Take A Look At Diversity On Fashion Magazine Covers In 2016 So Far

The numbers have been crunched in terms of diversity on the runways and in ad campaigns in recent seasons, with lackluster but very gradually improving representation. But how about fashion magazine covers? Jezebel recently looked at major magazine covers from the first six months of 2016 to gauge diversity among the cover models on 14 fashion, fitness, and teen titles. Teen Vogue was a notable bright spot on the newsstands (at least in terms of cover castings; the title has had some troubled times otherwise), with four of its six issues this year featuring non-white celebrities, such as Willow Smith and Zoe Kravitz. So was Elle, which had five women of color on its cover since January. Other (slight) exceptions to the whitewashed norms of women's glossies? Teen Vogue's main competition these days comes from Seventeen, which had three covers featuring non-white castings: Tori Kelly (of Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Irish descent); Fifth Harmony (a particularly diverse girl group); and Michelle Obama, though the FLOTUS cover only graced some issues while others featured Meghan Trainor. InStyle also got a nod for its three cover models of color (Viola Davis, Jennifer Lopez, and Lupita Nyong'o). W had a fairly strong showing, too: Zendaya and Smith shared a cover, and Jennifer Lopez (pictured) and Selena Gomez had their own covers. Allure featured approximately three models of color, too: Demi Lovato and FKA Twigs each had their own covers, and Naomi Campbell shared cover duties with Bella Hadid on another issue. Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, and Redbook all haven't yet had a single model of color nabbing that coveted cover spot in 2016. Marie Claire had just one issue sans a white cover model, which featured three non-white stars sharing the honored spot (separate covers for Selena Gomez, Zendaya, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Self has also only broken from the all-white mold one time this year, and Shape and Women's Health didn't fare too well, either. Acccording to Jezebel, Vogue (featuring Rihanna and Penelope Cruz, who's technically considered white thanks to her Spanish background) and Cosmopolitan (Jessica Alba and Shay Mitchell) also had little diversity to speak of. Time will tell if this year's stats can improve upon 2015's: Fashionista did a comprehensive breakdown of racial diversity on fashion tomes last year and found 19.8% women of color, just a smidge higher than its findings for 2014, when 19.7% of magazines featured non-white cover stars. And, hey, there are still six more issues for these titles to diversify their cover castings — and while we'd love to see that happen, we'd prefer if it was just commonplace, it being 2016 and all.