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Vanity Fair’s Women on Women is a collection of essays from the magazine’s modern archives, profiles of women written by women, spanning from 1983 to the current day. In her introduction, the magazine’s current editor-in-cheif, Radhika Jones, quotes a proclamation from the magazine’s inaugural editor, “We hereby announce ourselves as determined and bigoted feminists.” This spirit animates the diverse essays within the collection, which range from lighthearted to deeply affecting and nuanced portrayals of many of the most famous women in the world. The collection is divided into the categories, “Comedians,” “White House,” “Society and Style,” “Renegades,” “Musicians,” “the House of Windsor,” “The Stars,” and “In Their Own Words,” the last of which being a small collection of recent #MeToo essays. The women profiled include Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Frida Kahlo, Meryl Streep, Gloria Steinem, Lena Waithe, and Tina Turner, among others.
The most lighthearted profiles include Grace Kelly, Meryl Streep, Audrey Hepburn, and Tina Fey, which capture each woman’s unique energy and spirit. However, the thread that runs throughout the collection is pain, exploring women whose personal traumas were dissected in the public eye. This includes marital dramas, in the case of Michelle Phillips, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Williams, and Hillary Clinton, and a more dramatic domestic abuse narrative in the case of Tina Turner. Indeed, the Tina Turner profile is one that really sticks out in terms of its rawness. Turner is reluctant to discuss the abuse she suffered at the hands of her late husband Ike, about which much has been made of in the media. Her interviewer, Maureen Orth, discussing how well Tina’s body has stood the test of time, remarks, “What’s really remarkable about Tina Turner’s face is how few scars it bears from the years of beatings she took.” Orth points out how Tina’s public image is inseparable from her private suffering, how the media heaped criticism on Tina for not leaving Ike earlier, for not fighting back. Tina has clearly internalized these critiques, and expresses guilt and regret before concluding, “You asked me if I ever stood up for anything. Yeah, I stood up for my life.”
Many of the essays focus on women in their middle age or beyond, and there is a sense of comfort in the selfhood of these women, whose ages have lent them the gift or introspection and possession. The women are joyful, passionate, resilient, and incredibly strong. There is a quality in many of these women of silent strength, of under-recognized bravery and intelligence, especially in the cases of notable first ladies like Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Barbara Bush, who in many cases have captured the public attention more favorably than their mega-famous husbands. There are essays about the struggles of motherhood and the ways that it interacts with demanding careers, and professional struggles with sexist institutions. In these essays, there are a great number of men who fail those around them, and the many women who clean up after them, who are veritable superheroes in terms of the magnitude of their personal and professional duties. All of the essays feel fair and sensitively wrought (save for the profile of Princess Diana which makes a joke of her perceived lack of intelligence and her sartorial decisions). Overall, this collection is a refreshingly nuanced exploration of the forces that act upon public womanhood, and a deeply humanistic meditation on the importance of digging deeper than the media usually chooses to. These essays from decades past are lent even further depth through the lens of the #MeToo movements, and these time capsules of women fighting for their personal and professional lives feel especially important to grapple with.