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[Bitchfest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of andquot;Bitchandquot; Magazine] [Author: x] [September, 2006]
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About the author
Andi Zeisler
7 books255 followersAndi Zeisler is a co-founder and creative/editorial director of Bitch Media, a nonprofit feminist media organization based in Portland, Oregon. Zeisler's writing, which focuses mainly on feminist interpretations of popular culture, have been featured in a variety of publications including Mother Jones, The San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, The Women's Review of Books, and Ms. She is a former pop-music columnist for the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, and also contributed to the anthologies Young Wives' Tales, Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships (both from Seal Press), and Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit (Crown). She is the coeditor of BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, and recently finished a book about feminism and popular culture for Seal Press, Feminism and Pop Culture. She frequently speaks on issues of feminism and popular culture on college and university campuses.
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July 16, 2025
A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES FROM A FEMINIST ‘POP CULTURE’ MAGAZINE
The Introduction to this 2006 book explains, “When ‘Bitch’ was born we had ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ ‘Reality Bites,’ and ‘Mademoiselle.’ It was 1996, but even then, before the popular advent of the Internet, reality TV, and blogs, pop culture comprised our contemporary oral traditions, shaped our modern myths, and provided us with our gods and goddesses… movies, TV, ads, and glossy magazines … sought to tell us---as they seek to tell everyone—who we were. The thing is: we pretty much already knew who we were---or at least who we weren’t… What we were was curious about what those fictional women and their representational peers had to tell us about our cultural take on femininity, ‘proper’ male and female behavior, and women’s place in the world.
“We were also obsessed with how pop culture treats---and by ‘treats’ we mean ignores, sidelines, and denigrates---feminism. The mid- to late '90s saw the rise of so-called Postfeminism… now, all of a sudden, there were books about Postfeminism, references to it in film and literary criticism, even an entire website called the Postfeminist Playground where a group of women wrote about sex, culture and relationships from a standpoint that assumed a world where the gains of feminism were unequivocal and its goals roundly met. Postfeminism is, perhaps not surprisingly, very similar to old-fashioned antifeminism; at bottom, it suggests that the culture at large is just fine and that our pervasive, ongoing struggles with [it] … aren’t societal problems—they’re personal ones.” (Pg. xix-xx)
They continue, “the sparks of indignation we felt ignited a burning need to correct the record about what both women and feminism can and should be. That indignation is a big part of why we chose to call the magazine ‘Bitch.’ … We’d argue that these days the word ‘bitch’ is as loaded as the term ‘feminist’---both are lobbed at uppity ladies who dare to speak up and who don’t back down… [We] know that taking a stand is usually more important than being nice… When it’s being used as a insult, the word is most often aimed at women who speak their minds, who have opinions that contradict conventional wisdom, and who don’t shy away from expressing them. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we’ll take that as a compliment, thanks. And if we do, the word loses its power to hurt us… Last, but certainly not least, ‘bitch’ is efficiently multipurpose---it not only describes who we are when we speak up, it describes the very act of making ourselves heard… we still think, ten years later, that it’s the most appropriate title for a magazine that’s all about talking back.” (Pg. xxi)
They go on, “And what better to talk back to in this intensely mediated day and age than in the boundless source of material that is pop culture? Anyone who protests that a focus on pop culture distracts from ‘real’ feminist issues and lacks a commitment to social change needs to turn on the TV---it’s a public gauge of attitudes about everything from abortion… to poverty (two words: ‘welfare queen’) to political power… Contemporary feminism has always had ties to popular culture and its representation of women: Gloria Steinem’s first big break was ‘I Was a Playboy Bunny’… [and] two of the highest-profile early women’s lib actions were a protest of the Miss America Pageant and a sit-in at ‘Ladies’ Home Journal.’” (Pg. xxi-xxii)
They add, “The notion at the heart of ‘Bitch’ is simply this: If the personal is political… the pop is even more so…. they all go together---living-wage campaigns with critiques of ‘Maid in Manhattan,’ antiviolence organizing with questions about why the Lifetime channel loves its women so victimized---informing each other to keep this movement vital. The world of pop culture has turned out to be all too close to literal, the marketplace of ideas; if we’re not there checking out the wares, we won’t be able to respond effectively---or put our own contributions on offer.” (Pg. xxii)
They summarize, “If we could encourage a generation of young women and men to look at the culture around them through a lens that prioritized gender representations, they’d be inspired to protest that culture---and maybe by the time those people became ad executives, TV producers, and studio heads, they’d be creating a pop culture that truly reflect all genders accurately. We wanted to remind people… to ask questions about the messages in their media and to speak up---to each other and to the corporations and culture makers behind those messages. We still do.” Pg. xxiii)
Andi Zeisler wrote in an article, “The paradox of young-adult media---magazines, television, movies---is how, even in the process of trying to make girls feel comfortable with their lives, the messages imparted most often encourage extreme discomfort. Being ‘yourself,’ girls are told, is fine, as long as that self concentrates on being thin, pretty, unintimidatingly smart, and boy-friendly. Along this same line, countless authors of novels for girls translated the term ‘young adult’ to mean ‘shopping-obsessed, boy-crazy bubblehead,’ and the result was a vast assortment of stories that centered on a female character just dying to be asked to the prom.” (Pg. 20)
Athena Douris and Diane Anderson-Minshall note, “a lesbian who goes to men has committed the ultimate betrayal---a betrayal that can only properly be punished by exile. We… regularly chatted about the tragedy of lesbians who went to men… until it happened to one of us. Out, lesbian-feminist activist Athena fell in love with a man. She lost her job. (She was a sex columnist; her boss quickly labeled her ‘straight’ and ‘replaceable.’) Her closest friend… stopped speaking to her. In the space of two months… she lost her identity. She went from ‘lesbian’ to ‘hasbian’… Athena is far from the first hasbian, or the most infamous. That title might belong to JoAnn Loulan, who was the world’s leading lesbian sex therapist for twenty years… When Loulan started a relationship with a man several years ago, her best friend also stopped speaking to her. She lost speaking engagements, book sales, and, she says, her purpose in life…” (Pg. 71-72)
They continue, “for most of the world---lesbian and otherwise---when a man comes along, it does change everything… The reasons behind this kind of rejection---a phenomenon we term ‘dyke banishment’---are many. Loulan believes that it’s a result of homophobia---that lesbians feel so overwhelmed and negated by society, we can’t see the pain we’re creating when we exile another woman. Often, dykes… say they’re justified because women who love men have easier lives, so they don’t deserve the protection, companionship, or support of the lesbian community. In some ways, they’re right: Male-female couples enjoy thousands of perks unavailable to queer couples, including the … ability to walk down a street holding hands and not be bashed.” (Pg. 72-73)
Jennifer Newens comments on a 60 Minutes segment dealing with Martha Stewart: “60 Minutes’ masculine message: a Woman without a man is somehow not a legitimate woman; a woman (of) traditional femininity [who] forges masculine power from it is scary and threatening. Martha Stewart is all of the above, so she must be lonely and bitter, without the ‘true happiness’ that would come from a straight marriage.” (Pg. 223)
Bitch magazine’s final issue was in June 2022, and their website is now offline. But this collection is a fine example of the kind of material that was available in the magazine.
The Introduction to this 2006 book explains, “When ‘Bitch’ was born we had ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ ‘Reality Bites,’ and ‘Mademoiselle.’ It was 1996, but even then, before the popular advent of the Internet, reality TV, and blogs, pop culture comprised our contemporary oral traditions, shaped our modern myths, and provided us with our gods and goddesses… movies, TV, ads, and glossy magazines … sought to tell us---as they seek to tell everyone—who we were. The thing is: we pretty much already knew who we were---or at least who we weren’t… What we were was curious about what those fictional women and their representational peers had to tell us about our cultural take on femininity, ‘proper’ male and female behavior, and women’s place in the world.
“We were also obsessed with how pop culture treats---and by ‘treats’ we mean ignores, sidelines, and denigrates---feminism. The mid- to late '90s saw the rise of so-called Postfeminism… now, all of a sudden, there were books about Postfeminism, references to it in film and literary criticism, even an entire website called the Postfeminist Playground where a group of women wrote about sex, culture and relationships from a standpoint that assumed a world where the gains of feminism were unequivocal and its goals roundly met. Postfeminism is, perhaps not surprisingly, very similar to old-fashioned antifeminism; at bottom, it suggests that the culture at large is just fine and that our pervasive, ongoing struggles with [it] … aren’t societal problems—they’re personal ones.” (Pg. xix-xx)
They continue, “the sparks of indignation we felt ignited a burning need to correct the record about what both women and feminism can and should be. That indignation is a big part of why we chose to call the magazine ‘Bitch.’ … We’d argue that these days the word ‘bitch’ is as loaded as the term ‘feminist’---both are lobbed at uppity ladies who dare to speak up and who don’t back down… [We] know that taking a stand is usually more important than being nice… When it’s being used as a insult, the word is most often aimed at women who speak their minds, who have opinions that contradict conventional wisdom, and who don’t shy away from expressing them. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we’ll take that as a compliment, thanks. And if we do, the word loses its power to hurt us… Last, but certainly not least, ‘bitch’ is efficiently multipurpose---it not only describes who we are when we speak up, it describes the very act of making ourselves heard… we still think, ten years later, that it’s the most appropriate title for a magazine that’s all about talking back.” (Pg. xxi)
They go on, “And what better to talk back to in this intensely mediated day and age than in the boundless source of material that is pop culture? Anyone who protests that a focus on pop culture distracts from ‘real’ feminist issues and lacks a commitment to social change needs to turn on the TV---it’s a public gauge of attitudes about everything from abortion… to poverty (two words: ‘welfare queen’) to political power… Contemporary feminism has always had ties to popular culture and its representation of women: Gloria Steinem’s first big break was ‘I Was a Playboy Bunny’… [and] two of the highest-profile early women’s lib actions were a protest of the Miss America Pageant and a sit-in at ‘Ladies’ Home Journal.’” (Pg. xxi-xxii)
They add, “The notion at the heart of ‘Bitch’ is simply this: If the personal is political… the pop is even more so…. they all go together---living-wage campaigns with critiques of ‘Maid in Manhattan,’ antiviolence organizing with questions about why the Lifetime channel loves its women so victimized---informing each other to keep this movement vital. The world of pop culture has turned out to be all too close to literal, the marketplace of ideas; if we’re not there checking out the wares, we won’t be able to respond effectively---or put our own contributions on offer.” (Pg. xxii)
They summarize, “If we could encourage a generation of young women and men to look at the culture around them through a lens that prioritized gender representations, they’d be inspired to protest that culture---and maybe by the time those people became ad executives, TV producers, and studio heads, they’d be creating a pop culture that truly reflect all genders accurately. We wanted to remind people… to ask questions about the messages in their media and to speak up---to each other and to the corporations and culture makers behind those messages. We still do.” Pg. xxiii)
Andi Zeisler wrote in an article, “The paradox of young-adult media---magazines, television, movies---is how, even in the process of trying to make girls feel comfortable with their lives, the messages imparted most often encourage extreme discomfort. Being ‘yourself,’ girls are told, is fine, as long as that self concentrates on being thin, pretty, unintimidatingly smart, and boy-friendly. Along this same line, countless authors of novels for girls translated the term ‘young adult’ to mean ‘shopping-obsessed, boy-crazy bubblehead,’ and the result was a vast assortment of stories that centered on a female character just dying to be asked to the prom.” (Pg. 20)
Athena Douris and Diane Anderson-Minshall note, “a lesbian who goes to men has committed the ultimate betrayal---a betrayal that can only properly be punished by exile. We… regularly chatted about the tragedy of lesbians who went to men… until it happened to one of us. Out, lesbian-feminist activist Athena fell in love with a man. She lost her job. (She was a sex columnist; her boss quickly labeled her ‘straight’ and ‘replaceable.’) Her closest friend… stopped speaking to her. In the space of two months… she lost her identity. She went from ‘lesbian’ to ‘hasbian’… Athena is far from the first hasbian, or the most infamous. That title might belong to JoAnn Loulan, who was the world’s leading lesbian sex therapist for twenty years… When Loulan started a relationship with a man several years ago, her best friend also stopped speaking to her. She lost speaking engagements, book sales, and, she says, her purpose in life…” (Pg. 71-72)
They continue, “for most of the world---lesbian and otherwise---when a man comes along, it does change everything… The reasons behind this kind of rejection---a phenomenon we term ‘dyke banishment’---are many. Loulan believes that it’s a result of homophobia---that lesbians feel so overwhelmed and negated by society, we can’t see the pain we’re creating when we exile another woman. Often, dykes… say they’re justified because women who love men have easier lives, so they don’t deserve the protection, companionship, or support of the lesbian community. In some ways, they’re right: Male-female couples enjoy thousands of perks unavailable to queer couples, including the … ability to walk down a street holding hands and not be bashed.” (Pg. 72-73)
Jennifer Newens comments on a 60 Minutes segment dealing with Martha Stewart: “60 Minutes’ masculine message: a Woman without a man is somehow not a legitimate woman; a woman (of) traditional femininity [who] forges masculine power from it is scary and threatening. Martha Stewart is all of the above, so she must be lonely and bitter, without the ‘true happiness’ that would come from a straight marriage.” (Pg. 223)
Bitch magazine’s final issue was in June 2022, and their website is now offline. But this collection is a fine example of the kind of material that was available in the magazine.
Displaying 1 of 1 review