaging,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhat if you are a teenage girl who knows that you don\u2019t want to get married and have kids and all that you\u2019re seeing is: \u2018This is why this is important to be straight, to get married, to have kids\u2019? What options are going to be available to her?\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last three years, I interviewed more than 100 Americans under 30 about their sexual and romantic lives, their political leanings and the forces that shaped both. While influencers may make up the bulk of young people\u2019s media diet, my interviewees often relied on \u2013 and longed for \u2013 information from factchecked publications.<\/p>\n <\/span>The Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles on 12 November 2022.<\/span> Photograph: Vivien Killilea\/Getty Images for Teen Vogue<\/p>\n Paxton Smith, a 20-year-old Texan, was once riveted by a Snapchat story from Cosmopolitan that had emphasized that women have the right to choose how to style their body hair. Smith had never realized she had a choice; she just wanted to do what she thought boys wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a crazy thing for me to see,\u201d she recalled. \u201cNo one had ever framed a woman\u2019s body \u2013 especially in a sexual way \u2013 as being [able to be] whatever floated their boat. It didn\u2019t have anything to do with what anybody else thought.\u201d<\/p>\n From that Cosmo story, Smith said she learned that \u201cwhat\u2019s sexy is what\u2019s sexy to you and you should prioritize you\u201d. It was part of her political awakening. Years later, Smith went viral for giving a speech at her Dallas area high school about the importance of abortion rights.<\/p>\n Lex McMenamin, a Teen Vogue staffer who was laid off when the outlet was folded into Vogue, said they thought about the future of young people \u201cevery day, on weekends, at night, for years\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cFeminist media is not dead,\u201d McMenamin said. \u201cYoung people are so smart. I lack the nihilism that people have about young people and learning and self-development, including for marginalized people. There\u2019s more trans people and more queer people every day, even though they\u2019re doing their damnedest to make us want to die. It doesn\u2019t matter. Our readers will always exist.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was updated on 20 November 2025 to add a post-publication statement from Cond\u00e9 Nast on staff terminations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In late 2016, just a few weeks after Donald Trump won his first presidential election, Teen Vogue published a story that set the internet ablaze: \u201cDonald Trump Is Gaslighting America.\u201d The story garnered more than 1.3m hits, making it the magazine\u2019s most-read story of the year. Elaine Welteroth, then the editor-in-chief, told NPR that the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[8500,124,7446,81,19696,11488],"class_list":{"0":"post-34747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-makeup","9":"tag-politics","10":"tag-teen","11":"tag-trump","12":"tag-unraveling","13":"tag-vogue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}