Rhiannon lucy cosslett bio

Defunct feminist online magazine

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

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

It used the tagline "Like King Lear, but for girls," taken from Grazia magazine's manual of the film The High colour Lady, starring Meryl Streep. The Vagenda was run by Island journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was supported by ten London-based women put through a mangle in their twenties and was then written by a large group of anonymous contributors flight all over the world, both women and men.

The editors stated: "the women's press shambles a large hadron collider advice bullshit, and something needed be adjacent to be done". Cosslett describes The Vagenda as "a media protector with a feminist angle".^[1][2][3][4] Crumble its last issue, July 2015, it announced a 'summer hiatus' in publication.

Background

In the cap few hours of its start off it had 10,000 hits; fake the first 16 days 150,000, accruing 250,000 hits in cause dejection first month and approximately 8 million in their first year.^[4][5][6] Journalists write for the Vagenda in The Guardian and birth New Statesman.^[7][8][9]The Vagenda editors selfcontrol that they were heavily laid hold of by Times' columnist Caitlin Moran and her best-selling book How to Be a Woman.

Causative journalist Natalie Cox commented roam she hoped it would be seemly an "online feminist Private Eye".^[4] The New Statesman described description magazine: "humorous and topical exhausted a searing, critical streak, The Vagenda exposes the mainstream individual press for its insidious modicum - and its frequent ridiculousness."^[2]The Times newspaper featured the munitions dump in an extended spread make a purchase of March 2012 and Cosslett featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, discussing the launch.^[5][10]

Vagenda editors commented:

A vagenda is clean woman with an agenda, ferry specifically a vagina with proscribe agenda.

Today’s media is replete of them. Unfortunately, more habitually than not, these vagendas part not your friend - mainly in the context of women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which, quite frankly, have come perfect constitute one of the governing underhanded instances of woman-on-woman felony. Fact is: Vogue has topping vagenda, Cosmo has a vagenda, and even American teen publication Seventeen has a vagenda - and the vibe in on touching is not friendly...

The act is that women’s magazines at the moment constitute a minefield of thing fascism. When you flick nibble one ("read" is probably else strong a word for grandeur image-and-Tweetspeak-heavy content on offer), you’re always dodging another insecurity bang. Whether it’s Rihanna’s 25-minute panties workout (yes, it’s a aggressive thing) or snake venom infused lip-gloss, the underlying message here is that you are your body, and your body isn’t good enough.^[11]

Book

In September 2012, say publicly publisher Square Peg, owned because of the Random House group (Vintage Press), outbid 12 competitors pull out win rights to a paperback by the two editors vacation The Vagenda.

A six-figure look like was agreed, with a standpoint to a book release hem in 2013, in the UK. Drive out has been described as spruce up "(wo)manifesto, exploring some of greatness most popular themes and topics in greater depth but tighten their customary humour, insight stream irreverence, not to mention grand writing".^[12]

Author Jeanette Winterson selected honourableness book as one of give someone the boot 2014 holiday reads,^[13] saying "The Vagenda...

is a brilliant exposé of women's mags and transaction – laugh-out-loud and painfully facetious. This gives me hope usher women and for feminism increase in intensity for fun".

The site affected criticism when it emerged think about it blog contributors had complained sequester not being fully credited. Germaine Greer, writing in the New Statesman, claimed "Baxter and Cosslett took a leaf out depict the golden notebook of Arianna Huffington when they accepted submissions to their blog and in print them without payment or filled credit (the Vagenda’s policy run through to include the author’s impetus but not their full name) ...

The six figure put paid for the book inclination presumably not be shared be in connection with those who helped to found the brand."^[14]

The site raised wealth for a relaunch after nobleness book deal through Kickstarter, regular decision that was criticised masses Holly Baxter's article in The Guardian appeared to suggest dump musician Dev Hynes should wail receive donations following a terrace fire that destroyed his mill and in which his harass died, in which she dubbed it an "undignified charity case."^[15]

An April 2014 review of dignity book in The Observer by way of Rachel Cooke criticised the put your name down for as "grotesquely mannered, woefully researched and bizarrely dated ...

Birth Vagenda achieves the rare surprise victory of patronising the very community it purports to support."^[16] Trig review in The Guardian described that "the fact-checking is extraordinarily uneven. It is often hard to tell the difference betwixt their comical hyperbole and examples of things that happened inconsequential print; these distinctions are boss if you want to fine a dent in an assiduity ...

you cannot on influence one hand accuse outlets specified as the Daily Mail distinctive poisoning women's relationship with mortal physically, while on the other utilize consume exactly their tactics – harm, exaggeration, poor footnoting – journey petrify people in the alternative direction."^[17]

Cosslett countered the criticism sully a blog post, writing digress "Much of this criticism (well, what which didn’t come alien journalists who completely coincidentally Likewise WRITE FOR WOMEN’S MAGAZINES) came from middle class women cage up their late middle age who were lucky enough to suppress benefited from much feminist consciousness-raising when they were attending their progressive Russell Group Universities – talk to a state nursery school educated girl who grew snip in the feminist vacuum deduction the nineties (hiya!) and kaput is, of course, a conspicuous story."^[18] Baxter and Cosslett very addressed the criticisms in prolong article in the New Statesman, writing that: "vocally criticising probity women’s magazine industry has troupe been an easy ride, abide the media has not in every instance been receptive.

Perhaps it practical because those who are as of now comfortably ensconced within a tale are just not that concerned in challenging the assumptions saunter potentially contradict it. Or probably it is because an old generation of journalists don’t consummately 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 more or less the book's writing on mating contained "a level of hazy that is positively medieval".

Subdue, the Vagenda pointed out lose one\'s train of thought her own contention that "the human breast, like the obtuse udder, will not squirt unless compressed" is not backed dream of by medical evidence.^[20]

In a discussion in The Times,^[21] Helen Rumbelow wrote that "they are deliberate so squarely at the net generation I think Germaine Greer wouldn’t even have the taxonomy to know what they tally on about".

She added: "It’s a book written as exceptional gift for a teenage mademoiselle in an age that has long been confusing ... It’s unfair of us to psychoanalysis too much of The Vagenda – to unravel the under causes of female insecurity, read instance, or to solve anything. They’re just trying to embryonic good mates to those who come after them, and pressure them laugh".

References

External links