Zines / A Girl Like Me

Despite growing up in the 1990s, I wasn’t aware of the zine phenomenon until I looked at today’s reading.  I would imagine that since then, zines have largely been replaced by social media, message boards, blogging, etc.  I wrote my second artifact analysis on a girl-created website that was active between 1996 and 1999.  I think, though, there has been an marked evolution in online spaces in the past twenty years: as the web has become more ubiquitous and less exclusive, websites have largely been replaced by social media sites with their “one size fits all” approach.  So, I think zines, much like early webpages, were more creative and DIY than sites like Facebook.  Even MySpace, which afforded users great variation in the physical appearance of their pages, has largely fallen into disfavor in the past few years.

So zines filled a distinctive niche, almost suspended chronologically between the offline and online worlds.  I thought it was interesting how the zines discussed taboo subjects like self-mutilation and sexual abuse.  Again, since the internet has become more widespread, I think these issues have become more widely discussable.  Zines don’t appear to have ever reached mainstream culture (I graduated from high school in 2002 and like I said, I never heard the word zine until this class.)  So, only a small number of girls ever really benefitted from the open forum that zines provided.  However, message boards, blogs, and social networks have given girls more opportunities to go mainstream with taboo subjects.  That being said, despite having these resources, I believe that only a certain percentage of the population (female or male) will ever chose to disclose personal information about sexual abuse or cutting online.  I think many girls and women who struggle with these issues never tell anyone (or only close friends), let alone strangers, despite their anonymity online. 

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“A Girl Like Me”

I thought this video was an important portrayal of the African American girl experience, which in many ways differs from the white experience.  A couple of years ago on our local public radio station (Columbus, Ohio), a few women were interviewed who were studying violence and its prominence in so many black girls’ lives.  I wish I remembered the names of the researchers, because it was fascinating (and heartbreaking).  I remember a story about one girl whose uncle had murdered her aunt and gone to prison.  The girl said she lived in constant fear of her uncle being released from prison and killing her, too.  This is not to say that white girls are exempt from experiencing violence in their lives, but the research shows that African American girls see it at much higher rates.  I might talk about this more in my next post, but I would be interested in looking at girls of color and the ways that their perceptions and experiences of girlhood / femininity differ.

Oh … one more thing.  I had heard and forgotten about the doll test that they briefly discussed in the video.  I am not sure how I could have forgotten, because it had a profound effect on me.