It’s April 11, 2024, days after the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the state’s decades-old law barring abortion unless a mother’s life is endangered. It’s also one day before California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which marks the beginning of the festival season, where braless 20-year-olds compete for the summer’s coolest boho-chic look. The Teenager is acutely aware of abortion policy and Coachella. Which is why Teen Vogue’s top stories on April 11 are “4 Tricks to Nail Festival Dressing, According to Olivia Rodrigo’s Stylist” and “Arizona Supreme Court Upholds a 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban.” In two clicks, teenagers can receive advice on how to “accessorize like your life depends on it” and get schooled on “one of the most restrictive [abortion laws] in the country.”

This has been Teen Vogue’s general layout since 2016: progressive politics mixed with cultural drivel. With the rise of Donald Trump in 2016, the magazine announced that it would create a politics section, morphing from a tabloid that helps girls navigate the world into “the young person’s guide to conquering (and saving) the world.” The publication became hyper-politicized, apparently to match the times.

No one asked it to.

Fast-forward a couple Trump terms, and Condé Nast announced last Monday that Vogue will absorb Teen Vogue and focus its content on “career development, cultural leadership and other issues that matter most to young people.” According to New York’s NewsGuild, Condé management will lay off “six of our members, most of whom are BIPOC women or trans, including Teen Vogue’s Politics Editor.” The publication now has “no writers or editors explicitly covering politics.”

A chorus of they/thems has raised the alarm on social media. “They just gutted Teen Vogue which had top notch political journalism. The media is continuing to purge any sort of political dissent to Trump and the oligarchs,” trans activist and Harvard clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo said. Trans activist and journalist Erin Reed was devastated by the “major loss.” Another former writer said, “Teen Vogue was one of the first places I ever got to write the kinds of more radical stories about mental health, polyamory, queerness, trans people and more. I helped shape the identity and politics verticals back in 2017-2018 and seeing it ruined is nothing short of horrific.” A cabal of gender-curious staffers cornered and bullied the company’s head of human resources, Stan Duncan, on Thursday to protest the layoffs. Four of them were fired.

Employees complain that Condé is trying to stifle the magazine’s “insightful” journalism for political reasons. Teen Vogue’s readership (which the magazine defines as “genderless”) craves progressive activist content, they say, and Condé Nast is “attempting to intimidate and silence our members’ advocacy for the courageous cultural and political journalism of Teen Vogue,” union members say.

But a closer look at the publication’s trajectory over the past decade shows how it lost its way by embracing the niche political fashions and befuddling mannerisms of the far left, without regard for its general audience.

Teen Vogue’s reason for existence, recall, was to give fashion-aware girls relatable and affordable lifestyle tips, as Vogue matriarch Anna Wintour said when the magazine was founded in 2003. “We are going to do what we do well, which is fashion, beauty and style,” Amy Astley, the first editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, said at the time. “A lot of other teen magazines are focused on relationships, boys, sex and embarrassing moments. That is not our equity.”

Girls collected Teen Vogue magazines on their bookshelves in the early 2000s. They read profiles of Sylvester Stallone’s daughter Sistine, learned the modeling tricks Kaia Gerber picked up from her supermodel mom Cindy Crawford, and were introduced to Nicole Richie’s little sister Sofia. Relationships, boys, sex, and embarrassing moments were still featured, but not in a totally perverse Cosmopolitan way. Teen Vogue did publish some raunchy content, but that material wasn’t the magazine’s identity. Girls, for the most part, read about fashion advice, jewelry trends, up-and-coming singers, eating disorders, actor heartthrobs, and the rise of social media in Teen Vogue’s pages.

When Teen Vogue became political, its staff lauded the magazine as Gen Z’s minority-voice mouthpiece. The publication highlighted diversity, social justice, and trans-youth activism, through features like Politics Editor Lex McMenamin’s recent “LadyLand 2025 Brought NYC’s Queer and Trans Youth Together for a Fascist-Free Weekend.” Also through articles about why young queer people are cult fans of Rocky Horror; what the “Stitch and Bitch” knitting club can teach you about the revolution; how the followers of plus-size influencers feel when the influencers losing weight; why Nyallah, a 21-year-old she/they vocalist, writes nonbinary breakup songs; and how to find an accessible chest binder as a disabled trans person.

Teen Vogue wrote about transgender rights and political issues before 2016; after 2016, those articles became central to the overall identity of the magazine. Some of the publication’s first political articles were “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America”; “How Transgender Teens Are Fighting Against Bathroom Laws”; “We Had Zendaya Interview Michelle Obama, And It’s ALL the #BlackGirlMagic We Need RN”; and “I’m Trans and I Wrote a Letter to My Body Parts for Valentine’s Day.”

Elaine Welteroth, who became editor-in-chief of the publication in 2016, was honest about the magazine’s transformation. “I think Teen Vogue did an incredible job in that beauty and fashion space for young women,” she said in 2016. “But I think about a year and a half ago I’d say, we all kind of came around the table and said, we have to mean more to our girls. Why are we here today?”

Teen Vogue’s political era was successful in its own way. In 2021, the magazine won the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) and the NIRH Action Fund Champion of Choice Award. In 2020, it won the Physicians for Reproductive Health 2020 Voices of Change Award. Teen Vogue’s parent company, Condé Nast, allowed activists to take over the magazine’s masthead and, until this past week, appeared proud of that decision.

But that journalism catered to a specific group of progressive activists, the likes of whom grew up to major in gender studies at Ivy League universities and denounce the state of Israel as a genocidal regime. In 2018, only 1.7 percent of Teen Vogue’s audience was under the age of 17, according to data from ComScore. Most readers were over the age of 24. Teen Vogue, in favor of radical political activism, deserted the age group it was created to serve.

So, Condé Nast may have finally realized that it was not good business to run articles such as “This July 4, Let’s Remember: America Was Never Great,” or have the male trans activist Dylan Mulvaney lecture readers about girlhood, or employ staffers who believe that their identity elevates their writing above reproach. Just read this statement from union members:

Gone is the political-cultural criticism of the fashion and culture industries by the Black women writers laid off today. Gone are the incisive and artful depictions of young people from the Asian and Latina women photographers laid off today. Gone, from the lauded politics section, is the work that made possible the blockbuster cover of Vivian Wilson, one of Condé Nast’s top performing stories of the year, coordinated by the singular trans staffer laid off today. Nearly all of these staffers identify as LGBTQ. As of today, only one woman of color remains on the editorial staff at Teen Vogue.

It was not brave to teach girls how to have anal sex. It was not fearless journalism to investigate how the patriarchy contributed to the “climate crisis.” It was not “insightful” to write about how black women experience “food shaming.” It was not “courageous” to describe women as “non-prostate owners.” Who will miss Teen Vogue, other than indoctrinated 20–40-year-old progressive activists?

Teen Vogue died a long time ago. Condé Nast kept publishing it anyway — and by default helped a fashion magazine for kids become one of the most vocal woke propaganda outlets of the 21st century.