Andi Zeisler
Andi Zeisler | |
|---|---|
| Education | Colorado College (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, journalist |
| Known for | Co-founder of Bitch Media |
Andi Zeisler (born c. 1972) is an American writer and co-founder of Bitch Media, a nonprofit feminist media organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States.
Biography
Zeisler was born in New York.[1] In 1994, Zeisler graduated from the Colorado College with a BA in fine art.[2] After graduation, she moved with high school friend Lisa Jervis to Oakland and began making plans for their own zine when Sassy magazine was purchased by another publisher. Sassy's change in focus led the pair to believe there was a niche they could fill.[1]
In 1996, Zeisler and Jervis co-founded Bitch magazine as an all-volunteer zine with a circulation of three hundred copies.[2] In 1998, the pair began to grow the magazine into a quarterly publication with help from the Independent Press Association.[3] It was later an internationally distributed with a circulation of more than fifty thousand. Bitch Media's mission was to provide and encourage an engaged feminist response to pop culture.[4] In 2007, the magazine was moved to Portland and in 2009 rebranded as Bitch Media.[1] It later ceased publication in 2022.[5]
Zeisler's writing, which focuses mainly on feminist interpretations of popular culture, has been featured in a variety of publications including Mother Jones,[6] the San Francisco Chronicle,[7] and Ms.[8]
Zeisler's 2016 book, We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, examines marketplace feminism (the appropriation of feminist messaging as a marketing strategy), and relationships between pop culture and feminist challenges to power through activism.[9][10][11]
Published works
- BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine. Published in 2006, BitchFest is a compilation of memorable articles from Bitch Magazine throughout its ten years of circulation.[12]
- Feminism and Pop Culture: Seal Studies. Published in 2008, the book follows the impact of feminism on pop culture.[2]
- We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement. May, 2016 from PublicAffairs, We Were Feminists Once explores the commercial co-optation of feminism.[13]
References
- ^ a b c Rudulph, Heather Wood (May 2, 2016). "Get That Life: How I Co-Founded Bitch Media". Cosmopolitan. Archived from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved June 2, 2019.
- ^ a b c Mosel, Shel (April 24, 2019). "Bitch Media's Andi Zeisler talks feminism and activism at Oregon State University". Orange Media Network. Retrieved July 26, 2025.
- ^ "Bitch Magazine: Marrying Pop Culture And Feminism". HuffPost. March 11, 2011. Retrieved July 26, 2025.
- ^ Carpentier, Megan (May 10, 2016). "Andi Zeisler of Bitch magazine: 'Feminism isn't supposed to be fun'". The Guardian. Retrieved July 26, 2025.
- ^ Mukhopadhyay, Samhita (May 6, 2022). "The Demise of '90s Feminist-Zine Culture". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
- ^ Zeisler, Andi. "Eve Ensler on "good" bodies and bad politics". Mother Jones.
- ^ Zeisler, Andi (July 25, 2004). "Porn Plague / Has porn's proliferation desensitized us to its power?". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ Clarke, Kelly (March 20, 2017). "Andi Zeisler and Bitch Media Pushed the World to See Pop Culture through Feminist Eyes". pdxmonthly.com. Retrieved July 26, 2025.
- ^ Penny, Laurie (May 13, 2016). "'We Were Feminists Once,' by Andi Zeisler". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 2, 2019.
- ^ Chemaly, S. (2017). Marketplace feminism: About the menz. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 43(1), 201-203. https://doi.org/10.1086/692540
- ^ Kamen, Paula; Zeisler, Andi (2016). "Unfun Feminism". The Women's Review of Books. 33 (5): 3–5. ISSN 0738-1433. JSTOR 26433442.
- ^ Zeisler, A., & Jervis, L. (Eds.) (2006). BITCHfest: Ten years of cultural criticism from the pages of Bitch magazine. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
- ^ "We Were Feminists Once". Archived from the original on January 16, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2016.