Glamour U.K. gave the annual award to nine transgender-identifying ‘women,’ described as ‘trailblazers.’
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at some recent headline-making coverage from the U.K. editions of Vogue and Glamour, and cover more media misses.
Are Women’s Magazines Okay?
Last week, Glamour U.K. found itself on the receiving end of backlash from women at home and abroad when it made the decision to feature nine men on the cover of its 2025 Women of the Year issue.
The British mag announced it would give the annual award to nine transgender-identifying “women,” described as “trailblazers” who “work tirelessly to empower, uplift and celebrate trans voices.”
The group of biological men, who the magazine calls “The Dolls,” includes models, activists, writers, actors and more. Their names are Munroe Bergdorf, Maxine Heron, Taira, Munya, Bel Priestley, Dani St. James, Ceval Omar, Mya Mehmi, and Shon Faye.
Author J. K. Rowling, a leading voice for women’s rights and against transgenderism in the U.K., was immediately critical of the decision.
“I grew up in an era when mainstream women’s magazines told girls they needed to be thinner and prettier,” she wrote on X.
“Now mainstream women’s magazines tell girls that men are better women than they are,” the post continued.
The affection of British women’s magazines seems to be reserved for men who identify as women; those males who identify as . . . men should be avoided, according to a recent column in British Vogue which argued that having a boyfriend is “embarrassing.”
The column claims young people are distancing themselves from traditional, heteronormative relationships, and at times even working to maintain a “single” image online, even if they are in relationships.
“It feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across as quite culturally loser-ish,” wrote British Vogue opinion writer Chanté Joseph.
“On the ‘Delusional Diaries’ podcast, fronted by two New York–based influencers, Halley and Jaz, they discuss whether having a boyfriend is ‘lame’ now,” Joseph wrote. One of the top comments on the podcast, which Joseph includes in her piece, was “Why does having a boyfriend feel Republican?’”
The Vogue writer’s observation comes after Atlantic writer Faith Hill told CNN earlier this year that men’s political shift to the right has made dating less appealing.
“I think, for a lot of women in particular, it can just sort of feel like, ‘This is not a time where I trust men — I feel respected by men. I don’t necessarily want to go out and meet strangers who are men,’” Hill said.
Headline Fail of the Week
The Times of London reported last week what they believed to be a major pre-Election Day scoop: “Zohran Mamdani ally Bill de Blasio says his policies ‘don’t add up.’”
But it turned out the British paper had not done its due diligence and had in fact emailed and then accepted quotes from a Long Island man named Bill DeBlasio — not the former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The Times removed the story from its site after the real Bill de Blasio took to Twitter to say that he had never spoken to anyone with the Times.
Meanwhile, the New York Times gave the Times of London far too much credit in its coverage of the incident: “De Blasio Impersonator Tricks British Newspaper With Fake Criticism of Mamdani.”
As NR’s Jeffrey Blehar writes:
The Times of New York should be clowning on its London counterpart properly, not reflexively taking the side of journalists too stupid to perform their basic due diligence. Bill DeBlasio — who is now a minor legend — did not hang his shingle out to the world advertising himself as the former mayor. He was sitting at home minding his own business, for crying out loud! Even though he knew he was taking advantage of the Times’ ignorance — “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor. . . . So I just gave him my opinion” — I cheer him for forcing these people to pay the price for their lazy assumptions.
Media Misses
- CNN host Audie Cornish said increased immigration enforcement in cities like Chicago is playing out much like scenes from horror movies, going so far as to suggest that parents of trick-or-treaters on Halloween could be “abducted” by ICE. She noted there’s a scene in the horror film Get Out “where someone is abducted in the opening scenes of the film, and I have to admit, I thought about this Chicago directive, that’s like, ‘ICE, please don’t go to trick-or-treating,'” Cornish said. “Like, please don’t make that the scene of a raid that is a horrific experience — if someone loses their parent on a Halloween trip.”
- DHS is criticizing NBC’s Bay Area affiliate for its report that federal agents arrested a “42-year-old undocumented father at home in San Jose” as he was leaving for work.”According to the family’s Ring video, Gerardo was in his black truck at 7:45 a.m., about to head out to his construction job when multiple people, who appear to be federal officers, approached his truck and yelled for him to get out,” the report read.
“His wife, Idalia, who says she is a U.S. citizen, ran to the truck to try to stop the arrest. She said a woman, not in uniform, hit her 22-year-old daughter with a baton — the incident, however, is not shown on the footage,” the article adds.
DHS criticized the outlet for failing to include the information that the man “has a rap sheet that includes: lewd and lascivious acts with a CHILD, battery of a spouse, domestic battery, compensation for prostitution, felony reentry after removal.”
- MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently claimed no Democrats have ever compared President Trump to Adolf Hitler. Fox News’s Gutfeld! made a compilation of Democrats comparing the president to Hitler in response. The video includes Democrats like former Vice President Kamala Harris and Representative Jasmine Crockett.