ONTD Original: 5 reasons Anna Wintour is a sack of shit
Movie fans have long discussed who the main villain is in The Devil Wears Prada. Some will say Miranda Priestly. Others will say it’s actually Andy's shitty friends in an argument that they think is subversive, as if people haven’t constantly been pointing that out for the past 14 years.
But me, the humble fasdsr2? I would argue it’s the movie itself, for lionizing Anna Wintour, and helping her make the transition from a fixture on the fashion scene to the broader pop culture discourse. The movie may “expose” some of the shitty and unrealistic practices Miranda/Anna engages in, but still helps humanize and glorify her, suggesting that Runway/Vogue would falter without her leadership.
I mean, would Vogue really? How successful has the magazine been because of Anna’s input? Seems like the magazine has lost relevance? (These are actual questions - if you have thoughts, please sound off in the comments.)
Anyways, without further ado, here is by no means a comprehensive list of shitty things Anna Wintour has done, of which I’m sure I missed MANY.
Note: Please don’t blame me for the weird sourcing. Many of the primary sources are banned here, so I had to link to tweets about those articles.
1) Her fatphobia
I don’t even know where to begin with this. The examples are so numerous, we’re going to have to start off this list with another list.
André Leon Talley, the former American editor-at-large of Vogue and a former confidant of Wintour, flat out told Oprah: “Most of the Vogue girls are so thin, tremendously thin, because Miss Anna don’t like fat people.”
Oprah Winfrey had to drop 20 pounds before she was allowed on the cover of Vogue.
Wintor once called Andre Leon Talley to her office and told him he needed to start working out. He lost weight, but after he gained it back, Wintour staged an intervention in the Vogue conference dining room and told him again he needed to lose weight.
In an interview with 60 minutes, she said she went on a trip to Minnesota, where she could “only kindly describe most of the people that [she] saw as little houses."
In the documentary the September Issue, Wintour saw a photo of Jennifer Garner and said she looked pregnant and that they needed “to fix her.”
She once told a reporter she wouldn’t hire a fat person, even if they were a brilliant editor. “It’s important to me that the people that are working here, particularly in the fashion department,” she says, “will present themselves in a way that makes sense to the outside world that they work at Vogue.”
2) Her classism
Vogue once had a piece about breast cancer, which included an airline stewardess. She didn’t want a - god forbid - stewardess in the magazine though, so the magazine had to find a high-flying businesswoman who'd had cancer.
3) Her handling of the Bon Appetit debacle
This summer, Bon Appetit staffer Sohla El-Waylly revealed she was only making $50,000 despite her culinary expertise (!!!), which kicked off an insurrection in the test kitchen over pay disparities within the company. El-Waylly also demanded that EIC Adam Rapoport be fired after a racist photo of him in brownface surfaced, which led to other staffers of color to reveal other instances of him being a racist fuckwit.
Matt Hunziker, a Bon Appetit video editor, vocally supported El-Waylly and other people of color at Bon Appetit.
“Wow, what a noble thing to do!” says a decent person with a conscience and any semblance of morality. But Anna Wintour, lacking those things, did not.
After Business Insider published a story on Hunziker's suspension, Anna Wintour " assembled a 7 pm Zoom call to tell Bon Appetit staffers to delete any social media posts in support" of him.
4) Her racism
All right, we got another fucking list:
All the top 10 editorial leaders listed on Vogue's masthead were white as of June this
year.
It took Vogue 126 years to hire its first black photographer to shoot a cover, about 20 years of which Wintour was the EIC.
Former staffer Shelby Ivey Christie made a thread on twitter detailing her time at
Vogue/Conde Nast. She said it “was the most challenging + miserable time of my career - The bullying + testing from white counterparts, the completely thankless work, the terrible base pay + the racism was exhausting.”
In his book “The Chiffon Trenches,” André Leon Talley said he was brutally fired from
his job hosting the Met Gala in favor of a 20-something YouTuber + many, many, many
other incidents of cruel behavior from her. Leon Talley has said that: “Dame Anna
Wintour is a colonial broad, she’s a colonial dame, she comes from British, she’s part of
an environment of colonialism. She is entitled and I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege.”
5) Her acceptance of Ivanka Trump
Some people have expressed hope that once Trump is no longer president and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump leave the White House, the group will be shunned upon their return to New York. In a recent interview, Wintour failed to acknowledge that Melania Trump is the First Lady, as if that’s supposed to be a masterclass in shade.
A naive person might think that New York’s liberal elite is too classy to embrace them back in their arms. After all, many of them are Democrats!
But that is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Because at the end of the day, class interests reign supreme, regardless of what Trump has done.
In 2017, Wintour - a Democratic fundraiser - invited editors from Conde Nast's magazine to meet with an undisclosed guest. Lo and behold, it was Ivanka Trump! Editors were taken aback when Ivanka walked in. Wintour introduced her by saying it was "brave" of her to come before the editors. Wintour walked Ivanka around the room to shake everyone's hand.
“The message was: Be polite,” an editor in the room said.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16