The Washington Monthly’s Inner Lecher Finally Breaks Free

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Do you want to know today’s funniest story? Apparently there’s been a vast social media row asking whether the Washington Monthly got a little too steamy in its current issue when it ran this photo to illustrate a piece about the lack of women on DC think tank panels. The Washington Monthly! A magazine best known for 5,000-word pieces about tax expenditures and the fate of small-city airports! It’s sort of like finding a provocative picture illustrating the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.

Well, it had to happen someday. Today, in an effort to get ahead of the firestorm, the Monthly’s blog ran a post from the author of the article, Anne Kim, who said she likes the picture just fine:

The photo isn’t inappropriate; it’s provocative. And it directly challenges people to confront their own biases about how beauty (or the lack thereof) affects the prospects for a woman’s success in ways that men don’t have to deal with. No one wants to admit that they take a woman’s looks into account when they make judgments about her intellect, and that’s why this photo makes people uncomfortable. Let’s face it — how many of us assumed that the woman in the picture had an IQ lower than her bra size?

Would I have run this photo? Nah. But I’m boring. I probably would have womped up a chart or something. Still, it’s hardly likely that the Monthly was trying to pump up readership with this picture. It wasn’t on the cover, after all, or even on the front of the website. And I don’t think that one suggestive picture in ten years is going to make the Monthly a go-to destination for Beltway lechers. It was obviously meant to be provocative/ironic in exactly the way Kim suggests. Hell, knowing the Monthly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they ran it because it was the best illustration they could find that was free.

Either way, though, I’m just happy that this twitterstorm erupted over a photo in the good ol’ Washington Monthly instead of one of the usual suspects, like the Daily Beast or the Atlantic. It’s about time they got some heat for being too damn flashy.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate