While marveling at her first feature in Vogue, Noor Tagouri quickly went from elated to devastated when she realized that the magazine had misidentified her.
The 25-year-old activist, who made history in 2016 as the first woman to rock a hijab in Playboy, had been looking forward to her feature for months. Her excitement quickly shattered though when she got her hands on the February issue and saw that she had been incorrectly identified as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari.
Related: Amy Schumer Destroys Instagram Account That Photoshopped Her Face
To make matters worse, Tagouri’s husband was recording her big moment and captured her reaction to the upsetting oversight. In the clip (below), you can see just how heartbroken she is:
I’m SO heartbroken and devastated. Like my heart actually hurts. I’ve been waiting to make this announcement for MONTHS. One of my DREAMS of being featured in American @VogueMagazine came true!! pic.twitter.com/0lzPJoDn9v
— NOOR (@NTagouri) January 17, 2019
Tagouri later told BuzzFeed News that she was “absolutely devastated” to see the error, adding that she was more upset about how misidentification is “always happening to Muslim women.”
The fact that the 25-year-old has been a huge fan of the publication since she was a young girl was an extra blow, as she explained:
“I’ve never seen a Muslim woman in hijab in the pages of Vogue. I was so proud and couldn’t wait for my younger sisters to see this. I’ve been reading Vogue since I was little, and I did this for my 12-year-old self who never saw herself in pages like these.”
Sadly, the milestone was ruined by lazy fact checking; something the trailblazer had been very familiar with:
“Just last month Brides used my wedding photos for a horribly written and misrepresentative piece on Muslim wedding traditions — written by two white women. And they had to retract it and apologize and the works, but I found out about that article a year late because my friend found it online.”
Tagouri has also been misidentified as the wife of the Pulse nightclub shooter; a mistake the activist said had put her “life in danger.” She recalled:
“Outlets were using my photo to identify Noor Salman, the Pulse nightclub shooter’s wife — a mistake that is disappointing but not surprising since Noor Salman doesn’t wear the hijab, and I do, so it’s careless to think I look ‘more Muslim’ for the negative narrative being spewed.”
Fearing a similar error would taint her Vogue feature, Tagouri’s team attempted to have a final look at the final edit last week, but never heard back.
We even sent this email to @voguemagazine last week bc we this isn’t the first time I’ve been misidentified in publications. Got no response. pic.twitter.com/G5YVzSozqd
— NOOR (@NTagouri) January 17, 2019
Ugh. So frustrating!
Tagouri said simple fact checking and a more diverse staff could prevent publications from making these mistakes in the future, continuing:
“There are 3.4 million Muslims in America — behind that number are actual human beings, with stories, names, identities, experiences. We aren’t all the same. That goes for every marginalized group. How to avoid errors like this? Hire more people of color. And fact check.”
Sounds like an easy enough fix.
Vogue, for its part, issued an apology to Tagouri in a statement on Twitter Thursday, writing:
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) January 17, 2019
Instead of feeling embarrassed, Tagouri says she feels more “defeated” — but she’s hoping this will shed light on the situation and make publications step up their editorial game:
“I know we can learn, build, and grow from this. I am constantly talking about misrepresentation and the dangers of misidentification. It isn’t always easy — but this is why we keep fighting.”
Let’s do better, world.
[Image via Noor Tagouri/Twitter.]
Related Posts
-
Categories
