Is Women's Media Too Girly?
Over the past year and a half, media (websites, TV, books) created by women has often been accused of being too girly. When women's sites XOJane.com and Hello Giggles launched in May of 2011, journalist Tricia Romano wrote in the Daily Beast that both sites suggested that "women want to read about boys, cute animals, their periods, and they want to read it in a Valley Girl accent." Lena Dunham's hit HBO show "Girls" (April 2012) and Sheila Heti's acclaimed novel "How Should A Person Be?" (July 2012) provoked very similar criticism -- and subsequent defenses – in the blogosphere and a range of media outlets from Gawker and Mother Jones to the New Yorker to Buzzfeed. Do female journalists and writers undermine themselves (and other women) by publishing odes to frozen yogurt, writing about their breakups or creating a cable show about female friendship? Or does "girly" media surface and acknowledge women's experiences as important and worth hearing?
Presenters
Writer, editor (NY Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, Glamour, Sports Illustrated.) California native. Founder, Jezebel.com. Yoga enthusiast. Wannabe astronaut, wildlife veterinarian, backup singer. Failed grade-school spy.
Deborah Schoeneman was a Contributing Editor at New York magazine and a Staff Writer at the New York Observer. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Sunday Styles section, The Wall Street Journal and Glamour. In 2006, Random House published her first novel, "4% Famous." In 2008, she moved to Los Angeles to write for Hollywood. She wrote for Season 3 of the CW's remake of "90210" and on the first two seasons of HBO's "Girls." She recently wrote "Woman Child," an Amazon Kindle Single about the women acting, dressing and consuming pop culture like girls.
Margaret Wheeler Johnson is the editor of HuffPost Women.
She helped launch the Huffington Post’s Women’s section in June 2011 and has worked as its editor since, developing a site that brings experts, bloggers and ordinary women together to share their stories.
Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Slate and The Financial Times.
She grew up in New Orleans, holds degrees from Princeton and NYU, and has worked on the editorial staffs of Babble.com and Vogue.
Rebecca Parks Fernandez is a writer, editor, producer and organizer. She is currently the Executive Editor for The Conversation and the Editor-at-Large for HelloGiggles. She received a degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. She is a certified master gardener and an eternal optimist.
Sunday, March 10
