Hooray! Bitch Magazine is now a part of The Feminine Woman

We have acquired BitchMagazine.org and here is what it means.

Bitch Magazine was launched in 1996 by Lisa Jervis, Benjamin Shaykin, and Andi Zeisler. High-school pals and recent college graduates Lisa and Andi were both pop culture obsessives with a particular jones for magazines—both were interns at the legendary Sassy magazine in the early 1990s—as well as feminists constantly on the lookout for sharp, fun, nonacademic analyses of the sexism rampant in movies, television, advertising, and more. 

As frustrated readers as well as aspiring writers, they looked around at a landscape of self-published zines and, in classic let’s-put-on-a-show fashion, decided that if they wanted to see some smart analysis of feminist pop culture, they could start by writing it themselves. Bitch was born, and, 12 years later, its goals—to point out the insidious, everyday sexism of popular culture, propose alternatives, and celebrate pro-woman, pro-feminism pop products—are still as crucial as they were in 1996.

Bitch was an independent, quarterly alternative magazine published in Portland, Oregon. Its tagline described it as a "feminist response to pop culture", and it was described in 2008 by Columbia Journalism Review as "a respected journal of cultural discourse".

Bitch was published by the nonprofit feminist media organization Bitch Media. The magazine included analysis of current political events, social, and cultural trends, television shows, movies, books, music, advertising, and artwork. Its print magazine had about 80,000 readers. The magazine's publisher, Kate Lesniak, estimated that it had an online readership of 4.5 million. On April 12, 2022, it was announced that Bitch Media would cease operations in June 2022.

Fast forward to 2024, where feminism meet femininity. We here at The Feminine Woman have acquired Bitch Magazine and Bitch Media.

Bitch Magazine and its history

1995: The idea for Bitch is hatched as Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler reach a boiling point after one too many copies of Esquire and episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210. They decide that perhaps other fed-up, pop-culture-obsessed feminists might like to read their rantings. They type up a bunch of stuff and enlist high-school friend and Mother Jones employee Benjamin Shaykin to lay it out on his Mac and add punny headlines.

1996: The first issue is printed at Berkeley’s Krishna Copy store. 300 copies are distributed out of Lisa’s 1977 station wagon, Scooter. Lisa scours the Rolodex at her PR temp job and sends copies to fancy-sounding journalistic types around the company. One of these folks, at the Chicago Tribune, actually writes up the first issue, calling Bitch a “breath of journalistic fresh air blowing through the newsstand.” Lisa and Andi are flattered, particularly because both are graduates of liberal-arts colleges and know diddly about professional journalism.

1997: Bitch's fifth issue—the first with a color cover—is published. The Nation quotes Andi in an article about the Spice Girls and “girl power;” Spin magazine calls Bitch “the best-written and edited girlcentric zine around.” In other news, Bitch’s soon-to-be nemesis Jane magazine launches, providing vast amounts of editorial fodder.

1998: Bitch gets an actual office space, setting up shop in San Francisco’s Mission District next to a Chinese-food-and-doughnuts place. (Basically, everything there tastes like doughnuts.) The magazine’s print run breaks the 5,000 mark; meanwhile, the Bitch website launches. Lisa and Andi publish a parody of Jane’s “Vacation” feature based on their trip to the strip mall up the street. In a somewhat more controversial move, we also publish an editor’s-letter picture of Lisa with some guy’s butt on her head.

1999: Bitch attempts to snag two longtime crushes, Janeane Garofalo and Margaret Cho, for interviews in the magazine. Failure results on both counts. We decide to apply for 501(c)3 status, which would allow the magazine to incorporate as a nonprofit. Much tedious paperwork ensues.

2000: Bitch receives its first Utne Independent Press Award nomination. It will go on to become the Susan Lucci of these particular awards, nominated year after year with no win.

2001: Lisa and Andi decide to take the plunge, quit their day jobs, and do Bitch full-time. Ben leaves the magazine for swankier, better-paying design pastures, but his influence remains in copious amounts of white space and a list of hilarious-only-to-the-founders titles for future stories, like “Dirty Danson.” (“You know, if we ever interview Ted Danson….”) Sarah Crumb, Bitch’s first-ever subscriber, steps in as art director, and longtime reader and contributing smartypants Rachel Fudge joins us as senior editor. Bitch officially becomes a nonprofit organization, and begins to pay staff and publish quarterly; the print run jumps to 35,000. First big-name interviews are scored: bell hooks, Lynda Barry, Allison Anders, the Guerilla Girls. In other news, staff members plotz when we receive a piece of fan mail from horn-rimmed radio hottie Ira Glass.

2002: Bitch gets in trouble with both readers and the U.S. Postal Service thanks to a back-cover ad featuring a big purple dildo. Pro- and anti-dildo letters flood into the office for more than a year. The era of speedy art-director turnover begins when Sarah moves to New York and young designer/prog-rock enthusiast Briar Levit takes her place. The magazine leaves its fragrant corner of San Francisco behind and moves to a roomier office across the bay in downtown Oakland, where we are mere blocks away from DeLauer’s 24-hour newsstand/magazine mecca.

2003: Margaret Cho's people relent and finally let us interview her. She does not disappoint.

2004: Bitch's staff of full- and part-timers grows to a whopping seven, including circulation and outreach manager Cheryl Taruc, as well as our first vegan, associate publisher Debbie Rasmussen. Suddenly, we all feel a little weird about the volume of sugary snacks in the office. Briar leaves for London to get her Master’s degree in design, and Andrea Feldman steps into the revolving door of art directors. In other news, we get our first piece of hate mail from a famous person: Susan “Stop the Insanity!” Powter. The subject line is “Assed fucked by Bitch magazine", and we almost delete it because it looks like spam. Ms. Powter writes back to clarify that she meant to write “Ass fucked.”

2005: Bitch publishes its second Masculinity issue, this time featuring a urinal on the cover. Also on the cover are the words "cock rock," which prompts certain bookstores and newsstands to refuse to display the issue. We persuade gender/queer theorist Judith Halberstam to write a piece on masculinity for the issue—it’s the first and last time anyone enthuses over Dude, Where’s My Car? in the magazine’s pages. Elsewhere, we start to worry that Bitch is becoming the Spinal Tap of magazines when we have to find yet another art director. This time, we return to our roots and hire a dude, Nicholas Brawley.

2006: Bitch turns 10 years old and celebrates with a year full of parties, fundraisers, and the publication of the anthology BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine. Lisa and Andi embark on a long and fun book tour during which they meet scads of longtime supporters and contributors and get to hang out in independent bookstores across the country. The tour is marred only by the number of times we are pressed to answer the questions, “So, what about that name?”, “So, can men read this magazine?”, and the always prizewinning “Do you hate men?” Lisa steps down as publisher and Debbie takes over the reins. Oh, and our art director quits and is replaced by former art director Briar, now armed with an advanced degree.

2007: Bitch tries to beat the high cost of living by moving from Oakland to Portland, OR, home to our favorite purveyors of reading material (Powell’s City of Books, In Other Words, Reading Frenzy, Herbivore) and an all-around rad place to live. Our transition is made easier by the warm and enthusiastic welcome from Portlanders. We're thrilled to add two new staff members--Miriam Wolf as managing editor, and Amy Williams as development/outreach coordinator. In other news, Jane magazine folds, which is not as sad as the many other independent magazines that also folded this year.

2008: Bitch launches the lecture series Feminist Perspectives in Pop Culture with funding from the Oregon Council for the Humanities, bringing feminist heroines like Susie Bright and the Guerrilla Girls live and in person to delight Portland audiences. Our new and improved website debuts. And the staff continues to expand with the addition of Development Director Jaymee Jacoby and Operations Director Brian Frank, who is passionate about two things—sandwiches, and deciphering the arcane minutiae of magazine circulation.

2009: Bitch officially renames itself Bitch Media, the better to emphasize that it is a nonprofit multimedia organization and not just a magazine. After a long period of transition, Bitch Media welcomes its first Executive Director, Julie Falk, and starts doing all kind of nonprofit-y things like strategic planning, board development, and applying for grants to expand programming. Meanwhile, the magazine is redesigned and color is added to each issue, and the website institutes a successful guest-blogging program and a number of podcasts. 2010 starts looking bright...

2024: Bitch Magazine brand now joins The Feminine Woman brand.

What is The Feminine Woman about?

Renee is the founder of The Feminine Woman where she teaches women how to embody their feminine energy in this modern feminism culture. 

At the end of the day, we all need strong relationships to feel fulfilled as smart, independent women. And these strong relationships can only be cultivated through the acquisition of the right knowledge and skills.

We believe that every single one of us deserve love. We deserve to experience the feelings of warmth, connectedness and passion.

We deserve to be loved exactly how we are right now, without having to become someone else in the process, and regardless of how we look, how many friends we have, or how successful we think we are.

But unfortunately in this day and age, there aren’t many places where you can learn the skills of attracting the right partner for us and sustain a healthy relationship.

We don’t get taught these skills in our school system or any other academic environment.

But we believe our intimate relationship is one of the most important areas for us to focus on because it impacts us the most. Think about it, nothing else can make us feel as euphoric or as depressing as our intimate relationship.

And with that kind of power over our lives, I believe we all need to put more of our focus in this one area.

So we made it our mission here at Shen Wade Media to educate and empower men and women when it comes to dating, attraction, love and long term relationships. We believe by offering a world class education, we can really change lives, create more love in this world and move humanity forward.

We believe in delivering the most cutting edge advice and coaching in dating, relationships and spirituality. You see, there’s a science and an art to love and attraction, and we strive to always bring to you the latest and best transformational strategies.

It’s all about helping you become the next version the more educated and evolved version of you.

It's all about helping you experience the love and passion that you deserve to feel.

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Their first book is planned to be released in 2024. 

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