Melissa V. Harris-Perry—”Professor, Author, Intellectual,” if you trust the descriptors of her personal website—is back in the brainy thick of it all, this time popping up as the Editor-at-Large at Elle.com, the online version of the high-profile, global fashion magazine.
As Perry tells it:
What powerful, honest language from the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University. To use a word the former ruler of #Nerdland might appreciate in a more academic setting, let’s “unpack” her statement.
First, Perry, or rather, Dr. Perry, claims to have joined Elle.com because she sees in the publication a golden opportunity to use her “expertise as a scholar . . . commitments as a public intellectual, and . . . interests as a woman.”
Interesting. How pleased Dr. Perry must be to profit from an industry she argues excludes women of color; how honored she must be to lend her vast intellect to a publication whose March cover lures readers in with blurbs like: “Perfect Jackets? Yes!,” “Sexy Flats-They Exist!,” and “Sex!, Texts!, Money!, Dating 2016”; and how spiritually uplifted and honest she must feel to share website space with Elle’s daily horoscope!
And just what was her Elle.com horoscope on her big announcement day?
It’s unclear what Dr. Perry’s demons are, though they likely contributed to her departure from MSNBC on what appears to be egotistical grounds. Let’s see how long Elle.com tolerates her presence.
