[Nonfiction]

[Girls Guide]

Foreword: Zinestresses of the World Unite!

Notes on Girls Taking Over the World

By Karen Green and Tristan Taormino

"Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you."
-- "Jennifer" from Girl Power

Definition of a zine: "a small, handmade amateur publication done purely out of passion, rarely making a profit or breaking even."
-- Factsheet Five

Girls (and boys) have been creating and circulating zines for over a decade. In the nineties, zines have exploded into an immense underground culture with major media coverage, zine conferences, and magazines dedicated to reviewing new zines. These zines, ranging anywhere from Xeroxed handwritten rants and cut-and-paste collages to professional design and offset printing, possess some of the most intelligent, political, and outrageous writing today. We define "girl zines" as do-it-yourself publications made primarily by and for girls and women.

As more publications for women attract high-price corporate advertising, girl zines often skip high production values and wide distribution to focus on a grassroots approach to publishing. Without the pressures of the high-powered publishing world or advertising money, zines have become forums for uncensored, underground writing on the edge. The writing in girls zines tackles important issues for girls, like body image, sexuality and violence; it also pushes the boundaries of genre, mixing personal stories, fiction, rants, poetry, essays, and journalism.

While the mainstream press centers around major urban areas, girls zines are being produced everywhere from Austin to Memphis to Minneapolis. From the deep South, the Heartland, and the Pacific Northwest, these are voices of anew generation of women writers debating feminism, politics, sex, culture, and the media. A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World showcases these new (primarily young) female writers and artists, explores the power of this form of communication, illustrates how these zines represent some of the new voices of women in America, and provides a great resource guide.

Women have historically had limited access to channels of communication, and , ultimately, to power. We don't have to reassess statistics of unequal salaries, gender discrimination, and patriarchal double standards; we know it's out there. We also know that there are fewer mainstream avenues for women to articulate the injustices and the inequalities. As our capitalist society co-opts the radical energy of counterculture movements, and processes it (thus watering it down) through the media, we get only a semblance of feminist activism. However, women are still struggling to make their way in the world.

This project has been fun and exciting for us. We reveled in all the wonderful mailings we received and in lugging home the many different zines that come to our little post office. We've had the opportunity to see what is going on in some of the hearts and minds of women in America today. There was a lot to learn and a lot with which we identified. Some of the project, like some of the zines, was therapeutic. All of it was enlightening.

Because zines are generally personal and intimate works, they are simply about women's lives as they are lived on a daily basis. The writing tends to integrate information in a way we're not used to seeing. Among other things, zines are sites for communication, education, community, revolution, celebration, and self-expression. Historically, the titles of the sections we chose to organize the book--from the slumber party to the princess phone--are also sites for these activities. Our categories represent the spaces in women's lives where they communicate with each other and themselves. This is a personal approach, one that integrates static categories like race, class, and sexuality. Interestingly, all these spaces seem innocuous on the surface, but are actually quietly subversive; what goes on between women in these settings can be more dangerous than they appear.

Some of the things we found inside the pages of girl zines might surprise you.

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