Zines are a broad term for small homemade non-commercial publications that are produced and spread with a DIY approach. They can be very personal to the person or collective that creates them and are often used by underground (punk) or marginalized communities to express feelings and share ideas.
In 1991, the punk feminist band Bikini Kill handed out a small photocopied booklet titled “Jigsaw” at their concert, which jumpstarted a culture of zines made by and for girls and women called Grrrl Zines. These were part of the Riot Grrrl movement, a subculture from the USA that combined feminist politics and punk music.
The 90’s were also the time of the third feminist wave, which questioned the universality of womanhood. With so many constraints on how a girl should be in society, zines offered a freedom to express the maker’s multidimensionality, while accepting its inconsistencies. By emphasizing the personal, Grrrl Zines not only helped to express individuality, but also created a sense of connection between the girls and women creating them. Grrrl Zines served as a space for girls to re-envision their worlds’. The low threshold of these zines also easily inspired others to start making their own.
Visual Impact
Grrrl Zines aesthetics are all about celebrating crafty, girly, glittery and accessible ways of making. From stickers to scrappy collages or scribbled handwritten texts, they embrace the subjective, the frivolous and the unprofessional while making punchy statements. One of the defining visual elements of zines is that the hand of the creator is visible in their imperfections. Due to the cheap reproducibility of photocopiers, Grrrl Zines are often printed only with black ink, but sometimes use coloured paper as a base. Zines are still being made and shared today, surviving through the digital times of blogs and social media. With their messy materiality, they manage to create a culture of intimate connections that resist the patriarchal norms of commercial media.
Note
As it was challenging to secure the rights to publish various examples of zines, we are presenting a small selection here. To explore more diverse examples, please follow the links below, which will take you to great online archives showcasing a wide range of zines.
Text by Louise Mazet
References
Buchanan, Rebekah J. 2018. Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics. Mediated Youth, Vol. 31. New York, NY Bern Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw: Peter Lang.
1Buchanan, 2018, p.13
Piepmeier, Alison. 2008. “Why Zines Matter: Materiality and the Creation of Embodied Community.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 18 (2): 213–38. https://doi.org/10.1353/amp.0.0004.
Piepmeier, Alison. 2009. Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. Ebook. New York: New York University Press.