Negative comments on body image and weight from Anna Wintour’s interview on 60 Minutes have been making the rounds, showing that the fashion industry norm of equating beauty with being thin or skinny is still cemented in peoples’ minds. Given Wintour’s high-ranking position in the fashion world as the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, we can’t help but be disappointed — disgusted even — that she continues to perpetuate our culture’s obsession with weight and the negative body image that it fosters.
The Vogue editrix admits to having asked Oprah Winfrey to shed 20 pounds in order to be featured on the magazine’s cover in one of its 1998 issues, though this part of her interview was not aired. Anna Wintour is quoted saying that “it was a very gentle suggestion [...] I went to Chicago to visit Oprah, and I suggested that it might be an idea that she lose a little bit of weight [...] I said simply that you might feel more comfortable. She was a trooper!”
We highly doubt that it was as gentle a suggestion as Wintour claims. And the fact that she said Winfrey might be more comfortable if she slimmed down? It’s just another way of saying that she might not feel as bad about herself if she were thinner. Again, intimating that the more a person weighs the less they are able to accept and respect themselves, to feel comfortable in their own bodies.
As it turns out, Oprah complied with the request and lost weight. “[Oprah] totally welcomed the idea, and she went on a very stringent diet,” according to Wintour. “And it was one of our most successful covers ever.”
The tagline from Oprah Winfrey’s cover was about her “amazing makeover” — i.e., how losing weight and being skinnier made her more beautiful; how she improved by shedding the pounds. The whole reason for putting Winfrey on the cover was to point out her weight loss, to feature her as a person who was winning their struggle with their weight.
The Vogue issue in question is from over 10 years ago and clearly Anna Wintour’s position and views on weight and body image have not changed since then.
She further states in the 60 Minutes interview that she approves of and defends the use of Photoshop to alter images of people, thereby making them more “beautiful” than they are in real life. “That’s one of the things that makes me rather angry, that I don’t understand [...] That if you look wonderful, does that make you less important? Less powerful? Less serious?” She fails to grasp that it’s not a question of looking wonderful; the issue at hand is that photoshopping images presents artificial perceptions of and unattainable standards for beauty.
The cherry on the cake came in the form of Wintour’s comments on obesity: “I’d just been on a trip to Minnesota, where I can only kindly describe most of the people I saw as little houses [...] There’s such an epidemic of obesity in the United States, and for some reason, everybody focuses on anorexia.” Little houses? How deftly she turns the negative focus away from the obsession with weight loss by trying to spin the issue to look like obesity is the only true weight problem — and that losing weight is its logical cure and thus should be viewed in a positive light as promoting good health.
