Yesterday, I got a new issue of Bitch. It was full of the usual goodness- musings on the social implications of SFW and NSFW, an interview with the voice actor for Peggy Hill noting that she had posed in a PETA ad, and an article talking about how lesbian kisses on the air may be both good and bad for lesbians.

On that note, I've never really seen too much of an emphasis on lesbians in Bitch. Yea, there's lesbians, it's a women's magazine, and not one whose primary objective is to sell you anti aging cream, you know? I guess that if there were a lot of lesbian coverage in Bitch I missed it since lesbianism really doesn't stand out for me. Some chick likes another chick? Well, that's not enough for me to forgo a good magazine, as some letter writers have suggested.

Bitch also admirably has some multicultural coverage across the issues, by which I mean coverage on black women in sci fi, interviews with one of the creators of Girlfriends, an interview with Peggy Hill's voice actor, an interview with Margret Cho, and in this issue, a long essay on why hip hop is considered political nowadays, and r&b, India.Aire nonewithstanding is not considered political.

It's good to see all different sorts of voices in a magazine- treating only one group as the one true whatever, and then seeing all other groups as invisible or not important enough to waste time on is pretty annoying. (Yes, there are even male voices in Bitch- the aforementioned SFW/NSFW article was created by a man). I'm not saying a magazine can't have focus, but so many magazines don't seem to think about their focus and mostly just end up putting out the advertiser's story.


On a slightly related note, I think I should check out Fierce more often- the first issue was pretty thin, but I hear it's gotten better.