By Rosa Sottile,
So, Frankie.
I would say I am disappointed, but I’m not. Unfortunately I’ve come to expect this sort of thing.
You, like most media that touts itself as “alternative”, “different” or “independent” from mainstream pop culture is so often just the same stuff wrapped up in hand dyed fabric in front of a soft-focus photograph of a field.
I bought your most recent issue for some plane reading, but I couldn’t even stomach reading most of your articles (apart from Benjamin Law’s) due to the bubbling volcano of impotent rage I felt every time I turned a page.
It’s not just the fact that the only pictures of people (out of 130+ pages) that weren’t straight, thin and white were in one photo of a band, a sexist ad, an article by a fashion designer who said that “traditional feminine clothing” needed to be revived, and some photos of people in Aleppo, Syria, pre-war, photographed by and described by a photographer from London.
(This article, about a woman who took a holiday to Syria, took up 3 pages without a word from anyone actually from there or anything why would you need that guys I mean really this white lady has all the answers.)
So there’s that. Let’s call it what it is guys, straight up racism via total erasure.
The second big, huge, weird oppressive thing this magazine, and so many other parts of this “indie” culture bullshit does: patriarchal gender norms are cool!!!!
Yep, articles about (straight white ladies and dudes) crafting, cooking, about making appropriately “feminine” clothing, home decoration, running clothing and cake shops, fashion and being married (SO MANY ABOUT MARRIAGE OH LORD) and buying accessories to these activities are literally the ENTIRE MAGAZINE.
That and ads.
I have nothing against cooking, crafting, preserving – whatever, you want to do that, that’s fine.
But when an entire magazine, marketed at young women, as an “alternative” culture magazine contains only articles celebrating straight white women doing domestic tasks, you can consider my eyebrows well and truly raised.
Rosa is the National Education Officer for NUS. She’s currently working on the NUS Quality Survey, which she’d sure like you to fill out here. You can follow Rosa on twitter with @nus_education. Rosa is actually an excellent cook and quite likes to bake – but not because Frankie tells her to.
NUS Women's Department 