BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (40 page)

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

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• PRIORITIZE MEDIA MESSAGING. Resolve to devote a certain amount of time, thought, and practical work every week to the goal of generating
positive media coverage of the issues you care about. You could decide to send three letters to the editor, thank at least one reporter or producer by phone, and pitch at least one story idea to a booker or editor every week; if you’re a member of an activist group, you could initiate a weekly media messaging session to collectively discuss breaking news, deconstruct sexist framing, develop talking points, and generate story ideas.

• INITIATE AND BUILD RELATIONSHIPS. Get in touch with reporters, editors, and producers by sending information-rich letters, press releases, and media advisories (with enough lead time to respect mediamakers’ deadlines). Communicate regularly with reporters about issues of concern to you that fall within their beat. Provide study/report data, compelling human-interest stories relevant to their audience, and connections to expert sources and new research in your area of expertise. If you work with an organization, request editorial board meetings to discuss your issues with your local news outlets. Develop catchy, persuasive, and understandable sound bites for the messages you want to convey.

• GET CREATIVE. Organize a public informational or protest event and invite C-SPAN to cover it; use satire (à la Billionaires for More Media Mergers and the Guerrilla Girls) and action ripe for photo ops (à la Code Pink or ACT UP).

• DON’T LIKE THE MEDIA? BE THE MEDIA. Attend or organize media skills—building training in your community. Do your own reporting on
Indymedia.org
websites, make your own films with
PaperTiger.org
,
DykeTV.org
, or the Media Education Foundation, and host your own college, community, or cable access TV or radio show.

• DEFEND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, passed under President Clinton, heralded the biggest wave of media mergers ever seen in the United States. Today, a tiny handful of multinational corporations owns the vast majority of American newspapers, magazines, TV networks, cable and online news and entertainment outlets, record labels, radio stations, TV and movie production companies, publishing houses, Internet and cable distribution chains, and billboards—not to mention sports teams, stadiums, theme parks, nuclear and weapons-manufacturing businesses, and lots more. The Federal Communications Commission has all but abdicated its responsibility to regulate the U.S. media industry in the public interest. Urge senators and
representatives to fight against media concentration and support legislation for diverse, local, independent, and uncensored media. Corporate broadcasters who get to use the public airwaves for free should be required to provide news and entertainment programming that is diverse, informative, educational, and produced by a range of independent creative sources.

• DEMAND FAIR HIRING AND PROMOTION PRACTICES AMONG MEDIA COMPANIES. Media conglomerates are not magnanimous; they will not change their priorities without major incentives. In the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt would speak only to female reporters at her press conferences, forcing newspapers to employ women journalists. In the 1970s, newspapers and TV networks had to be sued by women journalists before they’d stop discriminating against women in hiring and promotion. It’s time to reprioritize gender equity in the media industry as a major feminist issue and pressure media companies to address not only the glass ceiling but also the corporate climate that pushes many women and people of color to leave the field. Though biology certainly doesn’t determine politics—right-wing women like Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, and Laura Ingraham do maintain a high profile in the mainstream media, but they generally use that platform to bash feminist concerns and lobby against women’s rights protections—newsroom and media-boardroom populations that more closely reflect the general population are a necessary first step.

• CLAIM THE AIRWAVES AND CABLE SYSTEMS FOR YOUR COMMUNITY. A variety of grassroots groups are organizing in local communities across the country to help set up low-power microradio stations, advocate fairer radio spectrum regulations that support diversity and access, offer legal and technical assistance, demand better programming and public accountability from radio and cable conglomerates, challenge cable license renewals, ensure equitable and affordable access to broadband networks, and more.

• EDUCATE YOURSELF AND OTHERS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY POLICY’S EFFECTS ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION. Profit-hungry corporations are gunning to privatize and commercialize emerging technologies, which would restrict public access to means of communication and information, expanding the digital divide between wealthy white Americans and low-income people and people of color. Understanding how these forces affect your own community and our culture as a whole is
key to standing up to Internet censorship and control, protecting bloggers’ rights, advocating privacy protections, and working to keep existing and emerging Internet, cable, and radio communications technologies broadly, affordably accessible as a public good.

• FIGHT THE INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING, COMMERCIALISM, AND GOVERNMENTAL PROPAGANDA. Combat the widespread use by media companies of misleading video news releases (VNRs), which appear indistinguishable from average news broadcasts but are actually propaganda pieces paid for, packaged, and promoted by corporations and the government. The Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration (in the case of pharmaceutical VNRs) have the power to force media companies to disclose product placements that masquerade as media content on reality TV, news programming, music, and more—but they have thus far refused to use this power in the public interest.

• THINK LONG-TERM. Finally, remember that your efforts won’t instantly reverse the tide of decades of right-wing media organizing, corporate consolidation, and commercialism run amok—but every action you take is important. Don’t get discouraged if your letters to the editor don’t see newsprint very often: Not only do outlets read and discuss critical communications from their audience, they count on multiple letters to measure public perception of key topics. If you read a letter similar to one you sent, yours may have helped it get published. And even with the perfect set of talking points, a well-tailored message, and many conversations with reporters, there will be times when your messages still get marginalized, misrepresented, or ignored. But your and others’ media outreach and advocacy efforts will still help generate informative, critical, accurate, authentic, positive, and influential coverage of women and the issues that most affect us—and our collective efforts can and will result in structural change. Learn from your mistakes, replicate your successes, and never give up. The fight for media and gender justice needs you.

bitchfest

Edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler

LISA JERVIS (right) is the founding editor and publisher of
Bitch
. She lectures regularly about media and feminism on college campuses nationwide and is a founding member of the training and advocacy organization Women in Media & News. Her writing has appeared in
Ms.
, the
San Francisco Chronicle, LiP: Informed Revolt, Salon, Punk Planet, The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order
(Penguin), and
Women Who Eat
(Seal Press). ANDI ZEISLER (left) is
Bitch’
s founding editor and current editorial/creative director. Her writing has appeared in
Ms., Mother Jones, Bust, Utne,
the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Women’s Review of Books,
and the anthologies
Young Wives’ Tales
and
Secrets and Confidences.

Praise for bitchfest

“Greatest-hits … from the pages of
Bitch
, the leading post-postfeminist culture-crit ’zine.”

—
The Atlantic

“Bitch
begins where … other magazines leave off, pointing out the not-sohidden sexist messages in … movies, television shows and other, less enlightened magazines, showing how the media shapes attitudes about women’s lives as well as reflecting them … While the anthology’s title suggests the anger for which feminists have long been known and reviled, it’s also funny. Many of the pieces in the book are filled with comic insights, proving that being a feminist is not antithetical to having a sense of humor.”

—MALENA WATROUS,
San Francisco Chronicle

“[
Bitch
] is one of the most consistently engaging and thought-provoking magazines out there, capable of covering serious topics without taking itself too seriously in the process, [and
BITCHfest
is] a sort of greatest hits collection [that will] keep you alternatively amused and outraged … There’s the occasional and always well-deserved finger-wagging, but
BITCHfest
is above all else a celebration of womanhood [that] will challenge the way you think.”

—ANDREW ERVIN,
The Miami Herald

“With amplitude and spunk,
BITCHfest
provides a provocative study of contemporary culture viewed through a feminist lens … Those unfamiliar with Bitch may be surprised to discover how much humor exists between its covers. It’s refreshing to see that many of these men and women can author serious critiques without taking
themselves
too seriously.”

—BETH ANN FENNELLY,
Paste

“We love
Bitch
and think
BITCHfest
is an essential component of any feminist’s library.”

—GUERRILLA GIRLS

“Bitch
is my favorite magazine. It makes feminism fun, relevant, and approachable—it’s like the Marlo Thomas of our time.”

—JOEL STEIN,
Los Angeles Times

“In a society as celebrity-obsessed and fad-saturated as ours, we ignore pop culture at our peril. Hurray for the women of
Bitch
, who raised their banner of intelligence right at the intersection of pop culture and feminism. They’ve done so with humor, vision, fire, and guts, as this book of selections from their first decade proves. Read it, learn from it, enjoy it, argue with it,
revel
in it.”

—ROBIN MORGAN

“Sharp, often funny feminist critiques.”

—KATE BOLICK,
The Boston Globe

“We were working at Ms. magazine in 1996 when a xeroxed pamphlet arrived at the office bearing the name
Bitch
. We opened the zine and found what we’d been fearing didn’t exist: feminist writing that was funny, engaged with pop culture, and yet intellectually rigorous. Eureka!
BITCHfest
is the greatest hits, and reading them is like hanging out with the smartest people you know.”

—JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER and AMY RICHARDS,
coauthors of
Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future

“A collection of eloquent postfeminism-pokin’ pieces.”

—ANNELI RUFUS,
East Bay Express

“With humor and insight, Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler, and their contributors explore what it means to be female, a feminist, a lover of pop culture, and that other thing that rhymes with rich but is so much more fun.”

—ARIEL LEVY, author of
Female Chauvinist Pigs:
Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

“As delicious as a day spent with your funniest, smartest friend, this collection is also a call to action, inspiring readers to fight the fear of female power. As the many writers in here show, few wrongs are righted without a bitchfest first.”

—CRISTINA PAGE, author of
How the Pro-Choice
Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex

“Smart, fierce and truly sassy,
Bitch’
s feminism is my brand of choice … and I’m raising my glass to another decade. At least.”

—ERYN LOEB,
Bookslut

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

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