Liberating Histories - For Girls, By Girls

00:00:00.000 The Vogue's or the Condé Nast titles, it was always skinny white women that were upper class 1.00

00:00:13.580 and that just wasn't representative of anything I was seeing on the internet.

00:00:17.860 As far as we knew and as far as I still know, it had never been done.

00:00:22.620 Celebrating all things feminine, celebrating maximalism, saying that, you know,

00:00:27.540 these visual codes could be intellectual and weren't just vapid and like air-headed.

00:00:34.420 I remember saying at one of the first meetings I just want it to be not Jackie.

00:00:39.540 We didn't change the world but we certainly caused a few little earthquakes.

00:00:45.940 Hi, I'm Victoria Badin.

00:00:55.160 I'm Elena Gallus.

00:00:56.500 And I'm Mel Waters.

00:00:57.860 And this is the Liberating Histories podcast.

00:01:00.580 The podcast that explores the last 50 years of the women's movement

00:01:03.920 through the campaigns, communities, conflicts and controversies

00:01:08.020 sparked by some of its most cherished magazines.

00:01:15.940 In this episode, we're flicking through magazines made by and for girls and young women.

00:01:22.700 I interview Sally Orson-Jones, an original member of the Shocking Pink Collective,

00:01:27.260 and Ioni Gamble, the founder of Polyesterzine.

00:01:33.260 Shocking Pink is a feminist magazine that launches right at the start of the 1980s. 0.92

00:01:37.840 It's bright and smart and witty and informative

00:01:41.240 and provide some really sharp insights into the issues that are preoccupying young women at the

00:01:46.620 time. There are articles on everything from periods, masturbation, contraception and abortion

00:01:53.220 to educational opportunities, work, nuclear power, pop music and fashion. You get the idea.

00:02:01.040 While these issues are not, of course, new to feminism, their coverage in Shocking Pink is

00:02:06.020 fresh and innovative and distinct from what we find in other magazines of the time. Sally is 1.00

00:02:12.840 involved with the first three issues of Shocking Pink but leaves at the end of the magazine's 0.99

00:02:17.720 initial run in 1983. After that there's a break in production but the magazine relaunches with

00:02:24.840 a complete change of personnel in 1987 before it folds for good in 1992. As you'll hear in the

00:02:33.460 discussion, Shocking Pink defines itself from the outset as a feminist antidote to Jackie magazine.

00:02:40.780 Jackie had been the best-selling magazine for girls throughout the 1960s and 70s. It's famed

00:02:47.060 for its endless advice about how to attract boys and then how to avoid having sex with them once

00:02:53.300 you'd snared them. Because it's such a staple feature of girl culture, Shocking Pink makes 0.98

00:02:59.080 fairly frequent reference to Jackie magazine, so it's a talking point throughout this podcast.

00:03:05.400 I'd always felt that Shocking Pink had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Jackie, but

00:03:09.960 as Sally makes clear, it was definitely more of a hate-hate scenario. The Shocking Pink Collective

00:03:16.900 were, however, indebted to another magazine, and I'll give you a clue. It's a magazine that we

00:03:22.760 reference on every single episode of the podcast. Yes, it's Spare Rib, the UK's longest running

00:03:30.300 women's liberation magazine. Members of the Spare Rib Collective were instrumental in supporting

00:03:35.840 Shocking Pink, which you'll hear more about in the discussion. As Shocking Pink was made on a

00:03:41.360 shoestring and the product of collective working, Sally was interested to hear about Ioni Gamble's

00:03:46.880 very different experiences of producing a magazine as the sole founder and editor-in-chief

00:03:52.500 of polyester. So polyester is a feminist scene founded by Ioni in 2014 when she was only 20.

00:04:04.440 It's independent, it's self-published and it aims to bridge the gap between URL and IRL

00:04:10.940 or for some of us the gap between online and real life. The print edition of polyester now

00:04:17.780 published annually is a prestige hard copy item that sits alongside a suite of regularly updated

00:04:24.480 online content and the podcast. With an online readership of over 200,000, Polyester is the

00:04:31.520 most widely accessed publication we discuss in the series, though its print run is obviously smaller.

00:04:38.540 Polyester has a really distinctive aesthetic. If I tell you that it takes inspiration from

00:04:43.620 John Waters' advice to have faith in your own bad taste, that will give you a sense of how it looks.

00:04:49.740 It's ablaze with colour, it's packed with illustrations, photos, fonts,

00:04:55.640 kitschy marginalia. It's the definition of maximalist. The content is varied, but the

00:05:02.980 magazine is consistently invested in exploring the interface between feminism online and offline.

00:05:09.400 And it does this through a conspicuously intersectional lens and with a permanent eye on all of the bits and bobs that make up girl culture.

00:05:20.340 Shocking Pink and Polyester are operating in very different media environments and they are financed and organised along divergent lines.

00:05:30.020 This raises interesting questions about the nature of feminist community in the 1980s and in the 2010s. 0.95

00:05:36.820 How do we connect with other feminists? What do we do with those connections? 0.99

00:05:41.920 We do get to those issues in the podcast, but we begin, where else?

00:05:46.640 With a question from a multiple choice quiz that I pulled from an early issue of Shocking Pink.

00:05:59.340 It is a late night and you are waiting at the bus stop alone when a few boys start to chat you up.

00:06:06.100 would you? A. Talk back to them, thinking this is your big chance. B. Smile at them shyly.

00:06:14.840 C. Tell them that you have no wish to hold a conversation. Or D. Talk to them half-heartedly

00:06:22.120 and then jump on the next bus that comes along, even if it isn't the one that you wanted. Sally.

00:06:27.760 In those days, I would have done the last one. That means that you appear like a good laugh

00:06:33.420 most of the time but you can be more serious when you need to be do you know i don't even remember

00:06:39.040 that isn't that terrible what about you ione what do you do i think i think it's the you know

00:06:45.320 rational thing to do so as that quiz suggests shocking pink enjoys parodying some of those

00:06:52.640 staple elements of mainstream girls magazines jackie the best-selling girls magazine of the

00:06:58.560 60s and 70s looms really large in shocking pink and it's even there in your inaugural mission

00:07:05.260 statement where you say that magazines like jackie and oh boy and blue jeans and i'm quoting here

00:07:11.660 don't give a realistic impression of girls lives at the start of the 1980s so i wonder if you could

00:07:18.820 tell us what shocking pink's relationship to jackie is you know how does it relate to jackie

00:07:24.480 and other mainstream girls' magazines?

00:07:27.600 You see, when I was growing up in the 70s,

00:07:31.960 I mean, we didn't even have the other two.

00:07:34.920 We had Jackie. That's what we had.

00:07:37.700 And it was all about how to please boys, how to get a boy,

00:07:40.820 how to keep a boy, what you needed to do to be attractive to boys.

00:07:46.200 You know, it didn't deal with anything to do with real life.

00:07:48.560 And when we started what was first called the Young Women's Magazine,

00:07:52.300 we started the collective I remember saying at one of the first meetings I just want it to be

00:07:57.660 not Jackie and that's what everyone picked up on so that's what we wanted more than anything that's

00:08:04.860 all we wanted to do yeah yeah and it's always dialoguing very closely with Jackie isn't it

00:08:10.420 there are lots of little excerpts from Jackie that you pop in the magazine and we we parodied it you

00:08:16.300 know we wanted we were certainly wanted a photo story in there we were certain we wanted a quiz

00:08:22.800 you know we we wanted to make it look familiar but completely different which we just wanted to

00:08:28.480 to turn it on its head but you know we didn't want to scare people off we wanted to lure people in

00:08:36.560 it is done very fondly though as well you know as we didn't feel fondly at that point

00:08:45.740 we really didn't I mean now retrospectively I look back and think Jackie was actually probably

00:08:50.480 great for thousands and millions of girls and we as a teenager we bought it every week we did

00:08:58.060 because there was nothing else but by the time we were doing Shocking Pink we didn't feel fondly

00:09:03.940 towards it at all no we felt we felt angry about it. When you're writing in those first issues of

00:09:10.640 Shocking Pink it feels very much like you know that there's a community of people out there

00:09:14.480 who agree with you and who feel the same way

00:09:16.620 and you're just trying to find them almost?

00:09:19.980 That was our hope.

00:09:21.980 We really wanted that to be true

00:09:25.040 and it turned out to be true, yes.

00:09:27.800 Well, Ione, in a similar vein,

00:09:30.140 I really like the Ask Celia feature

00:09:34.300 in one of the early issues of Polyester

00:09:37.040 and it really reminds me of getting my Just 17 home

00:09:40.180 and going straight to the problem page,

00:09:42.380 which was always my favourite part of the magazine what's your favourite part of a magazine you know

00:09:47.620 if you get if you buy a magazine what do you flick to first oh I can't I feel like making

00:09:53.240 magazines kind of ruins magazines for you because then you never actually buy or read them yourself

00:09:57.400 but I think for me as someone that yeah like edits and makes scenes I always am striving to

00:10:05.140 look for the light and the shade so yeah the quizzes versus the more serious pieces or their

00:10:10.420 personal essays for example and polyester has always had that sort of like dose of nostalgia

00:10:15.560 for like the more light-hearted pieces but also a lot of these are serious issues packaged in a fun

00:10:20.540 way so like an advice column it's like real issues but there's just nice illustrations next to it or

00:10:25.940 it's presented in this very like pop culture way which i think is fun as well what magazines were

00:10:30.720 you reading when you were growing up so i grew up when did i even grow up so i went to secondary

00:10:37.640 have you always been grown up I went to secondary school 2005 to 2010 so kind of like the advent of

00:10:44.620 social media and the internet and all of those things and a lot of the magazines that I bought

00:10:49.620 and I read were adult magazines to be honest so like when Vice was a free magazine I used to read

00:10:55.540 that a lot I really liked Lula magazine if you remember that one it was Leith Clark made it and

00:11:00.600 it was a fashion magazine as I got older and like moved to websites I was a really big fan of Rookie

00:11:05.820 magazine which tarvi gevinson started but a lot of the kind of way that i consumed culture was

00:11:11.900 through the internet so through tumblr specifically which i think was definitely a hub of like feminist

00:11:17.920 media and feminist thought in a way that no physical publication was at the time if that 0.55

00:11:22.320 makes sense yeah so you were you were more online than you were in print well i think for me print

00:11:29.160 was less about you know like sharing information and more about like an object that you could keep

00:11:35.300 that like has similar values to you that you will like cherish for a long long time so if I wanted

00:11:40.360 something immediate it would be on the internet but if I was trying to look for like images I

00:11:44.820 really liked for example or like things that I would keep with me for a longer amount of time

00:11:49.140 I would get that from a magazine right oh that's so interesting so it almost sounds to say print

00:11:55.860 has more of an influence over you maybe or a longer lasting influence I think for me it was

00:12:02.720 just more that it was so legitimate especially in that time and until well still going on we do see

00:12:08.800 the internet as like throwaway culture and in those early years it was very belittled like with

00:12:14.040 bloggers and all of those types of things like people really look down as that not being a

00:12:19.280 intellectual means of media so for example when I started polyester it was because I saw all of 1.00

00:12:25.040 this amazing feminist and politically engaged work that wasn't given a print platform and for me that

00:12:31.900 I was like, you know, the most legitimate, special thing you could do.

00:12:35.960 That brings me on then to your mission statement in the first issue.

00:12:40.800 So you say, we've all grown up on the internet,

00:12:43.680 so much so that the lines have blurred between our IRL and URL.

00:12:48.000 That's brilliant, by the way.

00:12:49.460 But here at Polyester, we notice that what we're reading online

00:12:52.260 is barely penetrating the real world.

00:12:55.060 We want to be recognised as real human beings offline and online,

00:12:58.820 not just digifeminist or emotional and hormonal young adults using the internet as a way to let

00:13:04.780 off some steam. So it sounds like you think or felt at the time that girls were being perhaps

00:13:11.080 misrepresented or undermined by the mainstream press. Yeah, absolutely. So polyester itself is

00:13:18.640 a John Waters reference, but it's also a bit of a reference to Nylon magazine, like poking fun at

00:13:24.420 that in a way and trying to create like a new means of media very similar to what sally was

00:13:29.260 saying i think clearly always we've had a very damaging media at large and i grew up with you

00:13:35.460 know intense body shaming in like heat magazine in the circle of shame or very objectifying

00:13:42.260 viewpoints even if it was in a women's magazine it was like you weren't gonna get anything really

00:13:46.800 deep or serious but then even transferring that over to you know like the vogues or the 1.00

00:13:51.120 Conde Nast titles, it was always skinny white women that were upper class. And that just wasn't 1.00

00:13:56.680 representative of anything I was seeing on the internet. Do you think that that's still the case

00:14:03.000 now? Yes. Like, I think we have so much more choice, which is great. So there are so many

00:14:10.560 small publications and indie publications, DIY publications like polyester. There's so many of

00:14:16.180 them. But the people that still hold the power within the media industry, so Condé Nast, for

00:14:20.920 example, Hearst, everyone is still run by, you know, rich white men who are so enamored with

00:14:30.080 power, they don't want to like relinquish that. And the means of control is through selling us

00:14:35.940 aspiration. So they don't know any other way. Like polyester's kind of viewpoint has always been

00:14:40.860 about inclusivity and community and giving people a home and then they'll sort of, you know,

00:14:45.300 buy into what you're saying. But that's not how fashion or the media at large has traditionally

00:14:51.040 done it. And I don't really think you can't change that without dismantling it completely

00:14:55.760 and starting afresh. So yeah, in short, I think it's definitely still like that now. I think

00:15:00.120 we have more diversity, which is great, but that doesn't run through to like, you know,

00:15:04.800 the boards of any companies, the C-suites on any companies, like even staffers on publications are

00:15:10.160 still like grossly mistreated. We still have a huge class divide in the media. So all of these

00:15:14.720 things are still very much issues and that drips down to like what we are reading about because

00:15:19.300 it's only really made by a very small pool of people yeah and i mean it strikes me how similar

00:15:27.360 the mission statements of both your magazines are like uh although they're 40 years apart

00:15:33.260 when um shocking pink announces itself as being this magazine by young women for young women

00:15:40.080 and a magazine that wants to look at fashion and music

00:15:42.900 and all of those things, but from, as you say,

00:15:45.820 an interesting and realistic viewpoint.

00:15:48.960 Sally, can you just tell us a little bit more about that,

00:15:51.900 about Shocking Pink's origin story,

00:15:54.700 you know, how you came to be part of this collective?

00:15:58.340 It's started by somebody from Spare Rib called Susan Hemmings,

00:16:04.020 who had a teenage daughter called Lisa,

00:16:07.360 and I assume it came from their conversations but suddenly there were sort of flyers up saying you

00:16:15.220 know are you interested in starting a new young women's magazine if you are come to this meeting

00:16:19.960 at this place and I did and there was an awful lot of of us there and Susan was sort of leading

00:16:26.020 the meeting and then the second one you know most of them hadn't come back but those of us that did

00:16:32.360 come back were very serious about it i have to say you know i've said this before in talking to

00:16:37.680 people that spare rib were a tremendous help to us in a practical way we did everything but we

00:16:44.600 didn't know how to lay out a storyboard or even that we needed to lay out storyboard so in in

00:16:49.720 those sort of terms they were fantastically helpful to us we couldn't have done it without

00:16:54.280 them really which is ironic isn't it but they had nothing to do with the input of the magazine they

00:17:00.240 had nothing at all to do with the content of the magazine I mean literally nothing so gradually

00:17:05.500 these meetings built and built and there became a sort of core group of us at one meeting we'd

00:17:12.280 been trying to think of a name for a while Susan had stopped coming to the meetings it was it was

00:17:16.960 just us and I remember I suggested socket because I thought you know you plugged in but also you

00:17:24.100 know you sopped it it was rubbish idea but lisa came up with shocking pink she suddenly said what

00:17:30.380 about shocking pink and we all just looked at each other because of course it's subverting 0.70

00:17:33.780 pink for a girl and we wanted to be shocking to a degree to a large degree and it was we all just

00:17:41.600 went oh yeah that's it that's the one and once we had the name it all gradually began to coalesce

00:17:47.980 you know collectives are difficult and we had no experience of collectives but we did okay didn't

00:17:55.100 we well I think so but can we lean in to that comment about collectives as well because I know

00:18:01.620 that when we've spoken to people from Sperry they've talked about the length of the meetings

00:18:06.900 how long they used to go on for and was there a lot of conflict or what what the challenges of

00:18:13.040 working just just a nightmare but it was strange because away from the meetings for a long time

00:18:19.360 we all socialized together it was our sort of social life but within the meetings yes

00:18:24.800 just everything went on and on we had to write everything sort of together or everyone had to

00:18:29.800 approve everything and although we were all so united and what we wanted within that people had

00:18:36.980 very different ideas and I think every collective everywhere would tell the same story it very

00:18:44.940 quickly settled into a few of us taking the lead and the others being very cross that we were taking

00:18:49.880 the lead but they didn't take any lead but it was never it was never a case of two or three people

00:18:56.520 making all the decisions not at all it really was everything was a collective decision and we wrote

00:19:02.180 collectively as well you know all those articles the big articles were done from conversations we

00:19:08.980 put tape recorder in the middle of the floor we all sat around talking and then we two or three

00:19:14.480 of us wrote the article so that's how we did those I mean that that's that is amazing collectivity

00:19:20.820 isn't it writing together I mean it was different times the early 80s you know it was very much what

00:19:28.620 was expected but we were happy to do I mean no one minded doing it. Had you been involved in

00:19:35.040 any other feminist groups before Shocking Pink or? I was 17 I'd only just been in London for a few

00:19:42.180 months I definitely identified as a feminist though actually I'd only started feeling brave

00:19:47.780 enough to do that because it was a very dirty word for different reasons than it is sometimes now 0.94

00:19:53.800 I mean the oldest I think was 23 and we thought of them as sort of slightly imposters the two 23

00:20:01.960 year olds they'd be they were at art school and we were very grateful for their skills but

00:20:06.800 you know they only just counted well that's interesting because you were very young when

00:20:12.180 you set up polyester can you bear in mind what you've been saying about the balance of power

00:20:17.760 in the publishing industry how did you go about starting polyester so i was 20 and i did my degree

00:20:26.840 in fashion journalism at uca in epsom and one of our sort of uni projects tasks was to create a

00:20:34.940 magazine so we kind of went through the process of it was quite like dragon's denny i suppose like

00:20:40.980 you had to think of a concept and then pitch it and then make like a dummy issue of it and so i

00:20:46.520 did all of that and yeah it went really well everyone who I kind of wanted to contribute

00:20:51.420 came on board to contribute so I thought that there's a need for this or people want to read it

00:20:58.220 so then I spent I think it was like 200 pounds of my student loan to get them printed and I threw a

00:21:06.040 zine launch in Dalston and then yeah it kind of just went from there and then for the first

00:21:11.480 three-ish years well first five years really it was just run by me voluntarily Gina who is our

00:21:19.960 senior editor came on board 2016 to run the website and we ran that as kind of like a blog

00:21:24.680 but print was always my baby and I commissioned everything and edited everything etc and then

00:21:32.700 2020 when the pandemic hit and we were in lockdown we were actually kind of like the opposite of a lot

00:21:40.160 of other publications and stuff which we're really lucky for in which we were actually getting work

00:21:46.060 so we could look into expanding a small team we relaunched the podcast during that time

00:21:50.820 and so 2020 to 2023 is when it's really kind of like been a job and I've got a team of three of

00:21:59.720 us and a wider contributor net and like a wider community but yeah three of us are the core team

00:22:04.980 that do the day-to-day basically right so um sally was talking about the challenges of working as part

00:22:11.680 of a collective this has obviously started as much more for solo enterprise what kinds of

00:22:17.060 challenges have you faced in that respect yeah well i think for me it was always about like

00:22:21.900 finding community like similarly to sally i just moved to london well not even in london i was in

00:22:27.240 surrey and wanting to be in london and then i did end up making the move and i wanted friends

00:22:32.000 and I saw all of these people on the internet so it was kind of like you know polyester was made in

00:22:36.700 mind for a place for people to gather around or a thing for people to rally around which has been

00:22:41.820 really really great and I think that spirit like still really remains today but in terms of

00:22:46.980 building it up there have obviously been challenges and a lot of them are like monetary

00:22:52.520 like running something voluntarily for like the first five six years of it was difficult but also

00:23:00.420 I've always really enjoyed it and I think it's one of those things where if you don't enjoy it

00:23:04.080 you should just stop and I would say the second thing is like learning essentially to be a manager

00:23:08.480 on the job and manage people maintain that sort of yeah like fairness and everyone making decisions

00:23:15.640 but also knowing when you have to do the hard bits but I think we've gotten to a pretty nice

00:23:21.300 balance now touch wood what are the hard bits I think just workload like the workload is we have

00:23:26.940 a small team and there's a big workload and delegating I think because I did it by myself

00:23:32.120 for so long delegating was something that I had to learn I think I'm pretty confident in editing

00:23:37.760 people and making decisions and all of those types of things now but I think also like sustaining

00:23:43.520 growth is obviously like a huge anxiety for anyone but especially if you're running like a feminist 1.00

00:23:50.540 magazine I mean it's not the type of thing that people are throwing money out or that you know

00:23:55.120 historically makes a lot of money not that that's even the goal but to turn over is the goal so I

00:24:01.120 think that's a big anxiety but also we've not had a growth plan because that would suggest that I

00:24:05.060 knew anything about anything I was doing but I've always taken like a slow and steady approach to

00:24:10.400 everything which I think has mitigated like any huge crises. What about the funding for

00:24:18.100 Shocking Pink Sally? How did you get it up and running? Can I just say I'm really impressed

00:24:23.580 because that's not how we did it we just flew by this you know seat of our hands thank you

00:24:29.800 funding well again once we started selling them we always sold out so that that was good

00:24:37.400 initially again spare rib they organized a sort of benefit gig with us and then gave us all the

00:24:47.260 money from that I mean obviously they covered costs and that was a tremendous help and you know

00:24:54.500 I can't remember I remember that we had enough money for the first print run that's all I can

00:25:01.860 remember and postage you know stamps and envelopes and and all those things that we needed a lot of

00:25:09.040 people were very generous to us like when I was talking about the layout boards I think the

00:25:13.780 printers gave us the layout boards you know our typesetter did it for free we bought her a kettle

00:25:20.600 I remember but she did it for free we were offered a darkroom by a place called the cockpit in

00:25:29.020 Holborn they said we could use a darkroom for free so I mean people were amazingly amazingly

00:25:36.560 generous to us and that's how we got the first issue off the ground in fact you know all three

00:25:43.600 issues I think people were consistently incredibly generous to us and I hope we appreciated it I think

00:25:50.140 we did. I think you've definitely given credit where credit is due and it's wonderful to hear

00:25:56.160 about all of the help that you had but the magazine is still very much your own. Certainly each of

00:26:03.300 these magazines has a really strong visual aesthetic and given that covers play such a

00:26:09.020 critical role in establishing the politics and the identity of the magazine, I thought it might

00:26:14.460 be useful for us to explore a couple of those cover images in more detail. So Sally, I wonder

00:26:20.320 if we can start with you. Can you tell us the story of Shocking Pink's first front cover?

00:26:26.140 So we knew exactly, for once, I don't even remember there being a problem about this idea.

00:26:31.480 whoever had it had it and we what we wanted was this picture of a you know a ordinary magazine

00:26:39.780 with these young women sort of bursting through it and it was quite a palaver actually we doled up

00:26:46.920 one of the one of the collective in a wig and makeup to be the ordinary magazine and then we

00:26:54.120 again the art students they knew this woman who had a photography studio and we went there and

00:26:59.380 she set up this big roll of paper and over and over again people just sort of we tore it you know

00:27:06.460 and over and over again people from the collective just jumped through it and then we chose the best

00:27:12.860 ones and and mocked it up but we we wanted to make a statement which is you know here we are

00:27:18.820 the first front cover of polyester features an Arvida Bystrom photograph what was the thinking

00:27:26.260 behind that so Arvida was and is a very big photographer and was dealing with like a lot 0.99

00:27:32.700 of feminist themes at the time which she still does as well specifically like digital feminist

00:27:37.760 themes and it was huge on tumblr and her work was a lot about looking at traditionally feminine

00:27:43.880 symbols and kind of subverting them or recontextualizing them within the actual

00:27:49.620 experiences of young women and girls and it was kind of like satire in a way like being the most

00:27:55.200 girly you can be like a reclamation of pink and like all of these other things so I contacted her

00:28:01.380 to shoot the cover and kind of just said this is what it'll be you can do whatever you want

00:28:04.880 and the cover is a girl and she has purpley hair she's wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt

00:28:11.620 and I think for us it was like a couple of different things it was like a just putting

00:28:15.360 a girl on the cover especially a girl that wasn't white and kind of being like you know you're

00:28:20.780 reading this and you could be this girl like it's not a celebrity it's not anyone that you know

00:28:25.100 like we kind of all have the ability to make this great work and make feminist work and then apart 1.00

00:28:31.540 from that it was yeah kind of the decision of having someone who was already so established

00:28:35.480 in the space and like inspiring a lot of people and aesthetically was very aligned with like our

00:28:41.100 mission statement of doing similar things like celebrating all things feminine celebrating

00:28:46.120 maximalism saying that you know these visual codes could be intellectual and weren't just

00:28:51.480 vapid and like airheaded. So yeah, it's kind of just like the perfect storm, I suppose.

00:28:56.600 I'm so glad that you use the term maximal because that's when I was making notes, I was bright and

00:29:04.220 maximalist with the words I used for both of the publications. I noticed with polyester as well,

00:29:12.120 that in that first issue you use a lot of pixelated fonts and it's almost like that 90s

00:29:21.220 geocities colour palette and I wondered whether to what extent you might be trying to replicate

00:29:27.680 some of those online aesthetics within the space of the the print periodical the print magazine

00:29:33.680 I was sick of opening up magazines where it'd be like a white page with like a sans serif on

00:29:39.360 and it would just be really boring so made the decision straight away to have no white pages in

00:29:45.060 the issue so whether it's like a gradient or a pink page or a blue page or whatever it would

00:29:49.060 just always not be a white page and it was about sort of you know a invoking a slight nostalgia for

00:29:56.740 very early's internet so yeah like geocities and b yeah it was about kind of like not taking the

00:30:03.740 digital aspect away from it and saying this is only important because it exists in the real world

00:30:08.640 is about a kind of like merging of the two.

00:30:13.040 I was thinking about Shocking Pink in this respect as well

00:30:17.100 in terms of some of its signature features.

00:30:19.760 And one of the things that I love in Shocking Pink

00:30:21.860 is the way that you'll often have little annotations

00:30:25.920 or like speech bubbles that are subverting the images that you're using.

00:30:32.200 I'll tell you why.

00:30:34.980 I mean, because we wanted to do it, obviously.

00:30:38.100 but you know we like I said we laid the magazine out ourselves we didn't really know what we were

00:30:43.240 doing and very often the layout board would have a lot of space on it we had to fill up that space

00:30:49.840 but we didn't want to be a zine you see we we wanted to be a magazine it was quite important

00:30:55.000 to us we wanted to look like something that you would buy so many elements of these magazines

00:31:04.900 are happy accidents aren't they um i wonder i only if i could ask you to turn to page 19

00:31:11.640 thank you it's very bright oh yeah here we go this is my pride and joy yeah so what i'm most 0.93

00:31:21.920 proud of what are you looking at i only a double page spread on masturbation there is like

00:31:28.760 illustrations also a big article lots of like writing around the edge and also a like diagram

00:31:35.940 of the vulva it's not a diagram well it's a picture annotated picture and that's really 0.66

00:31:42.720 important do you want to tell us why there's a photo of her vagina on page 19 i certainly do 0.89

00:31:49.660 and thank you well first of all we really wanted to do something on masturbation as far as we knew

00:31:55.720 and as far as i still know it had never been done before the nearest you get was in the the problem

00:32:01.720 pages saying it you know it is it is normal but you know still a bit sort of shameful and don't

00:32:09.280 talk about it we wanted to basically say everybody does it and girls do it and well initially we

00:32:17.100 talked about a diagram because we felt you know that was important but it was actually in this

00:32:21.960 time I can say it was me because I felt so strongly about it in those days if you looked at a diagram

00:32:27.220 of a vulva they didn't have a clitoris on them not important we just felt it was really really

00:32:35.500 important to have an actual picture with all the bits and so I took pictures of everybody I think

00:32:42.820 in the collective or certainly everyone who would who would do it we chose the most representative

00:32:47.720 one the clearest one you know the most easy to look at as it were easy to diagram to label

00:32:55.260 and put it in got us into terrible trouble got banned from libraries and all sorts of stuff but

00:33:00.660 I'm still so proud of it I'm so proud of that article because it's a good article and that

00:33:05.980 was another one that we did all all of us just sitting around the tape recorder and talking

00:33:09.840 about our experiences and then a couple of us writing it up and you know 40 years later I

00:33:17.480 I still feel a happy glow when I think about that, that article.

00:33:23.120 And it was, I think it really was for so many people have said to me,

00:33:26.740 so many young, well, then young, now ancient women have said to me,

00:33:32.320 I'd never read anything like that.

00:33:34.440 That was so good.

00:33:35.700 That made me feel so reassured, you know.

00:33:39.820 I did find something in Just 17, a couple of years after Shocking Pink,

00:33:45.600 because Just 17 was tailing behind you a lot of the time.

00:33:49.660 But they did an article on masturbation 1.00

00:33:52.640 and the accompanying image was just a girl 0.94

00:33:55.440 with a sort of head in her hands,

00:33:57.800 looking sort of anxious and depressed.

00:33:59.800 That's not how you do it.

00:34:01.520 No, and it always makes me feel,

00:34:03.380 this is a joyful celebration.

00:34:06.080 So the feelings that accompany the discussion

00:34:09.080 in Shocking Pink are so different

00:34:11.260 to the feelings that are swirling around

00:34:13.420 in that Just 17 article.

00:34:14.840 that was the idea i mean and again those illustrations which of course people can't

00:34:19.580 see but you know the people on the collective who could draw we just said do some appropriate

00:34:25.180 cartoons and there they are yeah and they're funny they are yeah and you're good at diagrams

00:34:32.360 in shocking pink you've got good anatomical diagrams elsewhere and bits about sexuality

00:34:38.340 and some good images of contraception as well so you have got very talented artists on the

00:34:44.060 collective some of that stuff i mean contraception was was another one that what that we felt was

00:34:49.800 really important because jackie was all about get a boy but it wasn't about and don't get pregnant

00:34:54.860 no no like it's all about what happens at the disco not afterwards yeah yeah i mean this frank

00:35:01.640 treatment of bodies is something that also seems to be characteristic of polyester as well can you

00:35:08.580 just speak about the bodies in polyester and what what your thinking is about how you want to

00:35:14.840 represent the bodies of girls and young women yeah for us I mean magazines in general are so

00:35:22.520 unrepresentative of what most people look like so for me it was about casting people shooting people

00:35:29.420 and having contribute the people that aren't represented elsewhere but at the same time when

00:35:35.060 I started polyester and in the years that followed was kind of when body positivity you know began to

00:35:39.920 rise and then peak and I found it a bit boring for lack of a better word like it was always like

00:35:46.960 oh shoot this fat person but shoot them in like a beige pant and like turn the contrast up so you 0.94

00:35:53.580 can see all their stretch marks and then still say that that's like incredible or that they've 0.99

00:35:57.760 like overcome something by having a body so for me it was always about making images that were

00:36:03.780 not only representative but also like glamorous and gorgeous and not necessarily sexy but just

00:36:09.660 pictures that people would look at and be like oh that looks amazing as well as as well as being

00:36:15.560 subversive or showing a different type of person for example we did like a beauty shoot and it was

00:36:20.780 all girls that had double chins which is like still something that I don't think we've seen

00:36:26.040 since because even though there is like margin more of acceptance for you know not skinny people

00:36:30.920 that doesn't extend to like having a double chin it has to still you know fall within certain beauty

00:36:36.840 standards and be desirable in these ways so it's about and is still about trying to you know kind

00:36:42.420 of create this visual language that is interesting and exciting and representative and also exists

00:36:49.820 outside of the male gaze yeah i mean it's a beautiful magazine to look at i love the the

00:36:57.340 images in the magazine and could I just yeah I'm ever so sorry but can I just pick up because that

00:37:03.040 was so interesting and can I just pick up the other thing about issues around the body one of

00:37:09.260 my deepest regrets is for the fourth issue of Shocking Pink which never happened on our watch

00:37:14.920 so our fourth issue we had done one of these round the tape recorder interviews about weight

00:37:20.120 so this was again I think hadn't been done and you know somebody must have that tape but I don't

00:37:27.300 have it and we were going to do an article about it and we were all talking about how it ruined our

00:37:32.920 lives you know scales had ruined our lives you know jackie used to give away calorie counters

00:37:38.340 it was all about dieting and weight loss and not being fat that was what it was all about and

00:37:44.560 that would have been a cracking article and i really really regret that we never did that

00:37:51.040 because again i think it would have been quite groundbreaking but anyway it never happened so i

00:37:56.380 I don't really know why I'm talking about it.

00:37:57.900 So what happened when you were planning the issue

00:38:01.100 and then it just didn't come to fruition?

00:38:03.680 Well, I'm not sure what happened because I left.

00:38:06.160 Why?

00:38:06.440 Because I was burnt out and I also thought I was too old.

00:38:10.080 I was 22 and I thought, you know, Young Wimms magazine.

00:38:14.200 I don't know what happened with the fourth issue.

00:38:17.360 I mean, I'm sure I knew at the time,

00:38:20.020 but it didn't happen for whatever reason.

00:38:22.640 I'm not sure.

00:38:23.200 And then there's that hiatus before it. Shocking Pink is relaunched by a different collective.

00:38:29.360 Completely separate.

00:38:29.860 Yeah. The question that I got sidetracked from there, it was about fashion.

00:38:37.040 And Sally, I'm thinking about Shocking Pink and how you wrestle with the question of fashion and how to, you say in,

00:38:47.340 I think it might be in the second issue that you're struggling with working out how to cover

00:38:51.340 fashion in the magazine. Some of the collective really wanted to write about clothes and fashion

00:38:57.480 and some of us hardly knew what fashion was you know and it was very liberating for us as feminists

00:39:06.800 to not have to bother or think about it but obviously you can be a feminist and still really

00:39:12.420 like clothes and care about clothes oh you know this is going a very long way back but I think

00:39:18.860 the general consensus of opinion was that we didn't really want to be bothered with clothes

00:39:23.340 and there's a real emphasis on comfort and the fact that you can take joy in clothes as well

00:39:30.460 and that's the same in in polyester as well where you've got that amazing John Waters tagline have

00:39:36.960 face in your own bad taste what about fashion in in polyester you know what are you thinking about

00:39:43.380 when you're covering fashion yeah so I think how we kind of cover fashion is more an overall you

00:39:50.340 know like identity based arc like whether that's something as I already mentioned body positivity

00:39:55.420 or like now we're seeing a lot of like very niche aesthetics on TikTok on the internet that kind of

00:40:02.240 like mirror subculture but only exists for a few months and I find that really interesting to cover

00:40:07.840 because ultimately these things are like anthropological and they're markers of culture

00:40:11.700 like how we dress whether we care or whether we don't they do kind of place us in a certain

00:40:17.360 context and for us it was always about you know not feeling ashamed of the clothes we wear whatever

00:40:23.820 that was for polyester it's like a very feminine like a super femme aesthetic and it was about

00:40:28.540 deconstructing that through like intellectual means as well as just enjoying it like kind of

00:40:32.840 reaching that middle ground where it's like okay we're socially aware of what this means how do we

00:40:36.900 divorce it from like a sexist context while also enjoying it yeah yeah and and I mean that's

00:40:43.340 I suppose that's what you settled on in shocking pink as well isn't it when you represent the

00:40:48.620 clothes it's about the clothes that people are wearing what they want to wear yeah but you know

00:40:53.440 it makes me look back and think those of us were saying oh we're not bothered about fashion you

00:40:57.220 And there we were all sitting, probably dressed identically in our sort of early 80s feminist uniforms.

00:41:02.520 So, you know, of course we did. But it was it was very anti-fashion.

00:41:07.680 It was very, very anti-high street, anti-fashion. And that was important to us as well.

00:41:15.480 Why do you think it's important for young women to generate content for other young women?

00:41:22.340 well we very much wanted that because we wanted young women to be writing about stuff that was

00:41:30.460 important to them i think in the first issue the issue the article about the race riots in

00:41:35.740 brixton that was sent in and that was fantastic so that is exactly the kind of thing that we wanted

00:41:41.840 i think being a teenager or in your 20s or being a woman at any age i'm sure but i haven't gotten

00:41:49.620 to any other one yeah it's such like a specific experience and we're so used to our like interests

00:41:55.160 and what we read being dictated for us rather than made like buying for us and obviously there's like

00:42:01.540 such a long and rich history of women made media the issue is it's so often not like a widespread

00:42:07.480 thing i think obviously access is so so much easier now than it was in the 80s when sally

00:42:15.000 was making shocking pink it's just like nowhere near the kind of friction that you have like we

00:42:19.040 have a direct line with our audience we have our submissions open on email and it's just so much

00:42:23.180 easier and to that point it's kind of like well why wouldn't people be doing this it feels like

00:42:29.100 a very natural evolution of having access to online publishing tools that people want to

00:42:34.900 make their own voice heard rather than being like told what that voice is what i love about both of

00:42:41.000 these magazines is there is a kind of fearlessness about them that comes with being young and yes

00:42:47.980 kind of with you with friends with mates and we took a certain amount of glee i mean some of us

00:42:54.160 more than others in being provocative and shocking yeah i'm pink some of us

00:43:03.080 so one of the things that i've noticed with both of the magazines and we were

00:43:10.820 getting close to it when we were talking about the annotations in Shocking Pink is about the

00:43:18.460 extent to which the power of both of these magazines lies in their critical celebration

00:43:24.640 of pop culture. What do you think, Ione? I think pop culture is just all around us and you can't

00:43:30.680 ignore it and it should still be analysed, inspected, talked about because otherwise

00:43:35.740 we're just being completely uncritical of the world we live in. And I think that's why

00:43:40.420 a lot of people really like polyester because it applies feminist thought to things that they're 1.00

00:43:46.160 already engaged in that they're already talking about they're already thinking about whereas 0.83

00:43:49.980 you know I don't have any academic feminist training or whatever I've obviously read books

00:43:56.480 but sometimes it's really hard for people to you know put it in a practical way that like is then

00:44:01.680 applicable to their lives and I feel like almost the perfect way to do that is through pop culture

00:44:06.100 a lot of your content taps into the fact that pop culture puts very strong feelings into

00:44:12.420 circulation and i guess that some of these feelings might be discontinuous with our

00:44:18.040 personal politics i think it's so important to talk about because i feel like we live

00:44:22.780 like the cultural age that we're living in is if you don't like something ignore it or

00:44:27.940 like don't give it any air don't give it any space and then it will just go away

00:44:31.780 and we know for a fact that isn't true these things thrive kind of like in the darkness or

00:44:36.600 whatever like whether it's something silly like a bad film or whether it's something like quite

00:44:39.920 serious like incel culture so it is really important to air those out like the good the

00:44:44.000 bad and the weird and just make sure that we're not letting culture like pass us by unchecked and

00:44:50.860 uninterrogated what do you think sally um it's very difficult for me to answer this because this

00:44:57.500 was the early 80s and we honestly didn't have the same kind of language a lot of the collective

00:45:04.080 well certainly one of the most active members of the collective was 14 we were 14 15 16 17

00:45:10.900 I'm not sure if any of us knew the term pop culture and I don't think it was very instinctive

00:45:20.720 what we did it was really instinctive there was no construct I mean there was obviously we we

00:45:27.060 wanted to be not Jackie and that's that's probably where it began and ended in in our heads we

00:45:33.280 probably went further on the page but you know the honestly the rest of the collective may say

00:45:38.820 differently but that's my memory of it so it's I guess maybe more of a like pick and mix approach

00:45:45.360 to what's in the air in the atmosphere and oh yeah definitely that yeah as a as a closing question

00:45:52.780 perhaps like when you're thinking back on the lifetime of these magazines or or your involvement

00:46:00.380 with them what are the dominant feelings that are being evoked like when you remember

00:46:06.820 air shocking pink sally what do you feel tremendous pride i think you know it's 40 years

00:46:14.600 and it's still one easily one of the things i'm most proud about in my life easily easily and you

00:46:21.980 know it didn't make the difference that we hoped it would make but it did make a real difference

00:46:26.260 and I still meet people today women today who say oh my god you know shocking pink you know

00:46:32.700 that was so important to me I couldn't wait for the next issue you know it we didn't change the

00:46:38.680 world but we certainly caused a few little earthquakes. What about you Ioni? Like I feel

00:46:47.260 proud that I had the initiative to start something in the first place because I feel like that is

00:46:53.900 not well it is kind of in my character but yeah it feels like I really took a punt if that makes

00:46:58.500 sense and hoped it worked out and still like very much feel in the middle of it but feel that

00:47:05.240 hopefully we can like serve people and like create the community that we want to keep making

00:47:10.660 wow so on that positive note can I just thank you both very much for this conversation I've

00:47:19.880 really enjoyed hearing all about Shocking Pink and Polyester two of the most exciting and

00:47:25.540 visually interesting magazines that we're talking about on the project so thank you

00:47:30.720 thank you absolute pleasure lovely to meet you so nice to meet you

00:47:40.660 What a fantastic episode, Mel.

00:47:42.780 Wow, it's so fascinating.

00:47:44.260 It reminded me of what you were saying the other day

00:47:46.680 about how periodicals are a young person's genre.

00:47:50.360 And this is really epitomised by Shocking Pink and Polyestazine.

00:47:54.680 Yeah, I agree. 1.00

00:47:55.580 There's a lot of young, fierce feminism at work there. 1.00

00:47:59.240 Yeah, so, so interesting to hear them talk about their respective magazines, 1.00

00:48:04.800 but also that Ioni in particular is stressing the importance

00:48:08.760 of the printed magazine of the material object so that's still really important in this digital age

00:48:15.080 I was fascinated by that and again you know I think this is going to come up in other podcasts

00:48:19.780 isn't it this this idea that actually online digitized magazines are great and accessible

00:48:26.820 to a certain extent but there's certain things that you can't say or you can't do with online

00:48:32.360 that you can do with the printed object.

00:48:35.000 Yeah, so print elides some of the scrutiny

00:48:38.140 that's placed on content that we find in the digital world.

00:48:44.380 Yeah, and print takes on this sort of new value

00:48:47.020 in the digital age as well,

00:48:48.380 where it becomes something which is more static

00:48:50.980 but less susceptible to the cross-currents

00:48:54.660 of the febrile online space.

00:48:58.180 Definitely.

00:48:59.000 And also what they were both talking about

00:49:00.740 in terms of pop culture.

00:49:02.360 They're both offering a sort of critical perspective on popular culture.

00:49:07.180 And in particular, thinking about what Sally was saying about the 1980s,

00:49:11.300 and she said, well, we didn't have the word pop culture,

00:49:13.480 but actually they were doing that,

00:49:15.560 particularly in terms of their analysis of Jackie through their magazine.

00:49:21.140 And then you get a lot of academics actually focusing very much on Jackie

00:49:25.000 as an important influence on the shaping of girlhood.

00:49:29.020 Yeah, so what Shocking Pink was doing back then 1.00

00:49:31.380 was actually modelling a form of feminist critique 0.99

00:49:34.340 that we've become much more familiar with since. 0.94

00:49:36.920 Yeah, groundbreaking.

00:49:37.960 That's so great, isn't it?

00:49:38.840 I love that idea.

00:49:39.520 It's almost like the practice coming before the theory

00:49:41.260 and now we look at it and we see what it was doing

00:49:43.640 and we understand it in sort of more theoretical terms.

00:49:47.160 And that's like what polyester's doing as well, isn't it?

00:49:50.080 It's taking pop culture and analysing it 1.00

00:49:54.020 through that feminist lens. 0.99

00:49:55.500 Yeah, there was that wonderful quote from Ionia 1.00

00:49:57.500 where she said that polyester's, you know,

00:50:00.020 a lot of the work it does is to show that these codes these pop culture codes could be intellectual

00:50:05.600 not just vapid I thought that was a great quote well brilliant I just love that conversation

00:50:11.140 well done Mel you know really fantastic stuff it was great I want to get them back and ask

00:50:16.140 them all the things that I forgot to ask just love those magazines yeah great great

00:50:20.840 that is all for this episode though this has been liberating histories with victoria bazan

00:50:32.460 elena careless and me mel waters we do have a fourth member of our team caitlin mendes who

00:50:38.760 you've not heard on the podcast she's based at the university of western ontario this series

00:50:44.640 is part of a larger ahlc funded project based at northumbria university and partnered with the

00:50:50.360 Women's Library at LSE. This podcast was produced by Sophie McNulty and Alex Watson at Pixoo

00:50:56.900 Productions. You can find more about our project at liberatinghistories.org or follow us on x

00:51:03.540 at libhistories or on Instagram at liberatinghistories. You can also find links to

00:51:09.160 magazine covers mentioned in our show notes as well as additional resources. Thank you for listening.

00:51:20.360 Thank you.

Liberating Histories - March 08, 2024

For Girls, By Girls

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