The Power of a Little Bitching

by Jan

Back in 1996, Lisa Miya-Jervis and her friend Andi Zeisler were a year out of college and working in boring retail jobs. Their discussions centering around a shared love/hate relationship with magazines, movies, TV, etc. inspired them to start a magazine. The first issue of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture had a print run of 300 copies and was distributed by Lisa tooling around to all of the local independent bookstores in her 1977 station wagon. Fast-forward to 2001--the most recent issue of Bitch had a print run of 34,000 and is available in all 50 states and Canada as well as a few overseas locations. Further testament to the power of a little bitching--Lisa and Andi recently quit their day jobs to devote themselves to the magazine full-time. Come join Lisa and I on the craftygal porch for the story of an incredibly inspiring D.I.Y. project.

Craftygal: Did you see the potential in your magazine idea from the start, or did you chew on the idea for a while?

Lisa Miya-Jervis: It did take a while to get going on the first issue, but once we decided to do it, we were doing it. As far as the potential for it getting as big as it is now, we had no idea. That all happened really organically, we really never expected it to get so big. We put the first issue out there with the idea of doing a second one, sure, but we didn't really think beyond that. We just figured we would see what the reaction was, and it was way beyond anything we expected.

cg: Do you still keep to the vision of your mission statement you ran in the first issue's editor's note?

LMJ: We have revised the mission statement a little, but I think we have stuck with the spirit of it, for sure. We've expanded our vision of what we can/should cover, I think, but other than that it really has stayed the same. Sometimes we're tempted to step outside the original mission, to cover something that's not all that pop culture related, and we always have to work to stop ourselves, because I think our fairly narrow focus has been the secret of our success.

cg: At craftygal, we are always inspired by the folks we interview. Which Bitch interview subjects have been especially meaningful to you?

LMJ: The bell hooks interview probably tops that list: Here was someone whose work I had admired for years--I was assigned to read her books in college!--and I was on the phone with her talking about her latest project, her upcoming projects, the direction her work is taking! She is such an amazing thinker. Also Ruth Ozeki, whose novel, My Year of Meats, I read and loved loved loved--and then a year later one of our contributors, who had met her at a reading, got an email from her saying she had gotten the mag, seen this contributor's work, and was totally into the magazine. So I got in touch with her and she was so nice and willing to talk about her work in a very open way.

cg: Have you been especially moved by any articles that you've run in the magazine over the years?

LMJ: My current favorite is from the current issue (#14). It's called "Envy, a Love Story," and it's about how recognizing attraction to women can short-circuit the envy we feel for other women and the bad feelings--mostly beating ourselves up for not looking a certain way--that can result.

cg: What is something that's been especially frustrating about working with Bitch? How have you dealt with it?

LMJ: Definitely the most frustrating thing has consistently been lack of resources--time and money. Up until now it has been a volunteer project. Actually, this very month I am supposed to start getting a salary for the first time. So there is always more we want to do but can't, in terms of research-intensive pieces, stuff like that. It's incredibly frustrating to have to ask writers and artists to work for free.

Also dealing with people's knee-jerk reactions to the magazine's name--or to its feminism. Sometimes people say stuff like, "I thought your mag would be really angry and negative and man hating, but I was so pleasantly surprised!" And it's like, well, thanks I guess, but you really need to rethink your idea of feminism!

cg: You and Andi have recently decided to quit your day jobs to give Bitch more of your attention. You mention in the current issue's editor's letter that you had actually been considering calling it quits, but after much soul-searching you opted instead to go full-steam ahead. What was it that finally tipped you in your new direction?

LMJ: Basically, we felt that we had worked so hard and come so far, and we are really on the verge of something. So we had to keep going, because if we fail, we fail, but if we didn't even try to push past this crucial point, we'd never know what we could have accomplished, and that would just be a shame. Plus there were a ton of amazing articles that had been proposed to us, and we knew that if we didn't pursue them they would probably never see the light of day. And we wanted them to get written and published.

cg: What are some of the milestones you have passed with Bitch that have excited and encouraged you?

LMJ: Our first color cover was hugely exciting. We have always aspired to the slicker production values, so that was major. Getting an office, also major. A lot of those interviews I mentioned felt like big milestones--to get well-known people to talk to us feels like a big deal sometimes (since it can be so hard--especially actors, their publicists hear "Bitch" and that's all she wrote...).

cg: What lessons have you learned from working on Bitch?

LMJ: Persistence. Quality will be rewarded. Days off are necessary.

cg: You mentioned that your interview with bell hooks was especially inspiring. She went on to write the introduction for your new book, Young Wives' Tales. How did that come about?

LMJ: During the interview we had talked a lot about love--it's her big issue right now--and so when we were putting together a list of our dream forward-writers, of course she was at the top. So I wrote to her and sent her some of the essays from the book. She liked them, then read the whole manuscript and liked it, and agreed to do the forward. We were incredibly lucky that she had time and was willing! And she was so generous with her time, I feel really blessed by how great she was and her willingness to work with us.

cg: What inspired you to take on the book project?

LMJ: It was basically a conversation between me and my coeditor on the book, Jill Corrall. We were talking about our generation's lack of role models for feminist relationships, alternative relationships--because older feminists, they generally came to feminism in the middle of a partnership, after the patterns were set. And we're really the first to get to marriage/commitment age having been raised with feminism and also with the growing visibility of same-sex couples.

We have the potential to remake the often sexist and retrograde relationship models that exist. But we need to talk to each other about how we are doing it, what issues and problems come up, etc.

And there are so many other ways to "do" a partnership aside from being married, aside from doing the "date, move in, make a lifelong commitment" straight-line thing. Plus there's still this strong idea in the popular imagination of what marriage is and can be, and what married people are like. You say "wife" and people get this certain image. And we need to remake that image of the wife, show that you can be a wife and also be a strong, independent feminist person who gets support from and gives it to her partner but doesn't have her identity totally bound up in the relationship, and be someone who doesn't need that relationship for survival (emotional or otherwise). So we were talking all about that and we said, "There should be a book about this." And then it was like...we should do it!

cg: Did you gain new insight on marriage from working on this book?

LMJ: It was so amazing to hear other women's stories. That was really the best part.

cg: As someone who began a do-it-yourself project that has now become a career, what advice would you give to a gal who is considering taking a similar plunge?

LMJ: Plan ahead! I know it's not always possible, but knowing how you will handle certain situations, such as expansions of the business and an increased volume of work, before they happen, can be a huge help. Do you have partners? What's the division of labor? At what point are you going to hire someone to help you? Stuff like that.

Also getting all your accounting systems and business licenses all set up from the beginning. Learning how to make a budget. These are all things that we just kinda improvised on, and now that the business has grown it has been really hard to manage the growth without a plan. It's been very stressful, and I wish I had planned ahead more.

Also, don't be afraid to get professional help (accountants, computer consultants, etc.) early on, even if you think you can't really afford it. It will pay off later in the planning ahead aspect and in the short-term in preserving your time and sanity!

cg: I've noticed that Bitch readers seem to become personally attached to the magazine. I know I was excited to see the write-up about Bitch in the August issue of the Utne reader. The author of that piece said she "felt like a proud mama" when she remarked "My, how our little Bitch has grown." I've also seen comments on Internet message boards like "was that a discussion we were having, or was it something I read in Bitch magazine?" Why do you think your audience identifies so personally with the magazine?

LMJ: I think a lot of that comes from the informal, conversational tone we take, and also the fact that in many ways we are our own audience. I mean, we set out to produce a magazine that we wanted to read. And I think that comes through--we see our readers as peers, and that's something that most magazines don't really do (or if they do--like Jane--it's done in a fake way). The other aspect of that is that we are covering stuff that so many women think about, and often talk about with their friends and in groups--we're passionate about it--but it's not a discourse that makes it into the larger arena in terms of feminist critique of pop culture being taken seriously and deemed worthy. So we are airing some stuff that's really close to readers' hearts that no one else wants to write about.

Also we're small, and our readers mean a lot to us, so we take the time to have a lot of contact. If someone writes me with a comment or a complaint, I will answer her. If someone calls the office with a subscription problem, it's often an editor answering the phone. We're accessible that way.

cg: Who would you rather be stuck in an elevator with: Howard Stern, Larry Flynt, Bill Maher, or Jerry Falwell? Why? What would you talk about?

LMJ: I think Bill Maher, 'cause even though he's a reactionary jerk, I think he would be fun to argue with. He seems like the kind of guy who respects intelligence even when the person is disagreeing with him. If we were stuck together, I could give him a piece of my mind about how he should bring that attitude into his show just a little bit more.... Then again, I would also like the chance to talk to Larry Flynt about the infamous meat-grinder cover. I don't really believe the argument that it was supposed to be a comment on the way that women and their bodies and images are treated. That's an intriguing idea, but it seems a little disingenuous.

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