“Glamour” magazine announced the honorees of its 25th Women of the Year awards last week.
Alongside Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon, entrepreneur and scientist Elizabeth Holmes, ballerina Misty Copeland, and exemplars of grace and forgiveness like the women of Charleston, “Glamour” honored two public figures who are not only unfit for the title, but also harmful to the very idea of female accomplishment.
“Glamour” is not just another women’s gossip magazine. With a print audience of 12.2 million and an online audience of 8.5 million in the U.S. alone, “Glamour” is encountered by 1 in 8 American women. This doesn’t even take into account the magazine’s readership in 12 other countries, from Greece to South Africa.
“Glamour” magazine’s Woman of the Year is a hefty title, one that millions of women and men across the U.S. are watching, reading about, and weighing against their own ideas of what it means to be a woman.
It is a nationally-recognized exhibition of feminine creativity and fortitude, a lineup of what the website calls “trailblazers and newsmakers.” With that in mind, let’s look at some of the honorees.
Caitlyn Jenner has sparked outcry over her inclusion in the list. Last year, Laverne Cox became the first transgendered person to receive the distinction, but Jenner’s recent, high-profile transition seems to have ignited
greater controversy.
The magazine’s website justifies Jenner’s inclusion with a quote from LGBT activist Alex Schmider:
“She made the decision to transition publicly — so that in the future kids don’t have to wait until they’re 65 years old to discover who they are.”
Bruce Jenner won the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year award in 1976 and publicly transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner in June. Through the months following Jenner’s coming out on the cover of “Vanity Fair,” it has become evident that choosing to identify as a female is enough to earn public acclaim. No matter that Jenner is a biological male who will never experience the pain of menstrual cramps or childbirth. She will never fear the threat of rape or encounter institutional sexism like women do.
Other Women of the Year have championed women’s rights in the Middle East and pioneered arenas typically inhabited by men.
Jenner posed for a sexed-up photoshoot and raved to a “Vanity Fair” reporter about how she can finally paint her nails without shame.
If only womanhood were that easy.
Critics point out that Jenner has not even been a woman for a year, to which supporters respond that she has spent a lifetime as a woman in a man’s body. Jenner might have spent a lifetime wrestling a psychological delusion, but she has not and never will face the trials and triumphs of authentic femininity.
Amid the controversy over Jenner, the presence of another polarizing public figure has been all but ignored. Cecile Richards, CEO of Planned Parenthood, was lauded by “Glamour” as a champion of women’s rights.
To legitimize the choice, the website quotes actress Lena Dunham, who gushes over Richards’ bravery: “She is fighting for each and every one of us.”
This “champion” of women’s rights has also backed the slaughter of over a million unborn girls since she became CEO in 2006. She has repeatedly misrepresented her company by claiming that Planned Parenthood offers mammogram services, although it merely provides referrals. She admitted as much when she testified before Congress in September.
Richards’ “grand achievement” is fighting for the women’s healthcare organization that provides necessary medical resources to women and earns over three-quarters of its nonfederal funding from the murder of unborn human beings. A champion of women’s rights, indeed.
“Glamour” claims that its Women of the Year recipients “each summoned up the will to do something extraordinary.”
If appropriating womanhood or abusing a position of influence to profit from the massacre of children is extraordinary, then our heroines have fallen very far indeed.