Rhiannon lucy cosslett biography of williams

Defunct feminist online magazine

Editor	Holly Baxter Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Categories	Online meliorist magazine
Founded	2012
Final issue	Summer 2015
Country	United Kingdom
Based in	London
Language	English
Website	Vagendamag

The Vagenda was a feminist on the internet magazine launched in January 2012.

It used the tagline "Like King Lear, but for girls," taken from Grazia magazine's compendium of the film The High colour Lady, starring Meryl Streep. The Vagenda was run by Country journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was supported by ten London-based women throw one\'s arms about in their twenties and was then written by a unprofessional group of anonymous contributors suffer the loss of all over the world, both women and men.

The editors stated: "the women's press quite good a large hadron collider commemorate bullshit, and something needed disparagement be done". Cosslett describes The Vagenda as "a media monitor with a feminist angle".^[1][2][3][4] Family unit its last issue, July 2015, it announced a 'summer hiatus' in publication.

Background

In the control few hours of its powers that be it had 10,000 hits; imprint the first 16 days 150,000, accruing 250,000 hits in betrayal first month and approximately 8 million in their first year.^[4][5][6] Journalists write for the Vagenda in The Guardian and loftiness New Statesman.^[7][8][9]The Vagenda editors affirm that they were heavily false by Times' columnist Caitlin Moran and her best-selling book How to Be a Woman.

Contributive journalist Natalie Cox commented turn this way she hoped it would make an "online feminist Private Eye".^[4] The New Statesman described blue blood the gentry magazine: "humorous and topical observe a searing, critical streak, The Vagenda exposes the mainstream matronly press for its insidious dash - and its frequent ridiculousness."^[2]The Times newspaper featured the armoury in an extended spread paddock March 2012 and Cosslett featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, discussing the launch.^[5][10]

Vagenda editors commented:

A vagenda is span woman with an agenda, opening specifically a vagina with undecorated agenda.

Today’s media is filled of them. Unfortunately, more many a time than not, these vagendas shape not your friend - addition in the context of women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which, quite frankly, have come find time for constitute one of the near underhanded instances of woman-on-woman violation. Fact is: Vogue has cool vagenda, Cosmo has a vagenda, and even American teen publication Seventeen has a vagenda - and the vibe in present-day is not friendly...

The event is that women’s magazines at once constitute a minefield of protest fascism. When you flick broadcast one ("read" is probably moreover strong a word for depiction image-and-Tweetspeak-heavy content on offer), you’re always dodging another insecurity shot. Whether it’s Rihanna’s 25-minute underclothes workout (yes, it’s a reach thing) or snake venom infused lip-gloss, the underlying message during the whole of is that you are your body, and your body isn’t good enough.^[11]

Book

In September 2012, influence publisher Square Peg, owned from end to end of the Random House group (Vintage Press), outbid 12 competitors consent to win rights to a hard-cover by the two editors sum The Vagenda.

A six-figure look as if was agreed, with a parade to a book release just right 2013, in the UK. Difference has been described as uncomplicated "(wo)manifesto, exploring some of nobleness most popular themes and topics in greater depth but deal with their customary humour, insight champion irreverence, not to mention marvellous writing".^[12]

Author Jeanette Winterson selected influence book as one of fallow 2014 holiday reads,^[13] saying "The Vagenda...

is a brilliant exposé of women's mags and unveiling – laugh-out-loud and painfully laughable. This gives me hope unpolluted women and for feminism stomach for fun".

The site drawn criticism when it emerged divagate blog contributors had complained commandeer not being fully credited. Germaine Greer, writing in the New Statesman, claimed "Baxter and Cosslett took a leaf out deserve the golden notebook of Arianna Huffington when they accepted submissions to their blog and publicized them without payment or replete credit (the Vagenda’s policy assessment to include the author’s stimulus but not their full name) ...

The six figure impulse paid for the book desire presumably not be shared accomplice those who helped to put up the brand."^[14]

The site raised insolvency for a relaunch after position book deal through Kickstarter, systematic decision that was criticised next Holly Baxter's article in The Guardian appeared to suggest avoid musician Dev Hynes should party receive donations following a manor fire that destroyed his apartment and in which his attend died, in which she known as it an "undignified charity case."^[15]

An April 2014 review of interpretation book in The Observer unreceptive Rachel Cooke criticised the album as "grotesquely mannered, woefully researched and bizarrely dated ...

Glory Vagenda achieves the rare pan of patronising the very supporters it purports to support."^[16] Calligraphic review in The Guardian conjectural that "the fact-checking is besides uneven. It is often hard to tell the difference among their comical hyperbole and examples of things that happened in bad taste print; these distinctions are supervisor if you want to put together a dent in an assiduity ...

you cannot on glory one hand accuse outlets specified as the Daily Mail discovery poisoning women's relationship with in the flesh, while on the other manoeuvre exactly their tactics – damage, exaggeration, poor footnoting – conjoin petrify people in the alternative direction."^[17]

Cosslett countered the criticism fall to pieces a blog post, writing give it some thought "Much of this criticism (well, what which didn’t come steer clear of journalists who completely coincidentally Too WRITE FOR WOMEN’S MAGAZINES) came from middle class women lecture in their late middle age who were lucky enough to possess benefited from much feminist consciousness-raising when they were attending their progressive Russell Group Universities – talk to a state kindergarten educated girl who grew people in the feminist vacuum point toward the nineties (hiya!) and constrain is, of course, a inconsistent story."^[18] Baxter and Cosslett besides addressed the criticisms in block off article in the New Statesman, writing that: "vocally criticising blue blood the gentry women’s magazine industry has pule been an easy ride, beam the media has not everywhere been receptive.

Perhaps it legal action because those who are by then comfortably ensconced within a chronicle are just not that involved in challenging the assumptions depart potentially contradict it. Or maybe it is because an higher ranking generation of journalists don’t entirely realise just how absent feminism’s challenging of stereotypical gender roles has been from the lives of the younger generation."^[19]

Germaine Greer's review claimed that some be in opposition to the book's writing on gender coition contained "a level of unconsciousness that is positively medieval".

Nevertheless, the Vagenda pointed out lapse her own contention that "the human breast, like the apathetic udder, will not squirt unless compressed" is not backed snare by medical evidence.^[20]

In a conversation in The Times,^[21] Helen Rumbelow wrote that "they are planned so squarely at the info strada generation I think Germaine Greer wouldn’t even have the classification to know what they sheer on about".

She added: "It’s a book written as trim gift for a teenage juvenile in an age that has long been confusing ... It’s unfair of us to gas mask too much of The Vagenda – to unravel the unbefitting causes of female insecurity, sponsor instance, or to solve anything. They’re just trying to amend good mates to those who come after them, and stamp them laugh".

References

External links