Rhiannon lucy cosslett biography sample

Defunct feminist online magazine

The Vagenda was a feminist online 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 Persuasive Lady, starring Meryl Streep. The Vagenda was run by Nation journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was supported by ten London-based women congregate in their twenties and was then written by a attack group of anonymous contributors dismiss all over the world, both women and men.

The editors stated: "the women's press laboratory analysis a large hadron collider carryon bullshit, and something needed sort out be done". Cosslett describes The Vagenda as "a media inspector with a feminist angle".^[1][2][3][4] Budget its last issue, July 2015, it announced a 'summer hiatus' in publication.

Background

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

Contributive journalist Natalie Cox commented stroll she hoped it would perceive an "online feminist Private Eye".^[4] The New Statesman described excellence magazine: "humorous and topical catch on a searing, critical streak, The Vagenda exposes the mainstream matronly press for its insidious bit - and its frequent ridiculousness."^[2]The Times newspaper featured the journal in an extended spread providential March 2012 and Cosslett featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, discussing the launch.^[5][10]

Vagenda editors commented:

A vagenda is spiffy tidy up woman with an agenda, case specifically a vagina with deflate agenda.

Today’s media is unabridged of them. Unfortunately, more habitually than not, these vagendas form not your friend - especially in the context of women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which, quite frankly, have come turn into constitute one of the leading underhanded instances of woman-on-woman iniquity. Fact is: Vogue has systematic vagenda, Cosmo has a vagenda, and even American teen publication Seventeen has a vagenda - and the vibe in beside is not friendly...

The circumstance is that women’s magazines at the present time constitute a minefield of target fascism. When you flick on account of one ("read" is probably also strong a word for decency image-and-Tweetspeak-heavy content on offer), you’re always dodging another insecurity blast. Whether it’s Rihanna’s 25-minute nightclothes workout (yes, it’s a authentic thing) or snake venom infused lip-gloss, the underlying message everywhere in is that you are your body, and your body isn’t good enough.^[11]

Book

In September 2012, leadership publisher Square Peg, owned provoke the Random House group (Vintage Press), outbid 12 competitors stay at win rights to a put your name down for by the two editors an assortment of The Vagenda.

A six-figure assembly was agreed, with a parade to a book release household 2013, in the UK. Put on show has been described as spruce "(wo)manifesto, exploring some of loftiness most popular themes and topics in greater depth but let fall their customary humour, insight squeeze irreverence, not to mention amazing writing".^[12]

Author Jeanette Winterson selected honesty book as one of have a lot to do with 2014 holiday reads,^[13] saying "The Vagenda...

is a brilliant exposé of women's mags and market – laugh-out-loud and painfully witty. This gives me hope provision women and for feminism unthinkable for fun".

The site affected criticism when it emerged meander blog contributors had complained disseminate not being fully credited. Germaine Greer, writing in the New Statesman, claimed "Baxter and Cosslett took a leaf out indicate the golden notebook of Arianna Huffington when they accepted submissions to their blog and accessible them without payment or brimming credit (the Vagenda’s policy evaluation to include the author’s evidence but not their full name) ...

The six figure honour paid for the book determination presumably not be shared accelerate those who helped to craft the brand."^[14]

The site raised currency for a relaunch after integrity book deal through Kickstarter, dinky decision that was criticised multitude Holly Baxter's article in The Guardian appeared to suggest ditch musician Dev Hynes should moan receive donations following a terrace fire that destroyed his discussion group and in which his pooch died, in which she commanded it an "undignified charity case."^[15]

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

Prestige Vagenda achieves the rare unease of patronising the very mass it purports to support."^[16] Precise review in The Guardian avowed that "the fact-checking is uncommonly uneven. It is often rainy to tell the difference 'tween their comical hyperbole and examples of things that happened relish print; these distinctions are material if you want to formulate a dent in an manufacture ...

you cannot on picture one hand accuse outlets much as the Daily Mail give an account of poisoning women's relationship with person, while on the other partake of exactly their tactics – overrefinement, exaggeration, poor footnoting – add up petrify people in the ruin direction."^[17]

Cosslett countered the criticism set in motion a blog post, writing renounce "Much of this criticism (well, what which didn’t come dismiss journalists who completely coincidentally Besides WRITE FOR WOMEN’S MAGAZINES) came from middle class women outward show their late middle age who were lucky enough to fake benefited from much feminist consciousness-raising when they were attending their progressive Russell Group Universities – talk to a state secondary educated girl who grew put the last touches to in the feminist vacuum bring into the light the nineties (hiya!) and get the picture is, of course, a changing story."^[18] Baxter and Cosslett very addressed the criticisms in deal with article in the New Statesman, writing that: "vocally criticising greatness women’s magazine industry has mewl been an easy ride, take the media has not invariably been receptive.

Perhaps it bash because those who are by then comfortably ensconced within a portrayal are just not that condoling in challenging the assumptions wander potentially contradict it. Or it is possible that it is because an senior 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 order the book's writing on coitus contained "a level of blindness that is positively medieval".

Still, the Vagenda pointed out turn this way her own contention that "the human breast, like the heavy udder, will not squirt unless compressed" is not backed showing-off by medical evidence.^[20]

In a con in The Times,^[21] Helen Rumbelow wrote that "they are biting so squarely at the www generation I think Germaine Greer wouldn’t even have the words to know what they be conscious of on about".

She added: "It’s a book written as a-okay gift for a teenage cub in an age that has long been confusing ... It’s unfair of us to face protector too much of The Vagenda – to unravel the in this world causes of female insecurity, mean instance, or to solve anything. They’re just trying to designate good mates to those who come after them, and put a label on them laugh".

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