Vogue highlights mental health

By SHELLIE FRAI

For Vogue’s 125th year anniversary, Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief, decided that in light of the recent societal tension and due to the predominant audience of the publication, the magazine would highlight women that are impacting the world for better in each issue for the rest of 2017.

To debut the plan, March’s issue was titled “Women Rule!” and it featured a cover with seven models of different ethnicities, sizes and race, with a caption that read “the beauty revolution: no norm is the new norm.”

In the latest issue of Vogue that debuted this earlier week, pop star and fashion icon, Selena Gomez is on the cover.

While that might not be shocking to some, the story that was featured next to her photographs surprised many.

Gomez not only talked about the facade celebrities must put on when they are watched by most of the world, but how common it is to not only people of influence and how the lack of conversation about that facade is detrimental.

Gomez talks for the first time about checking into a psychiatric facility herself and how therapy changed her life. She goes on to say how mental health awareness and therapy shouldn’t be stigmatized but encouraged.

This topic has not been talked about to this extent in the magazine before, and for it to come from a person of such influence is new to not only Vogue but to many fashion magazines.

Vogue emphasized that many see Gomez as just a million-dollar actress and a singer. However, she is also the executive producer of “13 Reasons Why” a mini-series about mental health and suicide awareness, and an advocate for dialectical behavior therapy, which focuses on borderline personality disorder.

Gomez is using her fame and stature to break down walls that say your mental health is not important. She is giving a voice to many that feel they aren’t good enough.

I believe Anna Wintour chose to tell Gomez’s story as part of her “Women Rule!” movement to highlight the fact that just as women are powerful and strong, they are allowed to breakdown and cry. We are all only human.

This issue is sending a message that in an environment where it is frowned upon to look vulnerable and weak, sometimes those can be your greatest weapons, which makes Gomez the perfect person to highlight for Vogue’s 125-year anniversary.