The Vagenda
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Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
| Editor | Holly Baxter Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett |
|---|---|
| Categories | Online feminist magazine |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Final issue | Summer 2015 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Based in | London |
| Language | English |
| Website | Vagendamag |
The Vagenda was a feminist online magazine launched in January 2012. It used the tagline "Like King Lear, but for girls," taken from Grazia magazine's summary of the film The Iron Lady, a biography of Margaret Thatcher. The Vagenda was run by British journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was founded by ten London-based women journalists in their twenties and was then written by a large group of anonymous contributors from all over the world, both women and men. The editors stated: "the women's press is a large hadron collider of bullshit, and something needed to be done". Cosslett described her creation as "a media watchdog with a feminist angle".[1][2][3][4] In its last issue, July 2015, it announced a 'summer hiatus' in publication.
In the first few hours of its launch it had 10,000 hits; in the first 16 days 150,000, accruing 250,000 hits in its first month and approximately eight million in their first year.[4][5][6] Contributing journalists also wrote other publications such as The Guardian and the New Statesman.[7][8][9] The Vagenda editors say that they were heavily influenced by The Times columnist Caitlin Moran and her best-selling memoir How to Be a Woman. Contributing journalist Natalie Cox commented that she hoped it would become an "online feminist Private Eye".[4] The New Statesman described the magazine: "humorous and topical with a searing, critical streak, The Vagenda exposes the mainstream female press for its insidious elements - and its frequent ridiculousness."[2] The Times newspaper featured the magazine in an extended spread in March 2012 and Cosslett featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, discussing the launch.[5][10]
Vagenda editors commented:
A vagenda is a woman with an agenda, or specifically a vagina with an agenda. Today’s media is full of them. Unfortunately, more often than not, these vagendas are not your friend - particularly in the context of women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which, quite frankly, have come to constitute one of the most underhanded instances of woman-on-woman crime. Fact is: Vogue has a vagenda, Cosmo has a vagenda, and even American teen mag Seventeen has a vagenda - and the vibe in there is not friendly... The fact is that women's magazines nowadays constitute a minefield of body fascism. When you flick through one ("read" is probably too strong a word for the image-and-Tweetspeak-heavy content on offer), you're always dodging another insecurity explosion. Whether it's Rihanna's 25-minute underwear workout (yes, it’s a real thing) or snake venom infused lip-gloss, the underlying message throughout is that you are your body, and your body isn't good enough.[11]