Cosmopolitan Magazine a Morally Corrupting Poison

Before boarding a short flight, I did what I imagine most twentysomething women do: I bought a glossy magazine, Cosmopolitan. I’d never read it before — not even the battered and outdated copies at the nail salon — but I’m always open to in-flight entertainment and suggestions for my ever-growing lip-gloss collection. After I merely glanced at the headlines tucked between the seemingly endless advertisements for jewelry and body washes, it became clear that I wasn’t being offered harmless suggestions for a stylish wardrobe. For just $6, I had purchased a morally corrupting poison.

Editor in chief Jessica Giles introduced the Cosmopolitan issue with a short paragraph lamenting the “batsh** election season.” Giles prefaces an article about the “dawn of Black-centered fragrances in a stubbornly white perfume industry.” Pages later, the magazine’s beauty editor, Julee Wilson, complained that the fragrance industry is “super European and super white,” adding that “it seems like the fragrance business never got the DEI memo the rest of the beauty industry has doubled down on.” (She recommends eight perfumes made by people of color, but there’s no description of how any of them smells, so you have no idea which ones you might actually like.) I thought that, by the end of 2020, progressives had exhausted their ability to whine about white people and supposed racism, but Cosmo provides a fresh spin by decrying the devilish perfume industry.

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Abigail Anthony

Abigail Anthony is a staff writer at National Review.

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Before boarding a short flight, I did what I imagine most twentysomething women do: I bought a glossy magazine, Cosmopolitan. I’d never read it before — not even the battered and outdated copies at the nail salon — but I’m always open to in-flight entertainment and suggestions for my ever-growing lip-gloss collection. After I merely glanced at the headlines tucked between the seemingly endless advertisements for jewelry and body washes, it became clear that I wasn’t being offered harmless suggestions for a stylish wardrobe. For just $6, I had purchased a morally corrupting poison.

Editor in chief Jessica Giles introduced the Cosmopolitan issue with a short paragraph lamenting the “batsh** election season.” Giles prefaces an article about the “dawn of Black-centered fragrances in a stubbornly white perfume industry.” Pages later, the magazine’s beauty editor, Julee Wilson, complained that the fragrance industry is “super European and super white,” adding that “it seems like the fragrance business never got the DEI memo the rest of the beauty industry has doubled down on.” (She recommends eight perfumes made by people of color, but there’s no description of how any of them smells, so you have no idea which ones you might actually like.) I thought that, by the end of 2020, progressives had exhausted their ability to whine about white people and supposed racism, but Cosmo provides a fresh spin by decrying the devilish perfume industry.