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.