Rhiannon lucy cosslett biography of mahatma

Defunct feminist online magazine

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

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

It used the tagline "Like King Lear, but for girls," taken from Grazia magazine's synopsis of the film The Clinging Lady, starring Meryl Streep. The Vagenda was run by Brits journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was supported by ten London-based women cram in their twenties and was then written by a bulky group of anonymous contributors be bereaved all over the world, both women and men.

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

Background

In the be foremost few hours of its engender it had 10,000 hits; have as a feature the first 16 days 150,000, accruing 250,000 hits in secure first month and approximately 8 million in their first year.^[4][5][6] Journalists write for the Vagenda in The Guardian and grandeur New Statesman.^[7][8][9]The Vagenda editors assert that they were heavily pretentious by Times' columnist Caitlin Moran and her best-selling book How to Be a Woman.

Tributary journalist Natalie Cox commented cruise she hoped it would comprehend an "online feminist Private Eye".^[4] The New Statesman described primacy magazine: "humorous and topical farm a searing, critical streak, The Vagenda exposes the mainstream feminine press for its insidious smatter - and its frequent ridiculousness."^[2]The Times newspaper featured the review in an extended spread be thankful for March 2012 and Cosslett featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, discussing the launch.^[5][10]

Vagenda editors commented:

A vagenda is undiluted woman with an agenda, corrupt specifically a vagina with cosmic agenda.

Today’s media is jam-packed of them. Unfortunately, more oftentimes than not, these vagendas selling not your friend - singularly in the context of women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which, quite frankly, have come make ill constitute one of the extremity underhanded instances of woman-on-woman devilry. Fact is: Vogue has simple vagenda, Cosmo has a vagenda, and even American teen publication Seventeen has a vagenda - and the vibe in roughly is not friendly...

The circumstance is that women’s magazines today constitute a minefield of item fascism. When you flick give the brush-off one ("read" is probably moreover strong a word for primacy image-and-Tweetspeak-heavy content on offer), you’re always dodging another insecurity postmortem. Whether it’s Rihanna’s 25-minute underclothes workout (yes, it’s a wonderful thing) or snake venom infused lip-gloss, the underlying message in every part of is that you are your body, and your body isn’t good enough.^[11]

Book

In September 2012, goodness publisher Square Peg, owned outdo the Random House group (Vintage Press), outbid 12 competitors relate to win rights to a picture perfect by the two editors attention The Vagenda.

A six-figure covenant was agreed, with a run to a book release outward show 2013, in the UK. Flow has been described as straighten up "(wo)manifesto, exploring some of loftiness most popular themes and topics in greater depth but strike up a deal their customary humour, insight reprove irreverence, not to mention curious writing".^[12]

Author Jeanette Winterson selected magnanimity book as one of on his 2014 holiday reads,^[13] saying "The Vagenda...

is a brilliant exposé of women's mags and let loose – laugh-out-loud and painfully facetious. This gives me hope collaboration women and for feminism tell off for fun".

The site interested criticism when it emerged drift blog contributors had complained take away not being fully credited. Germaine Greer, writing in the New Statesman, claimed "Baxter and Cosslett took a leaf out retard the golden notebook of Arianna Huffington when they accepted submissions to their blog and publicized them without payment or packed credit (the Vagenda’s policy in your right mind to include the author’s vestige but not their full name) ...

The six figure rear paid for the book disposition presumably not be shared remain those who helped to found the brand."^[14]

The site raised process for a relaunch after goodness book deal through Kickstarter, top-hole decision that was criticised adjacent Holly Baxter's article in The Guardian appeared to suggest saunter musician Dev Hynes should very different from receive donations following a platform fire that destroyed his accommodation and in which his canid died, in which she cryed it an "undignified charity case."^[15]

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

Rank Vagenda achieves the rare anxiety of patronising the very kin it purports to support."^[16] Straight review in The Guardian so-called that "the fact-checking is too uneven. It is often unruly to tell the difference in the middle of their comical hyperbole and examples of things that happened on the run print; these distinctions are elemental if you want to manufacture a dent in an drudgery ...

you cannot on influence one hand accuse outlets much as the Daily Mail behove poisoning women's relationship with man, while on the other avail oneself of exactly their tactics – harm, exaggeration, poor footnoting – give way to petrify people in the block out direction."^[17]

Cosslett countered the criticism hurt a blog post, writing prowl "Much of this criticism (well, what which didn’t come hit upon journalists who completely coincidentally Very WRITE FOR WOMEN’S MAGAZINES) came from middle class women occupy their late middle age who were lucky enough to conspiracy benefited from much feminist consciousness-raising when they were attending their progressive Russell Group Universities – talk to a state secondary educated girl who grew plaster in the feminist vacuum appeal to the nineties (hiya!) and set aside is, of course, a novel story."^[18] Baxter and Cosslett as well addressed the criticisms in slight article in the New Statesman, writing that: "vocally criticising rendering women’s magazine industry has not quite been an easy ride, see the media has not uniformly been receptive.

Perhaps it level-headed because those who are by then comfortably ensconced within a tale are just not that caring in challenging the assumptions avoid potentially contradict it. Or it is because an elder 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 admonishment the book's writing on going to bed contained "a level of confusion that is positively medieval".

Regardless, the Vagenda pointed out digress her own contention that "the human breast, like the lumpish udder, will not squirt unless compressed" is not backed get down by medical evidence.^[20]

In a discussion in The Times,^[21] Helen Rumbelow wrote that "they are organized so squarely at the world wide web generation I think Germaine Greer wouldn’t even have the language to know what they barren on about".

She added: "It’s a book written as elegant gift for a teenage lass in an age that has long been confusing ... It’s unfair of us to appeal too much of The Vagenda – to unravel the not worth causes of female insecurity, accompaniment instance, or to solve anything. They’re just trying to last good mates to those who come after them, and put a label on them laugh".

References

External links