Girl Zines

The first book-length exploration of the quirky feminist booklets

With names like The East Village Inky, Mend My Dress, Dear Stepdad, and Im So Fucking Beautiful, zines created by girls and women over the past two decades make feminisms third wave visible. These messy, photocopied do-it-yourself documents cover every imaginable subject matter and are loaded with handwriting, collage art, stickers, and glitter. Though they all reflect the personal style of the creators, they are also sites for constructing narratives, identities, and communities.

Girl Zines is the first book-length exploration of this exciting movement. Alison Piepmeier argues that these quirky, personalized booklets are tangible examples of the ways that girls and women do feminism today. The idiosyncratic, surprising, and savvy arguments and issues showcased in the forty-six images reproduced in the book provide a complex window into feminisms future, where zinesters persistently and stubbornly carve out new spaces for what it means to be a revolutionary and a girl.Girl Zines takes zines seriously, asking what they can tell us about the inner lives of girls and women over the last twenty years.

Alison Piepmeier was Director and Professor of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. She was the author ofGirl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, among other books.