WEEK 3 – ANALYSIS – TASK 2 – SPARE RIB MAGAZINE
SPARE RIB MAGAZINE
I discovered Spare Rib Magazine when looking closer in Linder’s work, and she cited this as one of her inspirations for her feminist-based work and it looked like a key piece of research to include within my exploration of different themes in this project. Surprisingly, I had not heard about this magazine before even though it had been a key indicator within the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 20th century considering I am familiar with the works of the Guerrilla Girls and other pioneers within 20th century feminism. I have gained all my research for this on the British Library’s website which has a good section covering all areas related to the Spare Rib magazine which is obviously a reputable source. Spare Rib’s beginning was in the 60s-70s around the time where the punk movement was at its peak, underground print culture was building along with women’s liberation. The combination of these led to Spare Rib magazine, questioning the inequality of women, the unnecessary oversexualization of their bodies from men as well as the fact that the media industry was particularly male dominated, and this called for a change in their eyes. The contrast between Spare Rib and other magazines who were also catered to women of the same age where that the other magazines were more focused on health, beauty, makeup, and fashion which was arguably more shallow while Spare Rib focused more on critical issues facing women’s rights, women of diverse backgrounds for a more educational purpose as well as being a lifestyle magazine. I think a magazine which has something slightly more educational to it is essential for modern print media as people are always looking to learn something new otherwise they could go on the shelves and pick up any other magazine which does not add much value to their lives.
“What is a liberated woman?” Was the question surrounding the first issue of Spare Rib magazine and was answered through letters within the first few pages. I found that this was such an interesting question to ask even now, but especially within the 70s as people would have such an extensive range of extraordinarily strong opinions to share. I feel like I need to ask myself more questions like this in order to stimulate a creative response through the form of collage in order to answer more questions within my artwork as well as solving issues or pushing myself to research into different themes. As a woman feminism is particularly important to me especially crediting the key pioneers, artwork, and movements up until now as well as understanding and appreciating the origins of the movement that allow women to speak up and have more of a voice than they have before.
Another thing I appreciate about the magazine was that the people involved understood areas for improvement, listened to their audience, which is key as they are the ones who are reading this and will be affected by it, and criticized aspects of the magazines that needed work. This led to improvements taking place to align more with them. Things such as allowing everyday women to share their stories more rather than only having widely known authors creating articles as well as featuring people from more diverse backgrounds. As one of the things I noticed was that a lot of the women on the front page were mainly of a white racial background, however, as the years progressed there were woman from other races featured which is important within feminism; to be intersectional and multicultural. However, I know I must look at this magazine in context of it coming out in the 70s, while feminism within the print media industry has progressed massively since then, but this magazine which such an important piece of media within this movement.
