Entertainment
Mindy Kaling Saved 'Vogue'!
Just when we thought Vogue had hit rock bottom, it reprieved itself entirely. Although Kimye may be most prominently profiled in this April's issue of the esteemed magazine, Mindy Kaling is also featured in Vogue, cracking wise and looking gorgeous. The writer-actress-comedian-wonderwoman's profile makes us easily forgive Anna Wintour's cover decision — because despite any scathing remarks folks have made, the magazine is actually proving to be more progressive than we thought.
Editors, like Alexandra Shulman in the UK, have said that Vogue epitomizes fantasy; it's unrealistic that we'll have a $1,000 watch, and we most definitely won't only walk down streets that are cobblestoned. (Sigh — dreams DASHED.) What we see in Vogue is specifically not supposed to represent our everyday lives; it's what we supposedly aspire to be (and, lo and behold, never will be). The notion of beauty, too, has always been narrow: six-foot-tall, 110 pounds, model.
Even though our quips about Kimye gracing the cover are rooted in disheartened consternation, they still are an interracial cover. The magazine also profiled Lena Dunham in February 2014, and she's a curvy, tattooed woman who has acquired her fame via writing. Kaling is Indian, curvaceous, and, though famous for showcasing her hilarious acting chops on The Mindy Project and The Office (and I'll always remember her as Amy in a short cameo in The 40-Year-Old Virgin ), the star rose to fame not through acting... but through writing. If Vogue is about profiling fantasy, can we go so far to say that our very own fantasies have changed? That we've gone from dreaming about the lives of models... to the lives of writers, women who use their brains to achieve ubiquity? (Kardashian, of course, excepted.)
Moreover, beauty has a wider spectrum that the magazine is now acknowledging. There's no denying that Kaling looks stunning in the photos, but what's more is that her looks are just an afterthought to her brains.
But she does love her some fashion — and isn't that what Vogue's primary focus is, after all? As she said, "I feel the same way about clothes as I do about food... I want everything."
