Teen Vogue’s new editor-in-chief, Alexi McCammond, has stepped down after facing backlash for tweets that she posted almost 10 years ago while she was a teenager.
“My past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about – issues that Teen Vogue has worked tirelessly to share with the world – and so Condé Nast and I have decided to part ways,” McCammond wrote in a statement about her resignation. “I should not have tweeted what I did and I have taken full responsibility for that.”
McCammond’s resignation marks the third time in two years that she’s publicly addressed and apologized for the tweets that were originally posted in 2011.
The tweets previously resurfaced in November 2019 after McCammond called out sports analyst Charles Barkley on Twitter after he told her “I don’t hit women but if I did, I would hit you” and then said McCammond “couldn’t take a joke” after she objected to the comments.
Barkley apologized but McCammond called him out again by quote tweeting his apology and writing that his comments were “not acceptable” and that “threats of violence are not a joke.”
Twitter users responded by calling out McCammond for a series of old tweets where she wrote “now googling how to not wake up with swollen, asian eyes…,” “give me a 2/10 on my chem problem, cross out all my work and don’t explain what I did wrong…thanks a lot stupid asian T.A. you’re great,” and “Outdone by Asian #whatsnew.”
This led to McCammond apologizing for and deleting the tweets.
More than a year later, after McCammond was named as Teen Vogue’s new editor-in-chief on March 5 this year, screenshots of these tweets surfaced again. This time, several of Teen Vogue’s staffers used the tweets to push back against McCammond being selected as editor-in-chief.
“We have written a letter to management at Condé Nast about the recent hire of Alexi McCammond as our new editor-in-chief in light of her past racist and homophobic tweets,” more than 20 Teen Vogue staffers wrote in a public note criticizing McCammond’s appointment.
McCammond responded to the backlash by apologizing for the tweets again and looked set to officially start as Teen Vogue’s editor-in-chief on March 24.
But less than a week before her official first day, these decade-old tweets have cost McCammond her job.
