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Welcome to the first-ever video from The Closet Feminist! In this video, I take a look at all the 2013 issues of Lucky magazine so far, as a test to see just how diverse fashion magazines are. The results are a little baffling, see for yourself.

Transcript of video

Hi folks, I’m Emily, the founder and editor of theclosetfeminist.ca

It’s now June, so we are halfway through the magazine publishing calendar. I thought it might be interesting to examine some magazines, and take a look at the diversity-or rather lack thereof-in the issues that have been published so far.

What I’m going to be looking at is the major editorial of each issue of Lucky magazine published so far this year. I’m using Lucky in particular for two reasons:

1. I wanted to use a magazine that would be familiar to The Closet Feminist’s reading audience, which, from what I can tell, are folks from Canada and the States, and Lucky is widely available in both of these countries, in case you wanted to follow up on this project yourself.

2. I really, really love Lucky magazine. I’ve had a subscription to it for years, so I haven’t missed an issue in a while.

Let’s get started!

Lucky got off to a really positive start. Their first issue of 2013 featured Jennifer Hudson — a woman of colour — on the cover, which is fantastic. And the editorial? Things get even better, because they feature of model of colour in the editorial [see above]. It’s a great way to start the year and seems to show Lucky’s commitment to diversity.

The February issue was interesting to say the least. Katherine McPhee was on the cover, and the editorial? Well, to me this editorial has its ups and downs. They hired three models for this shoot, and only one of them, Kenza Fourati (the woman on the middle), is a woman of colour, having an Arab background.

This is great, but I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out a common trend I see fashion editorials that have more than one model: I have observed that, as a general trend, magazines hardly ever feature an editorial wherein an ensemble of models is composed entirely of models who represent minorities.

There seems to be this need to have at least one white model no matter what. I find this somewhat ironic, as it would seem that editors seek to somehow balance out the token minority they hire. This being said, I’d also like to point out that of these three models, none of them appear to be plus-size, which is another great opportunity for diversity which Lucky missed.

Moving along, let’s take a look at the March issue. It starred Lauren Conrad on the cover, and kept with the status quo, featuring a editorial with one model, also white and thin.

In April we saw Julie Bowen on the cover, which is kind of cool because she is in her 40s, and magazine covers tend to feature younger women as an unwritten rule. Ironically, she is the oldest cover star Lucky has had so far this year, being older than the cover star of the so-called “beauty issue” coming up next month, which of course focused a lot on anti-aging products and advice.

If the April editorial seems reminiscent of the February shoot, it’s because it’s almost exactly the same thing [compare the two editorials below]. Kenza Fourati is once again the only model of colour out of three models, and once again, the other two models are thin and white.

It is duly bizarre because the other two models, the blonde and the brunette on the left [in the picture shown in the video] are NOT the same as the February shoot which you might assume at first glance since the editorials are so incredibly similar [compare two editorials above]. In other words, Lucky went out of their way to hire an ensemble of models that they basically already used once this year.

And just like the February editorial, none of them are plus-size. The fact that Lucky has done this twice so far in 2013, casting two very similar ensembles of models, and we’re only at April speaks volumes about the determination of this magazine to support the status quo. They had another opportunity to be especially diverse, given that they once again hired three models, yet they chose ultimately not to take it.

Moving on to the May issue, we see Drew Barrymore on the cover. As previously mentioned, this issue was considered “the beauty issue.” You can’t really see, but that’s what it says right here in the top corner [pointing to magazine cover]. Apparently, what Lucky considered beautiful is once again thin and white, because that’s the sort of model they chose for the May editorial.

So now we’re up to speed with the June/July issue, which is currently available on newsstands. And oh boy, what an interesting issue it is.

It seems really positive at first, as it features Christina Hendricks on the cover. Hendricks is very well known not only for her amazing acting skills on shows like Mad Men, but as a role model for full-figure Hollywood icons, which as we know are relatively rare. It’s also nice to see Hendricks on the cover, because, like Julie Bowen who we saw on the cover in April, Hendricks is relatively older then other cover stars, as she is in her late 30s.

After this, things get a little weird.

For only the second time this year, Lucky hired a model of colour to be the solo star of the major fashion spread. Remember, the last time they cast a model of colour alone for a major editorial was in January.

Hiring a model of colour in itself of course isn’t weird, at first glance it’s actually a really positive step forward.

So what is the problem then?

I say this editorial/issue is weird because it’s kind of like Lucky really, really wants you to know that they actually hired a model of colour, like it’s some groundbreaking thing that they deserve a gold star for. I say this because they mention the model’s name, Wang Xiao three times in this issue. Once in the letter from the editor, and twice in the editorial.

This is actually very unusual for a magazine. Magazines almost never give the names of the models used, unless the model used is also the cover star, like we saw with the March 2013 issue of Flare magazine which featured Charlotte Free.

In a way, mentioning Wang Xiao’s name three times seems like they’re overcompensating for all these months they weren’t using models of colour.

It is also interesting to note that they didn’t name the other model of colour — the one from the January issue [pictured above] — once. This is especially concerning, because it would seem that naming a model representing a minority in the fashion world is more important than another, potentially creating a very disturbing hierarchy.

This leads me to feel that, overall, this particular issue of Lucky smacks heavily of tokenism. The anxious and repetitive naming of Wang Xiao, drawing attention to their attempt to diversify their publication, could have been avoided entirely of course, if they had just hired more models of colour, or plus-size models in the first place.

Wrapping up this conversation, I just want to say again: I do love Lucky magazine. I’ve read it for a long time, and even though it’s glaringly obvious that they seriously lack diversity, I’ll still keep subscribing to it. I’m inspired by Anita Sarkeesian, the founder of the feminist pop culture blog, Feminist Frequency who reminds us in her videos that, “it is both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or more pernicious aspects.”

There is definitely hope though. Very recently, on June 18th, news broke that Eva Chen will be replacing Brandon Holley as the Editor-in-Chief of Lucky. Chen is the FIRST Asian-American Editor-in-Chief out of all of Conde Nast’s publications, so “yay!” for women of colour in the media, and here’s hoping that she will bring in some much-needed diversity to the pages of this particular magazine.

For more information on this video, head over to The Closet Feminist.