Do The Ugly Read Vogue? Let's Ask Anna, When She Dines In Hell

So Peter Braunstein got convicted yesterday. Normally this would have nothing to do with Anna Wintour and Vogue, but because apparently he wrote down some ugly fantasies of doing terrible things to Anna, both the Post (a while back, as their front pager of that day) and the NY Times today couldn't resist getting as much in as possible:

Mr. Braunstein’s trial drew attention because of the bizarre nature of the crime, because of his ties to the fashion industry and because the testimony included readings of long, rambling passages from a diary and manifesto in which he compared himself to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, expressed admiration for serial killers and threatened to kill Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue.

“I’m going to kill Anna Wintour — because I feel like it,” Mr. Braunstein wrote in his “personal manifesto, a k a the making of a menace.” Just shooting her would be too “impersonal,” he added. He wrote that he considered blowing up Ms. Wintour’s town house, then dashing inside the ruins dressed as a firefighter and killing her.

He also wrote that Ms. Wintour would be “escorted by eunuchs to a place in hell run entirely by large rats.”

This completely random insertion brought to you by People in New York Who Secretly Enjoy Watching Wintour Suffer.

Meanwhile, via Garance, I jumped to to the Jezebel blog for this sassy take on this month's profile of CBS reporter Lara Logan and her work in Iraq.  Vogue does a lot of these - ostensible "foreign affairs" articles that are built around, say, a beautiful reporter, a model with a charity streak, a socialite with a weird foreign background... this sort of thing.  The articles, should you bother to read them, will add zip to your understanding of the foreign affairs issues, but you could learn about a nice toner, or packing tips (you know, like a simple shift from Prada can take you from day to evening, depending on whether the local dictator dresses formal or not). Which is to say, they're not totally useless; but know your audience (all of this is parodied in the first few minutes of The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda Priestly tells her assistant "isn't there an attractive female paratrooper in Iraq? Am I reaching for the stars here? I think not").

So, after beating up the prose in the Logan piece (I wouldn't know, I was too busy looking at the dreadful pictures this month, and the stories about how models you'll never look like like to go on vacation... mainly to some beach you've never heard of), our critic offers up a sample alternative, then says this:

[This way] You're no longer writing a specific story about a specific pretty lady who does a specific difficult job; you are writing the one definitive story about All Pretty Ladies who do all jobs -- and, by extension, all Ugly Ladies Who Wish They Were Pretty. (Do the ugly read Vogue? That's not a hypothetical question. I'm actually curious.)

I was going to say I think not; but look at Peter Braunstein. Perhaps if Anna were nicer to The Ugly, she wouldn't have these terrible death threats to contend with. Just a (wee fashion brain) thought... :)

 

Comments

[Jennifer]

Excuse me but some deranged rapist/killer makes hideous threats to a woman and somehow she is blamed??? Why do so many (in secret or in public) blame a woman when she beautiful, successful, and gorgeously dressed?? Or say that somehow she is doing something wrong?
Anna is fabulous and please let's take that disgusting man for exactly what he is and only that-a criminal. Or if one prefers to say he is sick he needs help-fine. Neither Anna Wintour nor his victim nor any other woman holds any responsibility for that.