Forces to be reckoned with

One thing you learn after living in England is how to complain. Your first lesson usually includes the subject of weather and once it’s been mastered to an art form (no conversation goes without discussing the rain and sunshine and the rest of the elements) you move to the more complicated ones. In my case, the covers of British Vogue.

I admit, I did my best not to let the steam out. I remained quiet when they made Vanessa Paradis look like a pensioner. I let it go when Cheryl Cole (do people outside the UK even know her?) became a cover star. And was later replace with Lana Del Rey. Or pregnant Sienna Miller.

I kept buying Vogue hoping for a miracle. I wanted to see a cover like the one above. Unfortunately, my luck gave up on me completely because this month I was greeted by bored and uncomfortable looking Kristen Stewart who not only got the cover but was interviewed for an article about “love and living dangerously”, too.

Frankly, I don’t really care about Kristen Stewart. I am not 12, so a mediocre actress doesn’t interest me in the slightest. The question I do have, though, is why Vogue considered it to be a norm to feature these people including a wife of Rupert Murdoch who made her way into the clan by sleeping with the man while he was still married. Vogue referred to her as a “force to be reckoned with”. Ironically, a few pages apart, there was another article, about Adele, who was also introduced as “a force to be reckoned with”.

Sienna got a cover and a photoshoot because she got pregnant. Is it really a Vogue-worthy piece of news?

Now Stewart cheated on her boyfriend and guess what? She became Miss October!

And I promised myself to stop buying the magazine because, unlike Vogue Paris, it doesn’t take my breath away any more.

I understand the need for glossies to have sponsors and financial support, but I’ve always thought that British Vogue was too classy for celebrities that are mostly suited for the pages of Hello! and OK. I can’t get my head around the fact that some talented journalists have to spend their days writing about life of some 22-year old with no particular talent rather than people who make fashion happen.

I’ve always thought that Vogue was about inspiring and making the world a little bit more beautiful as we pick a freshly printed copy every month. I guess I was wrong…

Photo source: Vogue UK May 2005, Vogue UK October 2012