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Epicurus.com - BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine

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List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $10.88
Your Save: $ 5.12 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Average Customer Rating:     

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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 305.42097309049 EAN: 9780374113438 ISBN: 0374113432 Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: 2006-08-08 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Release Date: 2006-08-08 Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the wake of Sassy and as an alternative to the more staid reporting of Ms., Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape reflects and impacts women’s lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence at the way pop culture informs feminism—and vice versa—and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine’s first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It’s a recent history of feminist pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism’s future.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:      Summary: Highly refreshing Comment: I found this book to be rather eye opening,
really talks about feminism in depth through a series of high-quality articles provided from the "Bitch" magazine.
For everyone interested/passionate about feminism/women's rights
or anyone simply looking for an enjoyable book to read,
this is a must!
Customer Rating:      Summary: a fantastic read for men & women Comment: As a (middle-aged) male reader, I found this collection to be quite amazing. It seems that all contributors are equally committed to crafting clean, succinct essays with an engaging, yet erudite style. I can actually state that every piece was worth reading. Entertaining, instructive, even delightfully casual, at times, these are short, but thorough, and always interesting.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Great Fun Read for Undergraduates Comment: I use this text to compliment the main textbook for an undergraduate course in gender and communication. Students love this book because the articles are quick and interesting reads. I love the book because it introduces feminist arguments in an accessible format. The layout of the chapters is great and easy to connect to a standard gender text. This text produces excellent class discussions and keeps students discussing material once the class is over. Also, the price makes this an affordable supplemental text.
BITCHfest is fun and provides a broad range of articles on topics that are relevant to wide range of readers of all ages and life experiences.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Please enter a title for your review Comment: it seems like most of these writers spend more time looking for peripheral instances of gender inequality than commenting on things that actually effect them and i think this crying wolf is what has given feminism a bad name.
the general attitude to media images seems to be if it's a good role model criticize it as being unrealisitc and if it's realistic criticize it as being a bad role model. these writers occasionally lament the media casting women as victims but by and large strive to find the women-as-victims angle in any scenario.
the most consistently referenced inequality is distribution of money and political/corporate power, evidence of accepting the patriarchy's defining of these things as ultimate values without considering whether this viewpoint is socially constructive.
it's rarely hard to find the other side of the coin that an article isn't looking at. one article holds Comedy Central's Roast Of Pamela Anderson up as evidence that "women's place in the comedy world is still, almost always, as the subject of the joke".
another protests the term "you guys" being applied to a mixed gender (or solely female) group. the objection being that it erases women's gender identities or something. what's being ignored is that this evolution of language isn't something covertly instituted by a sinister patriarchy, it's something that's evolved naturally as a result of the decreasing importance placed on identifying someone (and therby descriminating against them) on the basis of gender.
most troubling is the paranoia that the most vocally mysogynistic men represent what most men think. "if a woman doesn't laugh at a man's joke... it's that the woman isn't equipped with enough of a sense of humor to appreciate it." "the word [bitch] is most often aimed at women who speak their minds, who have opinions that contradict conventional wisdom, and who don't shy away from expressing them".
Customer Rating:      Summary: Thought-provoking and very entertaining Comment: I had quit writing reviews for books for a long time now. I live in Turkey so I do not get the magazine, but I purchased the book after reading many favourable reviews here on Amazon.com. It turns out that I was missing a lot! This book has great, great articles, some are very original in essence and it keeps you interested. Although I, too, skipped a few of the articles, 90% of them are really good ones, about many different subjects. The articles are sharp, witty and it is good that the subject variety is satisfactory. If I could, I would translate it to Turkish so it can reach more people over here. Great, great stuff, if you are interested in popular culture as well as gender issues, this is the essential reading for you. Can't recommend it enough!
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