We all have a guilty pleasure, be it food, romance novels or reality television. Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler turned their guilty pleasure into a successful magazine, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, which critiques popular culture from a feminist perspective.
"Popular culture is a pleasurable thing," Jervis said. "We have a love/hate relationship with it, but we don't want to give it up. That's what drew us to it."
To celebrate the magazine's 10th anniversary, the duo recently released BITCHFest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine. They will read from their book Saturday at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham.
In the 10 years since Bitch's launch, popular culture criticism has seen a dramatic transformation. Once seen as frivolous and fluffy, it is now a legitimized, pervasive force, Jervis said.
"Popular cultural criticism continually examines the world we live in by pointing out effects of particular actions, and how ideology is ensconced in everyday practices-from music and movies to iPods, cell phones and Facebook," Anne Allison, professor and chair of the department of cultural anthropology, wrote in an e-mail.
Jervis said she believes Bitch helped legitimize the exploration of popular culture.
"We have taken pop culture seriously and treated it in an intellectual yet accessible way," Jervis said. "The actual [TV shows, fads, etc.] themselves aren't important, but the cultural moments that create them are."
Bitch has especially critiqued the current portrayal of feminism.
"Feminism has a serious image problem," Jervis said. "There is a lot of misinformation circulating that facilitates these tremendous problems."
Jervis said the magazine's articles addressing the identity of feminism have helped change some peoples' perceptions about feminism and provided a "way in" for a lot of people.
"Young women today are loathe to call themselves 'feminist' but their lives-gendered and sexualized as women-remain very particular ones that are also prey to structural inequities," said Allison. "It is critically important that readers of both/all genders learn to engage, see and challenge the world they live in from a position that makes note of how gender is positioned through power relations and how power is genderized."
The essays in Bitch provide a model for thinking critically about feminism and a plethora of other issues, Jervis said.
"The magazine puts popular culture and feminist politics in a context that encourages people to do more," she added. "I see the magazine as training in critical thinking."
In a society that is so saturated with messages from an endless variety of sources, critical thinking is our only defense, Jervis said.
"If we don't learn to interrogate the messages from these sources, we are totally at their mercy," she said.
Jervis and Zeisler aimed to select, categorize and organize the 54 essays used in the new book to match the sense of what the magazine is about. They included introductions to discuss how each section's theme relates to the past 10 years' developments in feminist identity.
Since Bitch does not have the budget to post back issues online, the book will fill that void for its readers.
"This puts the articles in perspective and helps tie together issues," Jervis said. "It creates a narrative through time."
Although the essays deal with very important topics, Jervis emphasized multiple times that the book is humorous and fun to read.
"I definitely should say that the book is really funny," Jervis said. "These are very serious issues, but we have always brought humor to our work."
Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler will read from BITCHFest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine Saturday, Sept. 16 at 7 p.m. at The Regulator Bookshop, located at 720 Ninth Street in Durham.
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