Feminist wiles

When Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler look back at their ten years of editing Bitch magazine, they can still see The New York Times Magazine riding their coattails.

The two created the mag as a feminist response to pop culture, when it was still considered fluff journalism to write about TV shows, ad campaigns and trendy products. Way ahead of its time—before pop culture was regularly dissected in papers of record, and prior to blogs, plogs and college classes about The Simpsons—Bitch addressed popular culture through a feminist filter and without condescending.

To celebrate a milestone most indie magazines never reach, and to reaffirm its significance in the broad spectrum of feminism, the two have compiled the best and most timeless of their mag’s decade of commentary in the appropriately titled anthology Bitchfest (FSG, $16).

“[We wanted] to make a magazine that would really speak to young women in their voice, which is often a very irreverent, witty and sarcastic one,” Zeisler says, “something that really brought across the idea that feminism in popular media seemed to be moving backwards instead of forwards.”

Novices in the small-press publishing world of San Francisco, the two at first produced issues that weren’t much to look at—the standard DIY aesthetic of zines that fade in and out of existence on their creators’ whims. Now, the slick, glossy, polished periodical sits on newsstands nationwide, its inflammatory title (meant as verb, noun and adjective) and striking cover designs daring readers to pick it up.

Jervis jokes that their goal was, and still is, world domination. But falling short of that, she’s still surprised by the success they’ve had. “If someone had told me in January of 1996, when we had just put out our tiny, little, crappily printed, half legal–size, 36-page issue, ‘Ten years from now you will still be around, and you’ll have an actual office, and it will be some people’s entire jobs to work there,’ I would have said, ‘You’re smoking the really good crack.’?”

The collection kicks off with a fiery intro by Margaret Cho, slamming those who say sexism is dead. She writes, Not all of the pieces share that level of ire, but there is an angry current running through the book that’s tempered by insight and intelligence—Bitch’s brand of feminism.

Organized into eight chapters, the essays tackle old feminist standards (porn, relationships, body image, lesbian culture) and also include less predictable inspirations: an argument that fat suits are the new blackface; an open letter to Carnie Wilson to shut up already about her weight loss; a consideration of whether masculinity is dead, or should be.

Most of the essays are short and vary between almost a satirical bent to a more academic tone. Particularly enjoyable is the witty “Sister Outsider Headbanger: On Being a Black Feminist Metalhead” by Keidra Chaney, who considers what kind of music is acceptable in the black community, and the racially and sexually segregated vacuum in which heavy metal exists.

Although it seems a fitting way to commemorate Bitch’s contribution to the culture at large, Zeisler realizes that a collection of essays is hardly the sum of Bitch’s parts.

“I love the book, but if you read it you wouldn’t necessarily know that we do a lot of activist alerts, or a lot of interviews,” she says. “We do want to bring people to the magazine from the book, and to the book from the magazine.”

And she thinks there’s still room for Bitch to grow and remain relevant.

“Feminism has a huge image problem, and a lot of misinformation circulates about what it means to be feminist,” Zeisler says. “I think that we have helped have an affect on that, and brought a young, lively, humorous public sensibility to feminism.”

Jervis and Zeisler will discuss Bitchfest Wednesday 27.