Girl Zines Making Media Doing Feminism – Alison Piepmeier

These images do not communicate the familiar sense of femininity; indeed, the little girl curtsying comes to seem almost maniacal in the context of Chestnut’s text, her smile not cloying but devious, dangerous. The images become infused with resistance, and Pine and Chestnut also locate resistance in particular performances of girlishness, as when Pine explains, “femme is the little girl in the corner glaring, the girl who always wear skirts, but never learned to cross her legs,” and Chestnut relates a childhood incident of cutting up a jumper that her mother was attempting to force her to wear.59 As the resistant girliness suggests, in the zine, femme becomes not only a personal healing performance but also a kind of tactical subjectivity.

Chestnut’s “Fuck you world, I am femme” gives evidence that claiming femininity can be an act of aggression against both individuals and the culture that have made girlhood so vulnerable. The zine presents drinking tea, cooking meals, and wearing skirts as an attack on patriarchal norms rather than a concession to those norms. Rather than retreating from these sorts of gendered behavior as both zinesters once did in an effort to maintain bodily safety, Chestnut and Pine now see their defiant performance of these behaviors and their pleasure in these performances as resistant.

Further, by using the term “femme,” a term affiliated with the performance of feminine roles within queer relationships, Chestnut and Pine additionally complicate their subject positions. Both authors identify as queer, and by claiming “femme” rather than “feminine” identities, they disentangle both categories from compulsory heterosexuality and “[make] … femininity unreliable as a marker of heterosexuality.”60 Pine writes: “Then there is of course, the implied queerness of femme. The subversive nature of femme—the double whammy to heteronorms by not only being queer, but a hidden queer.”

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–6751–1 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–8147–6751–6 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–6752–8 (pb : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–8147–6752–4 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Zines. 2. Women’s periodicals. I. Title. PN4836.P54 2009 305.42—dc22 2009020628 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 OceanofPDF.com To Maybelle OceanofPDF.com Contents Acknowledgments Foreword by Andi Zeisler Introduction 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 2 Why Zines Matter: Materiality and the Creation of Embodied Community 3 Playing Dress-Up, Playing Pin-Up, Playing Mom: Zines and Gender 4 “We Are Not All One”: Intersectional Identities in Grrrl Zines 5 Doing Third Wave Feminism: Zines as a Public Pedagogy of Hope Conclusion Appendix: Where to Find Zines Notes Index About the Author OceanofPDF.com Acknowledgments I highly recommend that other scholars delve into the world of zines.

This is the only research I’ve ever done that has resulted in surprise packages in the mail: zines, handwritten letters, buttons, and posters— sometimes with creative doodling on the envelope itself. I’ve also had the great pleasure of being invited to contribute to two zines while working on this project: the Sallie Bingham Center’s My Life in Zines and ABC No Rio’s The Art of Zines. I was also mentioned in a third project, the tenth- anniversary issue of The East Village Inky.

I thank all the zinesters and zine readers I interviewed, who shared valuable hours out of their lives to talk with me about the things I was interested in, and who often called and emailed later with follow-up thoughts and to see how the book was coming along. At many points in the process I thought I should just have printed transcriptions of all the interviews because they were fascinating, and I’m grateful to have been welcomed into such a generous and creative community.

Special thanks go to Neely Bat Chestnut for designing the book’s cover. I hope everyone working on archival research has a library and talented staff like the ones at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University. On several trips to their zine collection, I never failed to find enthusiastic, supportive folk.

In particular, I thank Laura Micham, Amy Hagardorn, and Kelly Wooten.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 29957fa4aedf6c83
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• Title: –
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• Pages: 297
• Language: English (en)

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