Recently while reading the feminist magazine Bitch, I came across an interview with Leila Cohan-Miccio and Caitlin Tegart, creators of the web series Vag Magazine. The series focuses on three women who buy a fashion magazine and recreate it as a feminist magazine, a la Bitch or Bust. The young women, Bethany, Fennel, and Sylvie, are stereotypical third-wave feminists. The series pokes fun at them specifically and third-wave feminism in general, highlighting the differences between a vision of feminism as empowering women as a group (Meghan, the “normal” character used to ground the viewer, defines feminism as the idea that men and women should be equal) and the idea that empowerment means individual women are free to do “whatever they want” and “have fun”:
The series reveals some of the limitations of “catch-phrase feminism” (to use a term from Brittany Shoot’s Bitch article). These catchphrases echo throughout American culture: “You go girl!” “It’s about choice!” Vag Magazine’s theme song informs the audience, “A girl is a girl, because she is power. Power is power because it’s a girl.” Another prominent pop culture feminist, Lisa Simpson, sums up this vision of feminism: “Well, as a feminist, virtually anything a woman does is empowering” (“The Blue and the Gray,” originally aired February 13, 2011). A viewpoint like this is inclusive, but can also shut down meaningful conversation. For example, the young women have trouble getting anything done (Fennel hires an intern because “We don’t believe in hierarchies, but we also don’t have time to get our own coffee.”) In another instance, Bethany, Fennel, and Sylvie tell Meghan that the skirts she wants to write about aren’t feminist enough, but are unable to clearly articulate what a feminist skirt would be.
Third-wave feminism is sometimes viewed with disdain because it can seem empty: if any choice a woman makes can be construed as feminist, then perhaps no act can be truly called feminist. At the same time, third-wave feminists can be more inclusive than previous generations: stay-at-home moms, working mothers, sex workers, and scientists are all embraced. However, there can be less of an emphasis on organizing and fighting for equality (though recent efforts to support Planned Parenthood and organize Slut Walks shows that third-wave feminists are interested in more than mere slogans).
Various episodes also address the available media options for those looking for a feminist perspective. The main rival to Vag Magazine is Cunt, a magazine staffed by more stereotypically aggressive feminists. The series shows how often women can feel like they are stuck with only two images of feminism: New Age-y “I honor you as a woman” feminists who seem spacey and ineffectual, or the stereotype of the radical man-hater. Episode 4, “Feminist Sweepstakes,” delves into this dichotomy . The episode starts with Fennel wanting to read her poem; she is asked to wait until the designated poetry hour; these women feel so much that they must have an entire poetry hour. Later, the audience is introduced to Jaybird, the editor of Cunt. Jaybird and her followers wear leather vests and jeans, which contrasts with the dresses, pastel colors, and feathers favored by the Vag staff. Only Meghan, the audience stand-in, gets to be “normal” – that is, reasonable. During the two magazines’ confrontation, Jaybird yells and talks about the patriarchy; Bethany and Fennel use poetry and talk about honoring Cunt’s place. Meghan is the only one who can speak clearly and without rhetoric, transcending common feminist stereotypes, doing so by being clever and critical.
But Vag Magazine is not about putting women down or just laughing at them or feminism. Indeed, there is a lot of love in this series, and a lot to celebrate. The cast is all-female, and all funny. The women are able to buy the magazine thanks to their efforts at selling crafts on Etsy. They do publish an issue of their magazine: they are, ultimately, successful. Indeed, the women of Vag Magazine act out the inner turmoil about how to present themselves as feminists to the world. The series humorously highlights the bind modern feminists often find themselves in: how to be inclusive without embracing everything, how to be forthright and challenging of inequality but not bullying.
The rest of the series is after the jump.
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Natasha Luepke is an adjunct writing professor for University of Phoenix and Kaplan Online University. Due to working with students in an online environment, she is particularly interested in the representation of identity in online and social media. She posts videos, presentations, comics, and blogs at Medievalist at Midnight.
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Comments 48
Aylo — June 27, 2011
"The women are able to buy the magazine thanks to their efforts at selling crafts on Etsy."
I think you miss the joke here. One of the characters says, "we had one major buyer, it was sylvie's dad." The statement point to to the fact that they were not actually successful in the marketplace (feminism can be, but is not yet, a catchall commodity), but beyond that, third wave feminists generally are upper middle class - thus the ability of one of the character's dads to buy a whole magazine. This points to the fact that many third wave feminists are not attuned to the needs of non-white lower class women.
Anonymous — June 27, 2011
Dunno. The whole concept of having a "normal" character is to set up an idea to contrast with a set of strawmen, and considering how apolitical this one is, it's a bit problematic. It reminds me a lot of the sort of people who will call themselves feminists at its most basic form ("equality between men and women" ususally being the exact definition) and then use that to tear down feminist reasoning. You could see chades of it here, as there isn't much of a feminist reasoning going on. We have the "normal" character who starts out as your average fashion writer and then the rest of the cast that is basically a cluster of stereotypes, wether they be non commercial (portrayed as naive, when you could do well without celebreties on the cover and find other ways of financing the magazine besides advertising but that's not even brought up), lesbian or (ironically enough) female - the whole thing boils down to ditzy women who are so confused with their task that they can't get anything done. Sounds familiar?
That's not to be said that there can't be meaningful conversations about the structural problems within feminism, but we should have seen enough to know the difference between adressing the problems and turning whole branches of the ideology into a punchline.
Eneya Vorodecky — June 27, 2011
I feel so uncomfortable at this moment.
When have any of you seen such behaviour performed by women who call themselves feminists?
Anon847 — June 27, 2011
Both the feminist politics of the VAG crew and the feminist politics voiced by Megan are incredibly transphobic and ignorant of decades of feminist thought about *gender*, which is not reducible to women (vaginas) and men (boners:ihaveone).
Kuroiboots — June 27, 2011
I hated it when Lisa Simpson said that! Lisa used to be a much more hard-core feminist, like when she rallied against the sexist Malibu Stacy doll in season five and created her own doll that was much more down to earth and a better role model for little girls. I take the above quote as proof of how horrible the show's writing has become and not at all like something the early incarnation of Lisa would ever say.
Matt — June 27, 2011
They should have a feminist character with no sense of humor based on the commenters here.
Keef.Button — June 27, 2011
Interesting idea for a web series, but I only laughed once. And it was the "go sit on your bucket" comment. Why is that?
kd — June 27, 2011
IMO this is much more a (not particularly well-done) parody of second-wave feminism than third-wave.
m Andrea — June 27, 2011
THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER!!!! I've been watching every episode, just perfect, big kudos to them all!!
Oh geeze, they have GOT to introduce some Black funfems and/or Black radicals, and have them accuse the white feminists of something, but what? The whole point is to poke gentle fun at the more extremist third wavers, so having the WOC mention a legitimate grievance wouldn't work. Maybe have the white women ignore the Black women's complaints in a way which makes the white women look silly?
And sorry, but these women are obviously radical as hell, otherwise they never would have set everything up the way they did... LOVE THEM!! It's SATIRE, in case y'all can't tell... Seriously, just perfect, wow.
m Andrea — June 28, 2011
Oh. The standard response of any white funfem to accusations of racism is blithering ass-kissing while simultaneously missing the point. She would apologize profusely, agree whole-heartedly and just blindly keep on doing it... Meanwhile, funfems Two and Three would breezily change the subject to native american indians and how it's super dooper impowerfulizing for white people to appropriate animal-identity-spirits 'an all those other accroutemental stereotypes of socially-constructed identity. Why, it's just *terrible* to appropriate native-animal-identity-spirts when there are natives who actually object and isn't this dream-catcher devine? It was on sale at Wal-Mart...
I would LOVE to see these people take on transgenderism. Oh please, let there be a goddess...
Ally — June 28, 2011
The ridiculousness made me laugh, but overall it seems more harmful than helpful. It pretty much *is* just about making fun of feminism. I am really tired of seeing these misguided Liz-Lemon-esque pseudo-feminists popping up in comedy everywhere.
Anonymous — June 28, 2011
This sounds really funny, even though you can tell from the stills that it doesn't seem to be addressing the fact that many WoC consider feminism to be a white woman's cause. But still, the description makes this seem like a very interesting parody to watch.
Eneya Vorodecky — June 28, 2011
So... basically the stick here is that feminists are actually pretty dumb women who are quite inconsistent and radical feminists are lesbian bullies. And "normal" women, who don't define themselves as feminists are actually victims of feminist women bullies who are so incoherent that they do not even know what they are talking about and suck at their jobs?
Maybe I am quite far from America but this looks like a parody of feminism period because we do not see any REAL feminism and feminists to which to compare and criticise "post-feminism", "funfeminism" and the like.
Still the show could grow. :)
Casey — June 28, 2011
Next week: Male feminists? Are they real? What do they look like?
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