BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine by Margaret Cho

BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine Reviews

• 
  carol.

  To be honest, I haven't read this particular compilation. I've actually been a subscriber to
  Bitch Magazine since I first learned about it in 2003, so I assume I've read most of these articles. I recommend this--but especially the magazine--to all my feminist friends who want to engage their brains in their cultural consumption.
  
  What's in it?
  
  Cultural deconstruction. Interviews with interesting people who usually have contributed some kind of outsider voice to culture/art, ranging from young artists to ones who have been contributing in their field for decades. What kind of art? Film, fashion, music, visual, written, performance, video and all their sub-genres. (In other words, all the various ways people express themselves). Occasional rants. A profile of an activist and some of the organizations they recommend. Letters to the editor. A book, movie and music section that focuses on indies, and has led me in directions I would not have found on my own (
  Little Jackie was an especially awesome find). A two page smorgasbord of cool stuff staff members want to bring to readers' attention in every issue. A full-page comic.
  
  I love the way it celebrates as much as it deconstructs. I long ago dropped my Ms. subscription because it was more depressing than uplifting, loved its theory a bit too much and had trouble staying relevant. Bust was a bit too DIY and indie-band fangirl, and it definitely lacked the analytical angle I wanted with my cultural commentary. Bitch manages to overcome the tendency of outsider commentary to overwhelm when acknowledging and discussing the multitudes of challenges we face. I highly recommend it.
• 
  Ciara

  when "bitch" magazine found itself in dire financial straits a few months ago & begged money off the feminist community at large to put toward publishing its next issue, much debate was sparked over "bitch"'s relevance to the feminist community. "there are better causes," people said. "all 'bitch' magazine does is encourage people to consume," they said. i won't deny that "bitch" isn't a perfect magazine (what is?), but i think a lot of people were confusing "bitch" with its infinitely lesser feminist magazine "bust". now, "bust" sucks. all it does is encourage people to consume. but i like "bitch". i don't always agree with them, but politics isn't about agreeing all the time. it's about thinking, & "bitch" usually makes me think. for example, i think that any magazine that has to beg upwards of $30,000 to publish one issue should maybe take another look at their overhead & make some difficult budget cuts. but still. one of my college majors was pop culture, which many of my fellow students perceived of as a soft option, an easy A. boy, were they ever surprised when they took intro to pop culture in pursuit of that easy A. pop culture was really challenging because it borrowed from so many different disciplines. & mostly what we did was examine the way pop culture functions within a political context. how does pop culture influence economics? how does pop culture influence religion? how does pop culture influence our perceptions of aging? etc. "bitch" magazine is about the relationship between pop culture & feminism. fabulous! & this book collects an assortment of essays that appeared in the magazine during the first ten years of publishing. again, i didn't agree with all of it, & of course, pop culture is ever-morphing, so some of the essays are hopelessly out-dated by our standards today, but it's still pretty interesting to see pop culture phenomena interrogated through a feminist lens & actually watch feminism as a movement change in response to pop culture. erego, i liked this book.
• 
  Daisy

  As someone who is frequently met with an eye roll and “Okaaay Germaine” when I bring up feminist issues I have been worried about the current state of feminism and what has been happening to women for the last few years. Reading this collection of articles that span a decade from the early 1990’s I felt nostalgic for the days when feminism meant taking control and being unafraid.
  What saddened me was that many of the old arguments were still being fought and in some cases things for women had slipped backwards. There is an articles which is dated by the author discussing the new appearance of threading salons – now the plethora of beauty salons offering this and so many other new unheard of then treatments is slightly depressing. The article discussing women wearing T-shirts saying, ‘I’ve had an abortion’ to secure abortion rights and show solidarity seem a world away and ahead of us today, a world where Texas has all but criminalised it.
  There is an article which I think is interesting to read in light of the current #metoo movement where the author discusses the tendency of the cultural response to rape and sexual abuse being to emphasise the victim status of the woman (its Bitchfest so don’t tell me boys and men suffer too). Going on to claim that there is purchase in the idea of what she calls the ‘collapsible woman’, Veselka says that we love to encourage women to break themselves over this so as a society we can show we are there to catch and support them. I agree with her, there has to be something better than being just a survivor. Vaselka asks,
  ‘How…have we come to portray the ideal “recovering” woman as someone who can’t go to the grocery store without having her “issues” “triggered”?’
  By telling girls that rape is such a violation, such a life destroying event we are setting the up to be destroyed if something happens to them and I feel that this sentiment is trickling down to more minor things. My secondary school was located in an area which couldn’t have been better designed for flashers if it was intended. An all-girls school it was a frequent occurrence that journeying to or from school you’d be flashed at. I remember vividly our headmistress telling us that we needed to remember that these men were pitiable, inadequate sad individuals and looking to scare or shock us and so the best thing we could do was ignore and not react unless it was to laugh at him. I felt empowered and not afraid, I felt that yes I was in the ascendency because any flasher was reduced to extreme humiliating efforts to gain my attention, and when it happened I wasn’t afraid or traumatised and it didn’t affect me in any way other than to give my friends something to laugh about. It saddens me today that women look to the police to take action, or see it as a terrible violation. At school we had self-defence lessons and I have never felt afraid to walk after dark and yet I see young women scared to go out alone, fearful, looking to others (law-enforcement etc) to enable them to feel safe.
  Full of short articles (all around the 5 page mark) on subjects such as pornography, teenage fiction (all hail the goddess Judy Blume), desire and the beauty myth this is a timely read showing just how far we had come, how in danger we are of ceding some of the ground gained and how far there is still to go.
  
• 
  Faye*

  I have been in a major reading slump for almost two months now, so this took me FOREVER to get through. Even though this book and the articles in it are not the most up-to-date, I enjoyed reading and learning from them very much. I found many pieces very well written, educational, and thought-provoking. If you come across this book in your libary as I did, I highly recommend you pick this up. Even if you don't read through it all, the diversity of the topics covered make for a very stimulating read, and you can always focus on the sections that seem most relevant or interesting to you.
• 
  Ana

  Mandatory reading for baby feminists such as myself.
• 
  Gabrielle Moss

  I wrote an essay in this book. If you don't purchase a copy of this book, basically you are saying that you think women are terrible. Oh my god, I can't believe you think that!
• 
  Amber

  I want to own this book. I'm afraid that once I return it to the library, I'll forget everything I know that I need to care about.
  
  I just watched a children's cartoon where a sea-faring boy and his captain friend are on an island populated by monkeys and one woman, named Matthew (yup) whom the captain soon grows to hate due to her constant references to her time at "the University". He states plainly that he doesn't like her because she acts (and, uh, is) smarter than him. He eventually THROWS HER INTO A VOLCANO. Because the captain is usually depicted as a kind of idiot, you would think this is a comment on how only stupid weird ship captains are dumb enough to hate a girl for being more educated than him. But no. The monkeys come over and thank the captain because they, too, found Matthew annoying. Because I just read BITCHfest, I go straight to thinking this is teaching kids early on that women who take on masculine characteristics (a smart girl named Matthew, hello) is not likeable by man nor beast.
  
  It's funny, accessible, honest and even though they authors of each article have clear ideas and opinions, it still is a piece that seems to have been created to start dialogue.
• 
  Val

  This is a collection that (thankfully) shows it's age. Most of the time? Half of the time? I want to say that things have improved. Sadly, it's not something that I can say with every essay. But for every 4 pieces that are laughably outdated, there are 1 or 2 that make me pause and consider things, something I am grateful for as a well-read feminist.
• 
  Christine

  Good and varied collection of essays focusing on various aspects of gender. Several of the essays also deal with homosexuality and pop culture.
  
  Do you know there is labia plastic surgery?
  
  
• 
  Jane

  I first heard about the feminist magazine Bitch in 2011 when they very controversially pulled three books (Tender Morsels, Sisters Red, and Living Dead Girl) from their list of top 100 feminist YA books after they received complaints. The magazine claimed that they read/re-read the books and decided the weren't so very feminist after all. I mean, you don't have to put items on a list of feminist books if you don't think they're feminist, but if you've already published the list, I feel like you should stick to your guns when people complain. And also, it's bad to put books on a list if you HAVEN'T ACTUALLY READ THEM.
  
  Suffice it to say, I didn't have a very good impression of the magazine.
  
  But I found this book in the library discards (where I go scavenging about twice a month) and I thought I'd give it a whirl. As with any essay collection, it's a mixed bag. But overall, I totally enjoyed it. Recommended for anybody interested in feminist and LGBTQ issues.
• 
  Kate

  Crap. I can't believe I accidentally deleted my original review for this book. Now I will have to try to recreate it from memory.
  
  When I took a class on writing the personal essay, one of my classmates thought that my essays would be a good fit for "Bitch."
  
  However, when I asked, "What's Bitch Magazine?" She looked at me like, what you've never heard or read this 'zine before?!
  
  Then she promptly recommended this book. Now that I have finished reading this anthology, I must admit I am a fan and these essays have inspired me to start revising some of my own works. I can't wait to check out their website and read more from their bitchin' contributors. Cheers to that and happy reading!
• 
  Elizabeth Edwards

  After picking up my first copy of Bitch magazine when I was 15 years old, it has been a long time coming for me to read the book. In a culture of "alternative facts," it is important now more than ever to think critically about the media we consume each day.
  
  Bitch offers our society a "critical eye" on how societal norms about sex, race, sexuality and class influence the media we consume. It is hard now to watch any show again without being critical to the patriarchal themes found in our everyday shows. Not only does the stories give real examples, but the author provides suggestions for advocacy and activism. I applaud Bitch for the book and their work for women throughout the world.
• 
  Anna

  This is a great collection of thought provoking social commentary. If you like Bitch Magazine you'd like this look back over the last 10 years. I didn't always agree with the author's point of view, but each essay raised interesting questions about gender and gender roles in American society.
• 
  Deema

  Couldn't bring myself to finish this book. Most of the articles seemed dated and irrelevant to today's world, which I guess is a good thing. But my main gripe with it was that it focused almost exclusively on white feminism which was disappointing. It completely dismisses other points of view from WOC making it extremely hard to relate to or take seriously.
• 
  Gaijinmama

  A collection of some of the best articles from just about the best magazine out there!
  Read this, it rocks! And subscribe to the magazine while you're at it. They are an independent, woman-owned, damn-good publication and need reader support to stay afloat.
  
• 
  Carey

  earnest inspiration, best taken in small doses.
• 
  Amanda

  While I have my disagreements, this collection of essays is thoughtful and thought provoking.
• 
  Rebecca Dobrinski

  With Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and – especially – Texas in the news recently, my feminist sensibilities have been on extra high alert. This may be why, after borrowing the book Bitchfest almost a year ago, I finally sat down to read it.
  
  For those who are not aware, the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture was launched in 1996 by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler. Looking for (and not finding any) feminist commentary on pop culture, Jervis and Zeisler opted to create their own andBitch became a reality. Three years after publishing the first issue, they created a nonprofit. Now known as Bitch Media, the name better represents the evolution into a multimedia nonprofit that has grown and gone beyond the boundaries of a magazine. If you want to dig deeper into Bitch’s history, check out their web site at bitchmagazine.org.
  
  Now that we are all on the same page, back to Bitchfest…
  
  Published for Bitch’s 10th anniversary, the book is divided into eight topical chapters ranging from puberty and feminism (“The F Word”) to sexuality, beauty, and activism. As editors, Jervis and Zeisler selected 54 essays that showcase the passion, intellect, and critical eye of the magazine’s contributors. The book breaks down a wide variety of perspectives on how popular culture deals with these topics.
  
  One particular essay that stuck out to me was “Teen Mean Fighting Machine: Why Does the Media Love Mean Girls?” by Gabrielle Moss. Having attended graduate school during my late-30s/early-40s, I made friends with women much younger than myself. Mean Girls is one of their “must see” movies – and they were aghast that I had never seen it. Interestingly, Moss’s essay confirmed some of the assumptions I had about the movie: stereotypes of teenage girls and having a boyfriend as a solution for girl angst. As Moss concludes, instead of “transform[ing] the way teenage girls are encouraged to think and act toward each other,” (48) the discussions inspired by the movie fell far too short of their potential.
  
  A very well organized book, the final chapter, “Talking Back: Activism and Pop Culture,” was the ideal way to wrap up the anthology. Each section builds up to a crescendo and “Talking Back” provides a reminder of how important activism is. It can seem trite, but without taking that step to speak up for what you believe in, things will never change.
  
  Seven years after Bitchfest was published, feminist voices such as those featured in Bitch magazine and throughout the Bitch Media outlets continue to remain a necessity. When you look at current pop culture, from Snickers commercials defaulting to the notion that the worst thing a man can be called by his friends is a woman to Susan Sarandon saying she no longer calls herself a feminist, women everywhere need to hear from those willing to speak out. As Jervis observed:
  
  “As the media landscape becomes both increasingly corporatized and more chaotic – with more grassroots potential through phenomena like blogs, low-power radio, digital video, and podcasting but also more risk that those venues will be used to sideline our voices in favor of more and more advertising messages – we need to take it further still.” (330)
  
  Hopefully, these voices will continue to inspire other women to stand up and take it further.
  
  This review originally appeared at Zen Dixie,
  http://www.zendixie.com/read.html
• 
  McKenzie Richardson

  Love it!
  
  This is a very good compilation of many of Bitch magazine's articles from 1996 to 2006. There are so many things to love about this book.
  
  Instead of throwing a bunch of articles together in an anthology, Jervis and Zeisler categorize the articles into broad groups such as Ladies and Gentlemen: Femininity, Masculinity, and Identity; The F Word; and Beauty Myths and Body Projects, just to name a few. Even within each category the articles vary greatly such as within Beauty Myths and Body Projects everything is discussed from facial hair to fat suits to vaginal reconstruction (a few of my personal favorites). While I may not agree with everything written in the articles, each one brought a unique perspective to mull over.
  
  The styles vary by contributor, many of which utilize the satirical, sharp humor that made me love Bitch magazine in the first place.
  
  If you like Bitch magazine and are looking for articles from previous issues or if you are at all interested in a subscription, this is a great book to start with because it gives a nice array of various Bitch-quality articles.
  
  I enjoyed the wide variety of topics and the critical mentality in regard to everything about the media that Bitch is famous for. The last chapter, Talking Back: Activism and Pop Culture, ties the book up nicely with a call to action and strategies for fighting the ever-present battle against media misrepresentation and sexism (as well as other prejudice related sentiments) in media coverage.
• 
  Marjorie Elwood

  Pretty academic in tone and a little out-of-date, this was not an easy read, but it was an essential one. I kept finding essays that I wanted to pass along to my friends, essays that challenged what I'd long believed or thought, or ones that put into eloquent words what I'd suspected or known. Eloquent, and with a bite: "Clearly, the strong, self-actualized woman is an image that sells. It makes sense, right? You see one of these ads, you get that strange sensation of--could it be? Could it actually be? Elevating self-esteem? Identification with an image in the media? Oh, my God! Ideally, advertisers are thinking you'll associate that good feeling (especially since it's so rare) with their brand and think, "Wow, Nike--they make me feel great!" Then you'll rush out and spend the seventy-five cents that you earn to the male dollar on their product." Other sections were simply alarming: apparently, Camille Paglia wrote:
  "Feminism...does not see what is for men the eroticism or fun element in rape, especially the wild, infectious delirium of game rape." There is also a section devoted to finding alternative media sources and getting the media to run more diverse stories that better reflect society's diversity.
• 
  Stephy

  BITCH Magazine, from the mid 90's was the fresh new voice of the woman's movement as viewed through the eyes of a much younger, hipper crowd than Ms. Magazine. In fact BITCH started out as a Zine, A few pages of writing on a topic in this case feminism, copied and stapled and mailed to whoever is interested enough to send postage.
  
  Today, it has grown up enough to write stories with sidebars like this:
  Hard Times At the New York Times Book Review, all the misogyny is fit to print
  Written by Sarah Seltzer
  
  The New York Times Book Review has never exactly embraced passionate advocacy—unless it was promoting Pynchon’s and DeLillo’s place in the postmodernist canon. Even worse, it has become the place where serious feminist books come to die— or more accurately, to be dismissed with the flick of a well-manicured postfeminist wrist.

  
  I loved it then and am delighted with it now. Subscribe!
  
  Bitch
  
• 
  Sarah Menezes

  The only good thing to come out of being stuck at the DMV over 3 hours was being able to finish BITCHfest. Because the articles are all from mid 90's to the mid 2000's, I felt a lot of nostalgia reading the articles (primarily the section titled "Hitting Puberty"), and they reminded me of how "ashamed" I was of my own inner feminist growing up, being afraid I would start to fit the stereotype that my family often clung to when mocking feminism. Only in the past couple of years have I been able to fully realize what it means be a "feminist", and that is that there is no clear box for it, and the whole idea of a "feminist stereotype" goes against the goal of feminism and eliminating harmful gender-based stereotypes.
  This isn't to say I liked or even agreed with all of the articles, but I appreciated them all to an extent, and found some really refreshing.
  
  P.S.
  I think BITCH Magazine would approve of "ask the passengers" by A.S. King,which kept popping in my mind while reading several different articles.
• 
  Elyssa

  I have a realy hard time with the title of this book of essays and the magazine from which they are derived. To me, even when a marginalized group "reclaims" a derogatory word, it is still a derogatory word. Often people (especially members of the dominant culture) continue to use the former (and unempowered) version of the word because they think it has been endorsed by feminists and made acceptable.
  
  With that rant out of the way, I did enjoy these essays. I felt that they were well selected from ten years of this magazine and represented a wide array of feminist issues. Everytime I delve back into books about feminism, I am reminded that these ideas are not so radical. It all boils down to women wanting the same rights and access as men. Why is this such a threatening concept?
  
  
  
  
• 
  Kristen Northrup

  The easiest way to sum up my impression is that I'd never read the magazine when I started this book, and when I was done, I ordered a (prepaid) subscription. I've still read very little on feminism, so even the presumably standard stuff was novel. It was surprisingly not-angry, given the title. Most pieces were just wry, and unnervingly close to resigned. On the other hand, except for one bit in one chapter intro, everything was thoroughly rational and quotable. I particularly liked seeing some of my presumably more out-there views expressed; the ones I've never heard anyone share before. And I still love "[apparently women] use their genitals only as sticky traps in which to catch wedding rings."
• 
  Nicki

  I've never read an actual issue of Bitch but ever since I discovered feminism, Bitch's website has been one of my favorites. I was really excited to find this compilation and it didn't let me down. Even though some of these articles are dated, they are still effective and relevant (makes you wonder about the state of third wave feminism!)
  Awesome read, it covers a huge range of topics. And it's one of those books where you can start anywhere and end anywhere.
  Would definitely recommend to feminists, budding feminists, or for anyone who wants to read a savvy, critical, honest compilation of Western/North American culture.
• 
  Lani

  There were certainly some essays I enjoyed more than others, but in general a good read. Some laugh-out-loud stories, some interesting points, and some perspectives I hadn't considered before. It was sometimes slow going when a string of articles didn't address anything I cared about, or beat a dead horse, but it was worth slogging through to find the good stuff.
  
  This is a book I'd like to share with a reading group - or more accurately, I'd like to photocopy chunks of this book and assign readings. :-)
• 
  Miri

  I expected to like this a lot more given how much I love the magazine. However, the pop cultural references were obviously very dated and lost on me (not the writers' fault) and almost every piece had essentially the same exact snarky tone despite the fact that they're all by different writers. I love snark as much as anyone, but reading a long series of pieces with the same tone got very tiresome. All the same, I learned a lot of good stuff and I'm glad to see how much better Bitch has gotten in the years since these pieces came out.
• 
  Makayla Osipenko

  I am so pleasantly surprised with this book. I got it on a whim, and wasn't sure if I would actually enjoy it. It was actually wonderfully educational and enjoyable. There is many different opinions expressed in this book, which was nice to see. This is a wonderful collaboration of work. I enjoyed so many of the articles, and the ones I didn't enjoy were still pretty good. I would recommend this to anyone who has a bit of knowledge about feminist and women's issues and were interested in learning more.
• 
  Torie

  I love Bitch magazine and I love this book. And I'm only on the third essay! Sometimes I feel self-conscious about being critical, like the world we live in decided that it's a bad thing to constantly assess what is fucked up or radical about an aspect of our culture. This book reminded me that there are a whole lot of smart folks engaging in this constant assessment and it's a good thing, a really good thing.
• 
  Alyse

  good read. it's all articles broken up into sections so you can always pick a section instead of a linear read-thru and get the same effect. the thing about collections like this is that some editors have gone through a billion articles and picked out the best and most applicable ones for the purpose of the book so there really are no misses. everyone wins. except patriarchy and dominant culture.
  hooray!!