When an editorial team uses the title ‘Road to Redemption’, AOC expects far more of a fashion story. This fashion story is perfectly lovely on its own merit and warrants no direct criticism. Model Lucia Davara is styled by Ana Blanch in images by Pedro Beraldo for Harper’s Bazaar Mexico November 2019.

My apologies to the editorial team for speaking my mind. However, I have a message for our young creatives generally and Harper’s Bazaar Mexico directly.

Don’t throw around intellectual concepts like religion and redemption with a model’s occasional wanton gaze, a flower in her hand and a cobblestone street. It totally trivializes the entire intellectual construct around female sexuality and redemption.

Right-wing religion places women’s lives into painful, searing realities that dominate us as women, gays and other sexual-religious minority groups even today. In fact, the tide is again turning against us worldwide. ‘The Handmaids Tale’ underscores the reality of where we live in Trumplandia today, and I don’t believe that Mexico is vastly different, based on AOC’s posts on the misogyny heaped regularly on Mexico’s women.

Right-wing judges are being put into our federal court system in record numbers, and Catholic bishops are NOT on the side of women generally, except to control us.

Personally, I’ve been previously in police protection for a year because I supported Planned Parenthood on television. For supporting Planned Parenthood, I deserved to die. As a teenager, I was denied communion after my own rape by my parents’ best friend. Indeed, the priest sided with my rapist and denied me communion — literally at the communion altar. He believed that I required redemption for being a liar. That moment was seared into my consciousness forever, even though I became a foe of Catholic bishops by the experience.

As recently as 2012, a group of uber-Conservative men stopped a dialogue on AOC between me and a Catholic brother because — AGAIN — I was unfit as a good woman and not even worthy of a convo around redemption. Against my better judgement, I was supporting the Catholic brother in a fundraising project for young people. The humiliation was again searing — although multiple conservative Catholic women in Massachusetts stood up for me.

Redemption is NOT a fashion trend

Harper’s Bazaar Mexico must understand that the redemption of women is not a fashion trend. Sorry to be terse, but only a superficial fashion glossy mind would call this editorial ‘Road to Redemption’ by thrusting a white rose into the model’s hand and putting a wanton facial expression on her face — when the rape of women is an epic problem in Mexico.

Not Knowing who developed this creative positioning, I will shut my mouth. Just understand that images and words have impact on people who see and hear fashion-speak. Countless readers of AOC are conservative women in America and the Arab world — in particular — who expect me to push back against the trivializing of women’s experiences, sexual identity and experiences.

If you haven’t put your own life at risk to stop the brutal flogging of 80,000 women a year in Sudan for having an ankle showing — or a woman about to be stoned to death for adultery, while the man was free and running around the neighborhood in Khartoum — do not pass judgement on this critique.

It’s not my job to understand that no offense was intended in this editorial. Simply stated, I refuse to quietly allow the real-world of female experience to be trivialized as “fashion light” in these difficult times.

You cannot create any fashion editorial about the “road to redemption” without being provocative. The entire concept is rooted in rebellion, repression and enslavement. To underscore my point, I share examples of “redemption” well done fashion editorials, and I will look for more in an effort to be helpful in communicating the complexity of this treacherous topic. My apologies to the editorial team for speaking my mind, but it must be done on behalf of the world’s women and the LGBTQ community who expect fashion to understand the nuanced complexity of their lives. ~ Anne

Road to Redemption Fashion Editorials @ AOC