On the surface, Glamour appears to be a standard women’s magazine, with a cover that promises to unveil secrets to better sex and a flatter stomach. But behind the facade lies a staunchly feminist soul, a testament to the fact that female empowerment can come in a pretty package.
A search for the source of this soul will lead directly to editor in chief Ruth Whitney’s corner office at Conde Nast headquarters in New York. Whitney has presided over Glamour for nearly 29 years, and the magazine bears her pro-woman stamp.
Glamour is known for taking on controversial, hard-hitting topics, from abortion to stalking. But as befits its title, it also offers advice on wearing hip-huggers or choosing shoe styles that flatter the legs.
“I really feel there’s no topic we can’t discuss in that magazine, from politics to finances to sex to mascara,” says Whitney, a woman whose no-nonsense attitude hints at her Midwestern roots. “One of the things that has kept me so interested in the job over the years is the vast variety.”
Glamour doesn’t categorize women as either frivolous or serious, and the magazine’s well-rounded nature contributes to its popularity. With a circulation of more than 2 million, Glamour outsells Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar combined. It’s also a moneymaker for Conde Nast.
But what makes Whitney almost visibly puff with pride are the National Magazine Awards — the Oscars of the industry — that Glamour has garnered. Glamour is the only women’s magazine to have won top honors for general excellence in the million-plus circulation category. Whitney has accepted the award not once but twice, beating out Time and Money in 1991. In 1992, the magazine also won the Public Interest award for a series on abortion.
Whitney was honored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in April when she was chosen as one of five inductees (others included Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown and People’s founding editor, Richard Stolley) into the organization’s new Hall of Fame.
This combination of editorial integrity, financial success and newsstand popularity makes Whitney revered in the industry and has given the 67-year-old editor staying power.
“She is still fighting the good fight — that’s what I love about her,” says Linda Wells, who grew up reading Glamour and is now editor in chief of Allure. “I really respect her and so admire what she’s done for magazines and for women’s magazines.”
Glamour has paved the way for many other magazines, not all of which are directed at women.
The combination of how-to articles, solid reporting on issues, opinion pieces and entertainment helped women’s magazines gain more credibility and “made all sorts of magazines possible,” Wells says. “It’s not a mutually exclusive thing to care about the way you look and be concerned with issues.”
Glamour is Ruth Whitney in the same way that Cosmopolitan embodies Helen Gurley Brown. While Cosmo’s message hasn’t aged well in the era of safe sex (Brown is scheduled to hand over the reins to Bonnie Fuller later this year), Glamour keeps reinventing itself.
“I figure I have edited four different magazines in the time I’ve been editing Glamour,” says Whitney, who took over in 1967 and has navigated the magazine through the women’s rights movement, the birth-control pill, the sexual revolution and women’s mass entry into the work force.
Although Whitney says the magazine has simply evolved with her readers, she is known for actively staying in touch with their concerns and channeling them into Glamour. One of her methods is to peruse all the reader mail — 10,000 letters a year.
When Whitney arrived at Glamour, it still boasted an annual cover devoted to the nation’s best-dressed college women. Whitney immediately changed the focus to achievement, giving birth to the Top Ten College Women Competition. Through the years she has also added a Women of the Year issue with an awards ceremony to further her goal of magnifying women without diminishing men.
“We are very pro-woman and we are pushy about it,” Whitney says. One of the primary functions of the Women of the Year awards is to “let readers know about the tremendous achievements of women in a great variety of areas from politics to science to sports. It just says `You can do it. It can be done.’ “
Whitney grew up as Ruth Reinke in Oshkosh, Wis., determined to compete with her two older siblings. That they were seven and 10 years older didn’t deter her. The praise she received from teachers on her writing convinced her to go into journalism.
The encouragement continued once she was enrolled as an English major at Northwestern University. After graduating, Whitney took a job as a copywriter for Time’s educational department in Chicago. She moved to New York for a position at Better Living magazine and eventually became executive editor of Seventeen before joining Glamour.
Along the way, Whitney realized that she wasn’t meant to be a writer.
“In truth, I’m a much better editor than I am a writer,” she says. “When I was younger, I sort of envisioned myself pounding away at a typewriter hour after hour. But I turned out to be quite gregarious. I love working with people, I love working with a team and none of that goes particularly with being a lonely writer.”
Whitney is determinedly practical and doesn’t hesitate to challenge the conventional way of doing things. Her assistant sits inside Whitney’s office, an arrangement “a lot of people regard as weird,” Whitney says, but it works for her.
The only computer in the sandy pink room is on her assistant’s desk. Whitney prefers to edit on paper while riding the train to her home in Westchester County, N.Y.
New staffers are sometimes surprised to learn that Whitney not only reads every article that goes into the magazine but also subjects each one to detailed scrutiny.
You’ll never see her at a fashion show, but you will find her involved in causes she believes in, such as chairing the executive committee of Northwestern’s Council of 100, a group of successful business women who visit the Evanston campus twice a year as role models to college women.
Whitney is a pioneer in many respects but also a representative of the era in which she grew up. She married the year she graduated from college (her husband died in 1995) and has one son, who followed his mother’s advice and works in the magazine business.
Philip Whitney, 32, recalls being the only one among his friends whose mother wasn’t home when school let out. By the example she set, he was brought up to treat women as equals.
“I remember huge arguments at the dinner table when I would come back from college and incite her to fury by uttering the dogma of the ’80s. Not that I believed any of it — I just knew I could pull her chain,” says Philip Whitney, consumer marketing director of Money.
“This is one woman who is a true feminist and can be incited to riot if her son were to say something against feminism.”
Although he was impressed by her position from a young age, not until he learned more about the magazine industry did he gain a full sense of her accomplishments.
“It’s so incredible that this magazine, which uses beauty, sex and fashion to sell the magazine, actually has a heart and soul that radiates a point of view,” he says. “And that point of view is `We care about women and we are your advocate.’ Knowing what I know about publishing, that high-wire act is extraordinary and kind of unparalleled.”
Glamour isn’t afraid to be political, and Whitney doesn’t shy away from that characterization.
“You can’t care about women and not be political because much of women’s lives is tied up in what happens in Washington,” she says.
Whitney is upbeat about the progress women have made since the late ’60s and expresses optimism about the weight they’ll carry in this election year.
“I think women are being taken much more seriously than they have been,” she says. “And what I think is more important is that women are taking themselves much more . . . seriously. One of the biggest obstacles to women’s advancement is their own self-doubt. Self-doubt is a very real enemy.
“But I’m basically very optimistic about women’s futures. I think women will shatter the glass ceiling. Women right now make 72 cents for every male dollar, but you have to keep in mind that is up from 59 cents when the women’s movement started. So that’s real progress.
“But 72 cents isn’t there yet. I think we ought to at least get this to 92 before we relax.”
Whitney has seen progress in her own workplace. Last year, Glamour got a new publisher. And for the first time it was a woman.
