Girl Zines

Author(s): Alison Piepmeier

Summer Reading Guide: Politics, Philosophy & Cultural Studies

With names like "The East Village Inky", "Mend My Dress", "Dear Stepdad", and "I'm So Fucking Beautiful", zines created by girls and women over the past two decades make feminism's third wave visible. These messy, photocopied do-it-yourself documents cover every imaginable subject matter and are loaded with handwriting, collage art, stickers, and glitter. Though they all reflect the personal style of the creators, they are also sites for constructing narratives, identities, and communities. "Girl Zines" is the first book-length exploration of this exciting movement. Alison Piepmeier argues that these quirky, personalized booklets are tangible examples of the ways that girls and women 'do' feminism today. The idiosyncratic, surprising, and savvy arguments and issues showcased in the forty-six images reproduced in the book provide a complex window into feminism's future, where zinesters persistently and stubbornly carve out new spaces for what it means to be a revolutionary and a girl. "Girl Zines" takes zines seriously, asking what they can tell us about the inner lives of girls and women over the last twenty years.


Product Information

Asks what the zines can tell us about the inner lives of girls and women over the last twenty years

"Piepmeier's careful study of the zine movement in girl culture is a powerful and convincing articulation of the ways women's and girl's activism has developed, and the creative forms it has taken." Leslie Heywood, editor of The Women's Movement Today "Before you could Tweet your every thought to the world, young women cut, pasted, Xeroxed, and traded their own handmade magazines through the mail. In fact, the gorgeously glossy mag you're holding in your hands right now started off as a 'zine. GIRL ZINES analyzes the beginning of the movement and its 'revolution grrrl style' roots, as well as the way 'zinesters used the medium to explore race, sexuality, and identity." BUST Magazine, Aug/Sept 2009

Acknowledgments vi; Foreword by Andi Zeisler viii; Introduction 1; 1. "If I Didn't Write These Things No One Else Would Either:" The Feminist Legacy of Grrrl Zines and the Origins of the Third Wave 27; 2. Why Zines Matter: Materiality and the Creation of Embodied Community 67; 3. Playing Dress-Up, Playing Pin-Up, Playing Mom: Zines and Gender 102; 4. "We Are Not All One": Intersectional Identities in Grrrl Zines 146; 5. Doing Third Wave Feminism: Zines as a Public Pedagogy of Hope 184; Epilogue 231; Notes 240; Index; About the Author

General Fields

  • : 9780814767528
  • : 53301
  • : 53301
  • : 0.363
  • : December 2009
  • : 226mm X 150mm X 18mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Alison Piepmeier
  • : Paperback
  • : 305.42
  • : 272
  • : 46 illustrations