Bitch Media

I describe myself as a pop-culture-holic.

We wanted to take the formal conventions of a magazine and use it in the service of something that was on the fringe—feminism.

This is the difference between rebellion and dissent. If you want to repackage an ideology to sell it to the mainstream, your process invariably involves that mainstream helping to shape your sales pitch.

I think there is value in blurring the line between alternative and mainstream.

What happens when you don't conform? What happens when you encourage teen girls to embrace their differences?

It doesn't serve us, or anyone, to pretend that money is not important. It doesn't serve activism, it doesn't serve creativity, it doesn't serve social movements like feminism.

Our bar for selling out was pretty low. If selling out was going to be defined by simply engaging with the mainstream, then we were already losing because that was exactly what we wanted to do.

From an economic perspective, you can position yourself as an alternative, but if you're still dependent on the traditional revenue streams—that's going to complicate your ability to be truly alternative.