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Andi Zeisler

Andi Zeisler

cofounder, editorial/creative director

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Who I am:

Andi is the co-founder of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. A longtime freelance writer and illustrator, Andi's work has appeared in numerous periodicals and newspapers, including Ms., Mother Jones, Utne, BUST, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Women's Review of Books, and Hues. She is a former pop-music columnist for the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, and also contributed to the anthologies Young Wives' Tales, Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships (both from Seal Press), and Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit (Crown). She is the coeditor of BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, and recently finished a book about feminism and popular culture for Seal Press. She speaks frequently on the subject of feminism and the media at various colleges and universities.

Andi graduated from The Colorado College in 1994 with a B.A. in Fine Art that has proved to be more or less useless, though she did use it to secure a job designing rugs for Pottery Barn back in the day. She passes her non-Bitch hours watching television and embroidering portraits of dogs, often simultaneously. Her other interests include painting, walking, candy, Scrabble, and the interrobang.

Fatal weakness: candy, naps

Crushes: Gram Parsons, Steve Buscemi, Hugh Laurie

Turn-ons: clogs, flocked wallpaper, the Winter Olympics

Turnoffs: lip liner, improper punctuation

Secretly wishes she were a: zoo keeper

What I'm reading:

Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott; Bonk, by Mary Roach; The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex, by Pagan Kennedy, many back issues of the New Yorker

What I'm listening to:

The Band, T Rex, Elton John's Madman Across the Water

What I'm watching:

Favorite TV shows: Freaks and Geeks, House, Dexter, dog shows

What blogs I like:
Let me think about it.

Recent Articles

Shelf Lives

Paging Through Feminism’s Lost & Found Classics
Shelf Lives
Article by Jyoti Roy, Andi Zeisler, Rachel Fudge, Jennifer Baumgardner, Noah Berlatsky, Evelyn Sharenov, appeared in issue Lost & Found; filed under: Books; tagged: early black feminists, feminist fiction, feminist history, marriage, sci-fi, Valerie Solanas.

In the 1976 cross-country race film The Gumball Rally, the late, great Raul Julia rips off his rearview mirror and tosses it over his shoulder, saying “What’s behind me is not important.” 


He didn’t win the race. 


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Hog Heaven

Ariel Levy on Female Chauvinist Pigs and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Hog Heaven
An interview with Ariel Levy by Andi Zeisler, appeared in issue Fun & Games; filed under: Books; tagged: Ariel Levy, beauty standards, body image, chauvinism, gender roles, objectification, porn, post feminism, sex, sex industry, sex objects, sexuality, stereotypes.

You’ll recognize the female silhouette that leans against the title on the cover of Ariel Levy’s new book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. She’s the girl who in recent years has made the move from the mud flaps of big rigs right into pop culture, gracing trucker caps, baby tees, and gold necklaces as an emblem of sexy, empowered ­womanhood. Or at least that’s what she’d like you to believe. But Levy doesn’t buy it, and Female Chauvinist Pigs offers her opinions on why this new symbol of postfeminism—the girl gone wild, the party-like-a-porn-star striver, the woman who populates HBO’s “educational” reality shows like Cathouse and Pornucopia—isn’t nearly as groundbreaking as she thinks she is.

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Tea Time

Valencia's Michelle Tea Likes it Caffeinated
An interview with Michelle Tea by Andi Zeisler, filed under: Books; tagged: authors, dykes, Michelle Tea, queer, San Francisco, sex industry, Sister Spit, spoken word.

Michelle Tea loves words, and it shows. As one of the founders of San Francisco's brilliantly loopy poetry slam-cum-cabaret Sister Spit, the 28-year-old Tea's flair for whipping tales of life and love into hilarious dramalogues have made her a local favorite on the spoken-word scene, and her gleeful energy and tongue-twisty stylings come through just as loud on paper.

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Editors' Letter: Issue 11

Article by Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler, appeared in issue Issue #11; tagged: discomfort.

“So, what do you think we should write the ed note about this time?”


“Oh, I don’t know. Marketing? There’s a lot of marketing in this issue. Or we could print another butt-on-the-head photo.”


“Yes, from our vast archive of them. But I was thinkin’ maybe discomfort would be a good topic.”


“Discomfort? Explain.”


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Drawn from Memory

an interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, artist, storyteller, freaky mama
An interview with Phoebe Gloeckner by Andi Zeisler, Lisa Jervis, appeared in issue Fighting Back; filed under: Art; tagged: autobiography, child abuse, childhood, comics, female artists, sexualization.

“I never intended this book to be published,” writes Phoebe Gloeckner in the introduction to her new collection, A Child’s Life and Other Stories. Perusing these finely drawn, mostly autobiographical comic works, which span twenty years, it’s not difficult to see why its creator might be wary of foisting her stories on a public whose idea of an enjoyable narrative is Titanic. Gloeckner’s unsparing memory and painstakingly detailed pen-and-ink drawings of family dysfunction, childhood cruelty, and queasy sex make for seriously disquieting reading. The book takes us through the years with Gloeckner’s alter ego Minnie, whose childhood is dominated by her overbearing, ogling stepfather and whose adolescence is spent on the streets of San Francisco in a morass of unsavory drugs and even less savory men.

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Recent Blog Posts

Palin fatigue

Love / Shove blog post by Andi Zeisler, September 11, 2008 - 4:52pm; tagged: 2008 campaign, femininnyism.

Y'all, I'm officially Sarah Palined out. My Google alerts have been seriously off the chain for the past two weeks, but it's getting to the point where I just can't face them every day. Yes, San Francisco Chronicle, I am aware that "Palin Candidacy Stokes Debate Among Women." No , Bonnie Chernin Rogoff, it's not Palin's "sudden popularity" that has feminists in a "snit." Yes, various religion- and motherhood-focused bloggers, we're all cognizant of the fact that both Christian women and mothers can be feminists. And listen, Us Weekly and similar publications, I never thought I would say this, but could you do me a favor and stick to coverage of the fashion foibles of Tori Spelling and the cast of Gossip Girl and not get all involved in comparing Palin's looks to those of Tina Fey and Megan Mullally? Because it's going to really ruin the new season of 30 Rock for me.

But I do want to point out that Katha Pollitt, is her inimitable fashion, has distilled all the Palin madness and hypocrisy wonderfully in her latest column for The Nation. Even if you're sick of the Palin-palooza, it's well worth your time.

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New call for submissions and theme list posted!

Dogged Pessimism blog post by Andi Zeisler, September 8, 2008 - 11:22am; tagged: bitch magazine, in the office.

Some of you have been asking when we're going to post the list of themes for upcoming issues — we know the call for Noir submissions was starting to get a little sad-looking there, all by its lonesome. Well, ask no more: The new themes are now posted in the Contributor's Guidelines section — so come on and make with those submissions! We'll be waiting...

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Ugh, here we go: On McCain's VP pick

Love / Shove blog post by Andi Zeisler, August 29, 2008 - 10:43am; tagged: 2008 campaign, politics.

So by now we all know the basics about Sarah Palin, first-term governor of Alaska and John McCain's utterly transparent pick for running mate: She's a self-described "hockey mom," an avid proponent of drilling in Alaska and an equally avid opponent of abortion and gay-marriage rights. (She's also so unknown as a politician that Fox News has repeatedly been referring to her as "Susan" Palin—though admittedly, getting facts right has never been the forte of that particular outlet, has it?)

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Douchebag lawyer and his douchebag lawsuit: “Feminism violates men's rights!”

Love / Shove blog post by Andi Zeisler, August 18, 2008 - 4:13pm; tagged: feminism, zero-sum shenanigans.

So New York lawyer Roy Den Hollander once married a young woman he met while working as a private investigator in Russia. Once Den Hollander moved himself and his foreign bride back to New York City, though, she took a job as a stripper and proceeded to dump him within months.

It's a sad little story, and probably not nearly the first of its kind. But to say Den Hollander seems to have had a wee bit of trouble letting it go would be a massive understatement. Since his marriage ended, the spurned groom has turned into a men's-rights crusader so convinced that feminism is the reason for all his personal woes that he's literally made a career out of litigating against it.

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Podcast Debate Club: Can Britney do justice to Varla?

Love / Shove blog post by Andi Zeisler, August 12, 2008 - 1:19pm; tagged: celebrities, movies, podcast.

Say what you will about the shock-schlock, soft-core oeuvre of filmmaker Russ Meyer, the man was definitely ahead of his time when it came to showcasing the hips-lips-tits-power! aesthetic that would eventually become inextricably linked to third-wave feminism. His best-known work, 1966's sinsister thrillride Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, has come to be regarded over the years as something of a prefeminist classic, but even those who cock a skeptical eyebrow at the equation of big-breasted go-go dancers + homicidal karate chops = empowerment can probably appreciate the film's gonzo exuberance, as well as its arresting black-and-white cinematography.

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