Vogue Lazily Mixes Up Activist Noor Tagouri With Pakistani Actress Noor Bukhari

When young activist and writer Noor Tagouri recently picked up the new issue of Vogue in which she is featured, she was “devastated” to find that the magazine confused her with a totally different person.

In a cute video Tagouri posted on Instagram of her finding the issue in person, she screams about how cool it is to see herself in the magazine before saying “they fucking spelled…” and pointing to where the magazine lists the name of a Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari. “Are you kidding?” she says before the video stops.

Tagouri wrote in the Instagram caption of her video:

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!! We finally found the issue in JFK airport. I hadn’t seen the photo or the text. Adam wanted to film my reaction to seeing this for the first time. But, as you can see in the video, I was misidentified as a Pakistani actress named Noor Bukhari. My name is Noor Tagouri, I’m a journalist, activist, and speaker.

Considering this wasn’t a simple typo, Instagram account and fashion industry whistleblowers Diet Prada raised the theory that Vogue probably just lazily confused two women simply for wearing a headscarf. And Tagouri echoed that in her post, pointing out how especially offensive this mix-up is:

I have been misrepresented and misidentified MULTIPLE times in media publications – to the point of putting my life in danger. I never, EVER expected this from a publication I respect SO much and have read since I was a child.

Misrepresentation and misidentification is a constant problem if you are Muslim in America. And as much as I work to fight this, there are moments like this where I feel defeated.

In response to the mistake, Vogue told Page Six:

In the February issue of Vogue the writer and activist Noor Tagouri was misidentified in a caption as ‘actor, director, and model Noor Bukhari.’ We are sincerely sorry for the mistake. We were thrilled at the chance to photograph Tagouri and shine a light on the important work she does, and to have misidentified her is a painful misstep. We also understand that there is a larger issue of misidentification in media—especially among nonwhite subjects. We will try to be more thoughtful and careful in our work going forward, and we apologize for any embarrassment this has caused Tagouri and Bukhari.

Nothing to see here, just more fashion magazines cashing in on “diversity” and tokenizing women to the point that editors think they’re literally interchangeable!