The new generation of British feminist magazines

One of the later sessions on the unit is about alternative media. There's an interesting crossover there with some of the territory we covered yesterday - specifically our discussion about Spare Rib, the feminist magazine started in 1972.

Spare Rib grew out of the alternative press and defined itself against the commercial media of the time. But it shut up shop a long time ago. However, in the last few years, a new generation of young feminists has appeared. They've started their own magazines, in print and online and, like Spare Rib, they set out to provide an alternative to the mainstream titles.

Last year, Jess McCabe (editor of the online feminist magazine The F-Word) wrote a good piece on the new magazines. She quoted Marie Berry, editor of KnockBack (probably the best known of the new titles) on her reasons for going into print:

"We don't read women's magazines. They're shit. We write KnockBack because,
fuck, someone had to."

Sarah Barnes, the editor of Uplift!, says something similar:

"I was getting increasingly annoyed by the magazines available to women. I
found them controlling and patronising, so I decided to create my own."

(Incidentally, The F-Word has a good review of Uplift!)

McCabe goes on to namecheck other magazines, in particular Subtext (they also have a MySpace page) and she mentions a whole heap of UK feminist blogs/online zines - The F-Word, which she edits, Lads Mags (which sets out to ridicule lads mags), CharlieGrrl's Blog of Feminist Activism, Mind the Gap, a blog run by a Cardiff-based activist group and Laurelin in the Rain, a more personal feminist blog.

McCabe points out, that in America, there are several well established feminist magazines that are sold on mainstream news stands - Ms (started by Gloria Steinem, who we talked about yesterday), Bust and Bitch.

But over here, since the demise of Spare Rib, there hasn't been a commercially successful feminist magazine, one that sold enough for WH Smith to stock it.

She suggests that all these blogs/zines suggest a groundswell of interest in feminism amongst young women - something that might lead to one of the new generation of mags becoming popular enough to make it into the mainstream newsagents.

Perhaps. But as I mentioned before, a lot of the commercial women's magazines here do cover what they see as feminist issues - though they do it in a rather soft way. If there is a new generation of feminism on the way, they'll start to cover it in their own way (and perhaps close down the opportunities for a genuinely new title).

As I mentioned in the last post, The Observer has just run its Radical Women special - and it's not the first time the paper has covered this territory - back in September last year, they profiled 'The New Feminists'.

Sorry - bit of a long post. But try to check out some of these links if you get time and let me know what you think. They could provide material for your log books.

Radical Women in The Observer

One of the things we didn't get chance to explore in any depth in yesterday's lecture is the way that feminism and feminist theory has become part of the vocabulary of many women's magazines.

I did briefly cover Helen Gurley Brown and the way that, in the 60s and 7os, under her editorship, Cosmopolitan was seen by some as an example of 'popular feminism'. As we discussed in the lesson, as second wave feminism gained influence, the women drawn to the ideas began to be seen as a potentially lucrative target market. Since then, women's mags have taken up feminist concerns, though not where they'd affect the basic commercial logic that drives all mag publishing. So they're happy with post-feminists like Madonnna but not with radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin.

Case in point - The special 'Radical Women' edition of Observer Woman, the paper's monthly women's mag. It came out on Sunday (March 9th) and features a package of features celebrating female radicals. Here's the blurb for the whole package:

"Mad, Bad, Briliant and Dangerous - Radical Women. They're redefining their arts, their politics, their industries, their lives - and the rules. We celebrate the most outspoken, unapologetic, successful and agenda-altering among them; from ballet's most influential diva to hip hop's new topless stars."

The package includes interviews with Candis Cayne, a transexual who stars in US soap 'Dirty, Sexy Money', Jane Shepherdson (the woman behind Topshop), Zaha Hadid (a leading architect), Jam Donaldson (a radical black lawyer/activist) and a run down on thirty 'New Radicals' (the list starts with Beth Ditto, who says 'Posing nude was a radical thing to do. I'm a fat person and I'm a femme. It felt good.)

Now, in the 70s, 'radical women' tended to mean something like Andrea Dworkin. Now, it's something much more fluid. Is this a bad thing. Well, some third wave feminists might see this as an example of the problems of post-feminism. Here, feminism becomes a useful sales tag, something that's become disconnected from a coherent politics. Then again, a lot of the women covered are doing inspiring things and pieces like this might be the way you get to find out about them.

Another thing to think about when you look at these stories - I mentioned yesterday that the newspapers were increasingly interested in targeting women readers. That's why the Observer publishes Observer Woman, which is clearly aimed at attracting thoughtful career women with lots of disposable income (because they will then attract advertisers to the paper). To draw in this group, the magazine needs to cover more serious subjects (like feminism) alongside the more standard women's mag fare, but it needs to do it in a way that doesn't upset advertisers.