by Lisa Jervis
MARISA MELTZER (“Are Fat Suits the New Blackface?”) is a freelance writer based in New York. She has contributed to The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and Teen Vogue, and is the coauthor of the forthcoming book How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time.
ANNA MILLS (“Envy, a Love Story”) writes essays and poems on sex, gender, nature, and capitalism that have appeared in Lodestar Quarterly, Identity Theory, SoMa Literary Review, Three Candles, Clamor, and Moxie. She teaches English at City College of San Francisco.
ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE (“Meet Anne: A Spunky, Adventurous American Girl”) is the author of Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull Press, 2004), the associate publisher of Punk Planet, and the series editor for Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Graphic Narratives.
GABRIELLE MOSS (“Teen Mean Fighting Machine”) studied the history of American popular culture at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; this essay is based on her senior thesis. She is currently a freelance writer and indie-rock nanny in New York City.
JENNIFER NEWENS (“The Paradox of Martha Stewart”) has worked as a restaurant cook, caterer, recipe developer, and food writer. She currently works as a senior editor specializing in cookbooks for a San Francisco—based publisher. She coauthored the cookbooks Basic Cooking and Basic Baking. She continues to follow the story of Martha Stewart.
MONICA NOLAN (“Mother Inferior”) is a writer and filmmaker based in San Francisco. In addition to her work for Bitch, she has written about film for Release Print and coauthored The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories. Her first novel, Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary, will be published by Kensington. She worked as an editor and writer on Kara Herold’s documentaries Grrlyshow and Bachelorette, 34. She has one of the most extensive collections of 1950s teen-girl literature west of the Sierras.
TAMMY OLER (“Bloodletting”) is a writer, editor, and rollergirl living in Denver, Colorado. Her work has appeared in local alternative newspapers and magazines and several online literary journals. She is currently at work on a memoir about science-fiction fandom.
BRENDAN O’SULLIVAN (“Dead Man Walking”) lives in Oakland, California, and likes reading theory a little too much. Though, all things being equal, he would rather just eat semisweet chocolate and dance. He has actually seen Weekend at Bernie’s II in its entirety. He can be reached at [email protected].
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA (“Busting the Beige Barrier”) is a U.S.-raised, Toronto-based queer Sri Lankan writer, spoken-word artist, and arts educator. The author of Consensual Genocide (Toronto South Asian Review Press, 2006), she has been published in the anthologies Colonize This!; Dangerous Families; With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn; the Lambda Award—nominated Brazen Femme; Without a Net; Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws; and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World, as well as in the periodicals Lodestar Quarterly, Mizna, SAMAR, Bamboo Girl, Bitch, Broken Pencil, Colorlines, Fireweed, and Anything That Moves. She has performed her work throughout the United States and Canada, teaches writing to GLBT youth at Supporting Our Youth Toronto, and is one of the organizers of the Asian Arts Freedom School, a writing, performance, and activist education program for Asian/Pacific Islander youth.
JENNIFER L. POZNER (“How to Reclaim, Reframe, and Reform the Media”) is the executive director of Women in Media & News (WIMN). She conducts media trainings for women’s groups and is a regular speaker on college campuses with multimedia presentations such as “Bachelor Babes, Bridezillas & Husband-Hunting Harems: Decoding Reality TV’s Twisted Fairy Tales” and “Condoleezza Rice is a Size 6, and Other Useless Things I Learned from the News.” She can be reached at [email protected].
MARGARET PRICE (“Queer and Pleasant Danger”) lives in Atlanta and teaches writing at Spelman College. Her essays, poetry, and short fiction have been published in Ms., the Michigan Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, and The Gay and Lesbian Review. She is at work on a scholarly tome titled “Writing from Normal” and a novel titled “Knocking Alex Up.” She satisfies her parenting urges by adopting another cat every time she drives past the shelter, and watches The L Word with equal parts enjoyment and horror.
DON ROMESBURG (“Holy Fratrimony”), a freelance writer and PhD candidate in U.S. history at the University of California, Berkeley, lives in San Francisco with his boyfriend, dog, and TiVo.
DANYA RUTTENBERG (“Fringe Me Up, Fringe Me Down”) is the editor of Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press). She serves as a contributing editor to both Lilith and Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, and is a contributing writer for Jewschool.com. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Tikkun, Bitch, Heeb, Salon, The Best Jewish Writing 2002, The Unsavvy Traveler, The Women’s Seder Sourcebook, The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism, and the forthcoming edition of Encyclopedia Judaica. She is currently studying for rabbinic ordination at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and speaks widely about religion and culture.
KEELY SAVOIE (“Screen Butch Blues”; “Unnatural Selection”) is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She writes on science, politics, and feminism separately, but enjoys it most when they all collide. She is a frequent contributor to Bitch and a featured writer for Women in Media & News’ blog. She also writes regularly for Choice!, Planned Parenthood’s online magazine; InTheFray, an online magazine; as well as for a politician whose views she generally respects. One of her recent essays appears in 50 Ways to Support Lesbian and Gay Equality (Inner Ocean, 2005).
JULIA SCHEERES (“Vulva Goldmine”) is a San Francisco—based journalist and the author of the memoir Jesus Land (Counterpoint, 2005).
HEATHER SEGGEL (“I Heard It Through the Loveline”) is a freelance journalist and frequent contributor to Bitch. Her work has appeared in the North Bay Bohemian, the San Francisco Bay Times, and throughout the zine world. It makes her teeth ache to know that Adam Carolla continues to find gainful employment on the air.
JULIA SERANO (“Skirt Chasers”) is a writer, spoken word artist, scientist, and gender activist. She has presented and performed her work at universities, high schools, cafés, clubs, libraries, poetry slams, and queer and women’s events across the United States. She is currently working on a collection of personal essays, tentatively titled Feminine Wiles: On Transsexual Women, Gender, and the Future of Feminism (forthcoming from Seal Press in 2007). For more info about Julia’s various creative endeavors, visit her website at www.juliaserano.com.
LEIGH SHOEMAKER (“Urinalysis”) notes that when this piece was originally published in Bitch in 1997, her bio read as follows: “Solipsistic Leigh Shoemaker will not rest until she has brought the transcendent stream down to earth with her incredible powers of concentration.” Nine years later, she still considers the attempt to ground the transcendent to be a worthwhile task. These days, however, she’s more inclined to get some rest between attempts.
SHAUNA SWARTZ (“XXX Offender”) is a freelance writer who spent her first thirty-two years in Los Angeles and moved to Philadelphia in 2004. After enjoying a stint copyediting gay male porn (after all, there’s no bigger turnoff than typos), she turned to the seedier world of technical writing. She is also a regular contributor to AfterEllen.com. She can be contacted at [email protected].
LORI L. THARPS (“The Black and the Beautiful”) is a freelance journalist, author, and teacher. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she attended Smith College and received a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has written for Ms., Savoy, Suede, American Legacy, Odyssey Couleur, and Essence magazines. She was a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and then a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She is the coauthor of the award-winning book Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s Press, 2001). Her work
can also be read in the Seal Press anthology Young Wives’ Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership and Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts (Perigee). Tharps recently relocated to Philadelphia after living in New York City for over a decade. She has yet to unpack her television.
NOY THRUPKAEW (“Fan/Tastic Voyage”; “The God of Big Trends”) writes frequently on international affairs and culture as a freelance journalist and senior correspondent for The American Prospect. A former Fulbright scholar and Pew fellow in international journalism, she has reported from Cuba, Iran, Cambodia, and Morocco, and worked as a discussion panelist for Japan’s largest English-language radio station. She has written for The Guardian (U.K.), Marie Claire, Nerve, Ms., The Nation, and Kyoto Journal, and was an Online Journalism Award finalist for cultural commentary.
VANESSA VESELKA (“The Collapsible Woman”) is a writer and musician. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Bitch, Bust, Ms., Jane, The Seattle Weekly, and Maximum Rockn Roll. As a musician, she tours and plays with her band, Vanessa Veselka and the Godless Moravians, as well as with the political punk duo The Pinkos. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her daughter, Violet, and is now delving into the messy waters of fiction.
SUMMER WOOD (“On Language: Choice”) is a student in the PhD program in anthropology at New York University, where her research focuses on the intersections among health, gender, culture, and human rights. She holds a master’s degree in public health and women’s studies from the University of Michigan, and has worked as a journalist covering issues of science and health, economics, and women’s rights.
acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, WE OWE SO MANY GINORMOUS THANKS to the staff and board of Bitch, without whom this book (and the magazine itself) would not exist. It’s often said that no book is solely the work of its author, and in this case it’s more true than usual. Over the course of Bitch’s life, we’ve been lucky to work with way too many talented folks to name here, each of whom helped make this all happen. Extra-special, all-inclusive thank-yous go to our longtime stand-up bitches: Rachel Fudge, Debbie Rasmussen, Cheryl Taruc, Juliana Tringali, Rita Hao, and Jeffery Walls.
We first discussed the possibility of an anthology more than six years ago with founding art director Ben Shaykin. Four art directors and one cross-country move later, we are pants-peeingly happy that Ben was able to design the book and bring this whole megillah full circle.
Denise Oswald, our fine editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has been awesome in every way; ditto her assistant, Sara Jane Stoner, whom we plagued with our every pesky detail.
Jill Grinberg, our agent, was excited about this project from the start; we’re lucky to have her enthusiasm and hard work in helping us make an abstract concept into a still-somewhat-abstract reality. Thanks also to Jill’s assistant, Kirsten Wolf, who handled our many, many questions with unfailing graciousness.
Margaret Cho is a longtime inspiration and a formidable loudmouth. We’re thrilled that she wrote our foreword; thanks also to Keri Smith for helping make it happen.
We’re so very grateful to our families, who have been tireless supporters of and cheerleaders for the magazine even when they weren’t sure if the name was such a hot idea. Their words of wisdom, unsolicited PR and networking efforts, and occasional tough love have helped keep us going for ten years and counting. Colossal gratitude (and apologies) to the friends who have put up with our crankiness amid the deadlines for this book and, over the years, the magazine. You know who you are.
Tremendous thanks also go to the many contributors to Bitch, whose insight, smarts, and wit have been the reasons for the magazine’s success.
Most of all, we thank our readers, who have kept us going with praise, crucial financial support, and the occasional photos of their pets reading the magazine; they’ve kept us sharp with constructive criticism, difficult questions, and constant reminders of all that remains to be done.
Notes
1
Warning: Patient could experience loss of sexual sensation or chronic pain.
Copyright © 2006 by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler
Foreword copyright © 2006 by Margaret Cho
“Girl, Unreconstructed” by Rachel Fudge, copyright © 2006 by Rachel Fudge. “Dead Man Walking” by Brendan O’Sullivan, copyright © 2006 by Brendan O’Sullivan. “How to Reclaim, Reframe, and Reform the Media” by Jennifer L. Pozner, copyright © 2006 by
Jennifer L. Pozner. “Screen Butch Blues” by Keely Savoie, copyright © 2006 by
Keely Savoie. “Laugh Riot” by Andi Zeisler, copyright © 2006 by Andi Zeisler
All rights reserved
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Benjamin Shaykin
eISBN 9781429998574
First eBook Edition : May 2011
First edition, 2006
Most of the essays herein were previously published, in somewhat different form, in issues of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture dating from 1996 to 2005, and are reprinted with the permission of their respective authors.
“Elegy for Jane” copyright © 1950 by Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., and Faber and Faber, Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
BITCHfest: ten years of cultural criticism from the pages of Bitch magazine / edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“All of the essays were previously published, in somewhat different form, in Bitch Magazine from 1996—2005.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-11343-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-374-11343-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Feminism—United States. 2. Popular culture—United States. I. Title: Bitch fest.
II. Miya-Jervie, Lisa. III. Zeisler, Andi, 1972— IV. Bitch (San Francisco, Calif.)
HQ1421.B525 2006
305.420973’09049—dc2
2005036156
