Sins of Jezebel.com
This sensational blog is addictive. But is it feminist?
By Chandler Levack
I never wanted to be a feminist. Frankly it was a label I avoided, rife with expectations of vegan footwear, Ani DiFranco singles, and a parade of oversensitized paramours. For years, feminists seemed like versions of my petrifying second-year roommate, a staunch libertarian studying public relations who spouted maxims like, "you can't be a feminist unless you own a vibrator," all the while thumbing through back issues of Cosmopolitan.
In fact, it wasn't until my discovery of a certain women's blog that I could align myself with the dreaded "f-word." That website is Jezebel, the Gawker Media empire's antidote to women's magazines, and it provides a service that's contrary to other women's media: a personable female perspective that doesn't want to sell you something. Think Sassy, 2.0.
Launched in May 2007 with the tagline "Celebrity, sex, fashion for women. Without airbrushing," posts appear every 15 minutes, Monday to Friday. The all-female staff vents on everything from Sarah Palin's personification of girl power to the Antropologie fall catalogue, unleashing a maelstrom of commentary from dawn to dusk. For someone in need of a feminist reality check, I consumed the blog like a bag of Lay's potato chips.
Scrolling through the posts on Jezebel, one gets the feeling of an inclusive cool-girls' club, one where Vogue editorials, crappy emails from ex-boyfriends, and Angelina Jolie's handbag can all be taken to task. The commentary is shockingly provocative, and the sentiment real and discursive. But compared to the tenets of first and second-wave feminism, Jezebel's snark doesn't take a stand. Whatever the site's for, they're also against.
In fact, the success of Jezebel, a national phenomenon namechecked on Gossip Girl that reaches a million readers a month, depends on the woman's-mag culture that it spurns. Blowing the whistle on the retouching of country singer Faith Hill's Redbook cover photo brought the site national attention. It thrives on the rejection of mainstream feminism by women who no longer find it viable.
Former assistant editor Moe Tkacik (who has since moved on to Gawker) has labeled the writers of popular blog Feministing "the bonerkiller squad." While Jezebel might shy away from these so-called "feminazis," they owe them their page views, not to mention their freedoms. While Gloria Steinem doesn't blog much these days (apparently she's "a more hung-up writer than that"), her contribution warrants much more than Jezebel's dismissal of her as "a dinosaur."
And then there was the denial of date rape. Appearing on a New York talk show with comedian Lizz Winstead, Tkacik and editor Tracie "Slut Machine" Egan (she blogged under the nickname for years) sparked controversy with their cavalier commentary on the emotional ramifications of sexual abuse. Egan, rejecting her role-model status — her posts on Jezebel promote unprotected sex, cocaine as an aphrodisiac, and impromptu hookups in scuzzy bar bathrooms — quipped, "I am not Captain Save-A-Ho... The thing I can do is just write, and if women relate to that, then I feel like that's great and we can share those experiences. But in the same way that like, Moe knows shit about China, I don't know shit about rape."
This cruel dismissal of a saddening female reality made me think twice about my Jezebel obsession. As He's A Stud, She's A Slut author Jessica Valenti writes on the Feministing blog, "even sad hipster girls negotiating their way through patriarchy have some responsibility for the things they say when their job is about writing for and influencing young women."
All the same, Jezebel is a place for me to belong, taking Judy Blume's Deenie into account alongside the Bush Doctrine. Putting feminism in my own language, it invites me to question my place in society in a way The Beauty Myth never could. I never found a definition of feminism I could live with, until I read Egan's post on her blog "One D at a Time," which finally hit it home:
"(Feminism) is kind of like Christianity, in that there's this one core belief — that women are people, too — but there are all these different sects and theories as to what's the best way to practice."
You can't be a bad feminist, Egan maintains, because as long as you're thinking about women's issues, it doesn't matter how you feel about them. While this inclusive definition may trouble some (is Sarah Palin a feminist? Paris Hilton?), it's made me rest easy. I can be a feminist and be myself — the vibrator is still up for debate.
