In the wake of Sassy and as an alternative to the more staid reporting of Ms., Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape reflects and impacts women's lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence at the way pop culture informs feminism--and vice versa--and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine's first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It's a recent history of feminist pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism's future.
Hello! I'm a writer, editor, and Washington, DC native currently torn between San Francisco and NYC. I'm the author of "The End: 50 Apocalyptic Visions From Pop Culture That You Should Know About...Before It's Too Late" (Zest Books, July 2012) and the editor of "Madonna & Me: Women Writers on the Queen of Pop" (Soft Skull Press, March 2012). I've also contributed to the books "BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism From the Pages of Bitch Magazine" and "Somebody's Child: Stories About Adoption."
I've covered pop culture, feminism, arts, and lifestyles for more than 40 publications, including Salon, the Village Voice, Time Out New York, the Chicago Sun-Times, CNN.com, Rookie, ELLEGirl, XOJane, NYLON, and BUST.
For more information about my work, please visit LauraBarcella.com and MadonnaAndMeBook.com. You can also follow my occasional musings on my blog at laurabarcella.wordpress.com.
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