By Doug Gross, CNN
August 20, 2013 -- Updated 0001 GMT (0801 HKT) | Filed under: Web
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| Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's photo spread in Vogue magazine has proven controversial, with some saying it detracts from the 3,000-word article that focuses on her successes and vision in a male-dominated tech world. The profile describes Mayer as an "unusually stylish geek." Take a look at other photos of her through the years. |
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| Mayer was always an exceptional student, excelling in biology and chemistry. "When I was first at Stanford, I was very certain I was going to be a pediatric neurosurgeon," she says. However, a summer at youth science camp resulted in a change in thinking, and the path that would eventually lead to Google and later Yahoo. |
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| In December 2009, Mayer married Zachary Bogue, a private-equity executive a year her junior. |
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| While Mayer describes herself as an introvert, she says her husband, who she met after they were set up, is the flip side of the coin. "He finds social situations very energizing and for me, I find them very intimidating and draining." |
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| Mayer accepted the National Design Award on behalf of Google in October 2008. But public speaking and social events haven't always been easy, says Mayer: "I'm a really shy person. ... Yet at Google, my colleagues would never believe that; because here, I'm outspoken because I feel comfortable and I feel like I can express my opinions and find my voice." |
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| Early days at Google, Halloween 2004. After agonizing over 14 job offers, she chose to join Google in 1999 because, she says, "I felt like the smartest people were there, I felt like it was a risk and I felt like it was something I wasn't really prepared to do." |
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| Mayer says every new product raises users' expectations. Here, Mayer is at Grand Central Station in New York for the launch of the Transit feature on Google Maps in 2008. |
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| When she can, Mayer enjoys outdoor and sporting activities. She says, "I did a cross-country ski race once, it was 56 kilometers long, which is like 32 miles and I did it without training. ... I actually was slower on the cross-country skis than I would have been if I walked." |
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| Mayer says gender doesn't matter if you have a passion for what you do. "I'm surrounded by all kinds of other people who are just as passionate and that passion is gender neutralizing." |
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| Pictured in 2013, Mayer has often been named one of the most powerful women in business. "I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies," she told Vogue magazine. "I'm just geeky and shy and I like to code. ... It's not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do—it just sort of happened." |
(CNN) -- Since taking the helm of Yahoo after years in Google's upper echelon, Marissa Mayer has been at the center of plenty of talk not focused on turning around the once-mighty Web giant.
As Silicon Valley's most prominent woman, her appearance, her motherhood and the way her policies will affect female employees have all, fairly or not, been the subject of spirited discussion.
Now, a two-page photo spread in September's Vogue magazine has them talking again.
In the photo, Mayer lies upside-down on a backyard lounge chair, wearing a blue Michael Kors dress. Her blond hair fans out at the foot of the chair, her Yves Saint Laurent stiletto heels point toward the top and she holds a tablet computer featuring a stylized image of her face.
In the minds of some, that single image is enough to undo a 3,000-word article -- the first in-depth interview Mayer has granted since taking the reins at Yahoo -- that focuses on her successes and vision in a male-dominated tech world.
"Nothing says, 'I'm a powerful woman' like a photo of you upside down on a weird couch," Stan Horaczek, an editor at Popular Photography, said on Twitter. "Nice work, Vogue."
"Being equal means you can be (feminine) AND smart," wrote online business consultant Angie McKaig. "However, still wincing over Marissa Mayer all stretched out for Vogue."
Some people focused less on the photo and main article than they did on what they deemed a questionable sidebar piece titled "What Would Marissa Mayer Wear?: A Workweek Guide to Office Dressing."
"Marissa Mayer's ascent up the corporate ladder and to the top of the tech world are enough to make her the mentor every working woman wants," the piece reads. "But her uncanny ability to perfectly answer that age-old fashion question: What is work-appropriate? is equally worth emulating."
It follows with a five-panel slideshow of outfits presumably inspired by Mayer.
"Oy... " read the one-sound review of Slate economics reporter Matt Yglesias on Twitter.
Mayer has made no secret of her love for design and fashion. The article, in which writer and Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg calls her an "unusually stylish geek," is her second appearance in Vogue, following a 2009 feature when she was one of Google's top leaders.
READ: How Marissa Mayer makes her own rules
Much of the online response on Monday, the first day other publications could run the image, remained focused on the article itself, with much of it praising Mayer and the steps she has taken to begin a turnaround at a once-faltering Yahoo. Others said the photo, like it or not, shouldn't take away from the overall look at Mayer's life and career.
Anna Holmes, founder of women's website Jezebel, argued in a column for Time that "women who hold any position of authority get it coming and going" when it comes to their appearance. Ignore it? You lack self-respect. Focus on it? You're superficial.
If anything, she writes, Mayer's photo and other recent debates "make me yearn for a time when female competence in one area is not undermined by enthusiasm for another -- in which women in positions of power are so commonplace that we do not feel compelled to divine motive or find symbolism in every remark they make, corporate policy they enact or fashion spread they pose for."
In the article, in which Mayer reveals a fondness for even numbers, cashmere boleros, pineapple milkshakes and Candy Crush, she also provides insight into her first year at Yahoo's helm.
On her vision for Yahoo: "Close your eyes and listen to this list. E-mail, maps, weather, news, stock quotes, share photos, group communication, sport scores, games. You're listening to what people do on their mobile phones. And it sounds like a list of what Yahoo does."
On buying blogging site Tumblr: "I've done now between three and four dozen acquisitions in my career ... and I've never seen this kind of lock-and-key fit between two companies. Our demographic is older. Theirs is the youngest on the Web."
On her controversial move to end work-from-home at Yahoo: (In a conversation with Web investor and pioneer Esther Dyson) "Mayer elaborates, a little defensively, on her reasons for the change. She never meant it as any kind of larger statement about society, but simply as the right decision for Yahoo, where by various accounts working from home often meant hardly working. Teams are happier now that absent participants don't teleconference in for meetings. Messages on Yahoo's 'devel-random' e-mail list, the company's informal forum, have lately turned positive. And in perhaps the clearest sign of support, employees have, she tells Dyson, 'stopped leaking my e-mails' to the press."
On getting ahead in Silicon Valley: "I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies. I'm just geeky and shy and I like to code. ... It's not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do—it just sort of happened."
Thank you CNN. From reetime news technology.
