Contemporary Authors

• How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some! ( presented by Reductress) HarperOne (San Francisco, CA), 2016

1. How to win at feminism : the definitive guide to having it all--and then some! LCCN 2016006052 Type of material Book Personal name Newell, Elizabeth, author. Main title How to win at feminism : the definitive guide to having it all--and then some! / by Elizabeth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo ; presented by Reductress. Edition First Edition. Published/Produced San Francisco : HarperOne, 2016. Projected pub date 1610 Description pages cm ISBN 9780062439802 (paperback) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available.

• LOC Authorities -

  LC control no.: n 2016057115

  Descriptive conventions:
  rda

  Personal name heading:
  Pappalardo, Sarah

  Found in: How to win at feminism, 2016: eCIP t.p. (Sarah Pappalardo)

  ================================================================================

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
  Library of Congress
  101 Independence Ave., SE
  Washington, DC 20540

  Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov

• Amazon -

  Sarah Pappalardo is the editor and co-founder of Reductress, the first and only satirical women's magazine, and a writer, performer and playwright living in Brooklyn. Born in Boston and raised in the wilds of New Hampshire, she has written and performed at IO Chicago, The Second City, and the Magnet Theater, and The Upright Citizens Brigade. She was previously an artistic associate for the Chicago-based Bare Boned Theatre, and her plays have since been performed in front of tiny audiences throughout Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia.

• Cosmopolitan - http://www.cosmopolitan.com/career/a4962907/get-that-life-reductress-sarah-pappalardo/

  Get That Life: How I Co-Founded the Satire Site Reductress

  Sarah Pappalardo, a writer and comedian, wants to dispel the notion that starting a website is glamorous.
  Sarah Pappalardo
  By Prachi Gupta
  Oct 17, 2016

  Sarah Pappalardo, 31, is the co-founder of Reductress.com, a satirical women’s online magazine that now boasts about half a million monthly unique visitors nationally. Though Reductress has become one of the most popular humor sites on the internet — particularly among women — it’s still a tiny operation run by a handful of dedicated staff members and stable of contributors. Pappalardo, a writer and comedian, wants to dispel the notion that starting a website is glamorous. But Reductress is evidence, she says, that if you stick with a good idea and refuse to give up on it, good things will start to happen.

  Around 13 or 14, I spent two summers being alone and awkward and watching a ton of TV. I think it was right around the time that The Daily Show started, and Upright Citizens Brigade and Strangers With Candy. I guess you could say I became a comedy nerd from that point on. When I was 16, as soon as I got my license, I started taking improv classes down in Boston [about an hour’s drive from where I lived in New Hampshire]. I was the editor of the opinion section in my [high] school newspaper and started using that as an outlet.
  More From Get That Life
  How I Became a Producer on "Planet Earth II"
  How I Became a Professional Stuntwoman
  How I Started Activewear Company Carbon 38

  I went to DePaul University and took [comedy] classes in all the three big theaters [in Chicago]. I was spending most of my nights just performing intensely — between rehearsals and performances, 20 hours a week. It was like a third major. It was the thing my heart was in, while college was just kind of for fun.

  By the time I was a senior in college, I was burning out performance-wise. At that point, I was doing a children’s show, an improvised hip-hop show, an indie team, and none of it was fun.

  It’s funny, when you just put so much importance on something, especially when you’re really young, you can just completely psych yourself out and not have fun with it. And maybe that works if you’re literally trying to work for NASA, but if you’re not having fun doing comedy, you’re doing it wrong.
  Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

  I finished up grad school [for literature at DePaul University] in a year and moved to New York. I landed in New York right after the market crashed in 2008 and somehow I got a full-time job that actually paid, doing web copywriting for some horrendous number I didn’t even know could be a salary in New York. I took it immediately and was like, “I can make it work.”
  More From Get That Life
  How I Became the Co-Creator of "Westworld"
  How I Became a Political Journalist in the Midwest
  How I Became a Circus Ringmaster

  I worked a day job and wrote at night. I ended up having a side hustle of blogging for random blogs and doing random consulting and writing work. At that time, I definitely wasn’t thinking anything about, Oh, I care about my career. I was like, I need to know how to pay the rent, and if the economy gets any worse, I need to stuff money under my mattress. I lived very boringly for a couple of years and built up savings.

  I was doing improv for fun at the Magnet Theatre and someone was like, "Hey, we’re starting a sketch program here." I started out taking classes there, around 24 or 25, and then started performing a little bit. By the time I was 26, I was just doing exclusively sketch stuff. I met [Reductress co-founder] Beth [Newell] doing sketch.
  Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

  Beth and I had just finished writing an election show, so it must’ve been 2012. She emailed me one night, kind of out the blue, and she was like, “I have this idea. I don’t know if anyone’s done it before. It’s kind of dumb,” and apologized profusely for this fantastic idea [for Reductress] — as we do as women.
  More From Get That Life
  How I Became a Wedding Dress Designer
  How Maneet Chauhan Became a Judge on Chopped
  Get That Life: How I Became a Political Pundit

  I started looking around the internet, like, “Yeah, someone must’ve made a fake women’s magazine before.” And it turns out nobody really had, at least in any committed way.

  We started out really focusing on the fear- and insecurity-based marketing toward women and the way that women’s media talked down to women in order to make them buy things. And then also create a space where we could do more women-focused news satire, whereas The Onion was doing a lot of "area man" stuff and wasn’t coming from a woman’s perspective. Then these first-person essays started becoming all the rage and these listicles about being a twentysomething — all this click-bait started happening — and we kind of incorporated that into the Reductress repertoire and had a lot of fun with that.

  We got a small group of women together, and wrote about 50 or 60 articles to have ready for launch. I painstakingly developed the first site myself and I’m not a coder, so it was sheer torture on my part. But in four months, we got a site up. We got a little bit of press three days after launch on April 29, 2013, and that kind of set the ball rolling in a small way.

  For the first year, we never really thought, Oh, this is going to be a business. We thought, Oh, this, at best, will be a cool blog that we can have fun with and have something fun to do with other women we know that don’t really have a place to do this kind of comedy. We were only posting weekly. We actually just had fake ads on the site for the first year.

  I quit my job at the agency I was working at in June 2013 and that was a big move. I had wanted to quit my day job for a long time and this was just the legitimate excuse to take the leap. Eventually, a friend of a friend was like, “You should do a Kickstarter and take this more seriously.” So about nine months in, we did a Kickstarter to raise a little money to redesign the site.

  Most of that first two years, I would freelance when I could. I was living with a roommate. I had no experience in how ads work or how websites even make money.

  We started out just me and [Beth], and then contributors — usually 30 people at a time who are pitching, not necessarily actively writing. We hired our first part-time employee a year and a half in, Anna Drezen, who has been the most amazing person to our company that we ever brought on. She just got hired by SNL. I can’t imagine a better home for her.
  Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

  That first year, we didn’t have an office. It wasn’t a business in any way. Beth and I were meeting once a week with an intern and choosing assignments, editing pieces. We were posting about eight pieces a week. We were just trying to hone in on what the voice of the site really was. We relaunched it exactly a year after our initial launch.
  More From Get That Life
  10 Best Gifts For College Graduates
  How I Created the Tuna Melts My Heart Instagram
  Get That Life: How We Opened House of Yes

  In 2015, we started getting attention from larger businesses that wanted to work with us on creative projects. Other organizations started to want to co-produce shows, so we started to do events. In January, we started writing a book proposal. We got a book deal by April. We were kind of fawning over this idea that women’s media had just discovered feminism in late 2014. So we wanted to write kind of a terrible how-to manual on how to be a feminist. Our book is called How to Win at Feminism and it has a series of how-tos and features, graphics, and things like that that are all on how to be the best feminist you can possibly be, but from the point of view of the women’s magazine. It may not be the best advice to take seriously.

  We’re two full-time people and three part-time staff, [all female]. We have plenty of male contributors outside the office. But within our office, we have diversity across race, life background, sexual identity, and that’s what we try to support. Experience being inundated with women’s media is kind of crucial to the job. The premise of Reductress is to not get the man’s side of things, because we’ve been getting the man’s side of things our entire lives. You wouldn’t believe how many pitches we get from men that are like, "So, how about a column from the man’s point of view?"
  Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

  We talked about doing [themed] homepage takeovers for various reasons for a couple of years. I think it was over a weekend [in August 2016] that we all found out about [a comedian being accused of] having raped at least one woman, and then a lot of people realized that he had [allegedly] done some horrible things to other women too. Everyone just came in on Monday feeling like shit. Nobody could work, nobody could get past it.
  More From Get That Life
  Get That Life: How We Created House Hunters
  How I Became the Editor-in-Chief of Eater
  Get That Life: How I Helped Create BarkBox

  People were just saying terrible things, questioning the validity of this person’s accusation, questioning the words of several women. We were all just kind of like, this feels like the most genuine time to do [a homepage takeover]. I think probably the only time we got this many pitches on one topic was when the Brock Turner thing came out. There were literally so many pitches that we couldn’t choose just one.

  We really wanted to talk about rape from a variety of different angles and not just make one overarching statement. I think we decided that around 2 p.m., had a couple of our outside contributors involved, but everyone in-house was here writing. We had everything mostly ready to go by the end of the day and finished up a few things in the morning. And weirdly enough, it kind of started to go viral before any of us had posted anything about it on social media by morning.

  I wouldn’t say that any of the pieces made me laugh out loud in a way that a typical Reductress piece would, but I think we really did a good job at finding the finer, more nuanced absurdities about rape culture, about how men react to when women openly discuss what happened to them. There hasn’t been enough comedy about [that] because, again, it’s hard. And there’s no guarantee that you’re going to do it right. We just do the best we can, and we hope that it doesn’t, you know, trigger someone and that it sends the right message that we intend to.
  Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
  More From Get That Life
  Get That Life: How I Became a BuzzFeed Video Star
  How Hannah Hart Became a YouTube Star
  How I Started My Own Home Goods Business

  The response was overwhelmingly positive. I was expecting a lot more trolls to have something to say about it, but I can’t even remember a negative response to it. A lot of women came out and just said thank you.

  If anyone thinks it’s a glamorous lifestyle, I assure them, it’s not. It all sounds, like, awesome now, but there were just so many months where traffic was never what we wanted it to be, revenue was never what we wanted it to be. We’re still not taking a salary in a traditional sense. It’s still a bit of a hand-to-mouth situation in terms of paying our own expenses, but Beth and I make money through things like a book advance, speaking fees, and workshops. Being a small, independent publisher, we’re certainly not rolling in any dough based on ad revenue right now.

  But it has opened up a lot of doors that we didn’t have open before we had launched Reductress. A major theater company that I used to work with reached out and wants to co-produce a show. Our book is coming out in October. And we have launched a podcast and are pitching lots of things to lots of people.

  It’s definitely not a straight path like they say, but I would really encourage everyone, if they think they have a clear idea that they think is good and truly unique, to keep plugging away at it. Even if you fail, you will learn so, so much that will lead to the next good idea. And the only way you’re going to move forward is to move forward, so just keep doing it.

  Get That Life is a weekly series that reveals how successful, talented, creative women got to where they are now. Check back each Monday for the latest interview.

  Follow Prachi on Twitter.

• New York - http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/talking-to-beth-newell-and-sarah-pappalardo-of-reductress.html

  The Women Making the Realest Fake News
  By Gabriella Paiella
  Share
  Tweet
  Share
  Pin It
  Email
  Comment
  Print
  Image
  R: Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo Photo: Courtesy of Reductress; Peter McNerney

  One night in October, about an hour before the third presidential debate was set to begin, a mostly female audience filed into the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater in Chelsea for Reductress’s monthly variety show, “Haha, Wow!” The lineup included comedian Marcia Belsky and musical duo Friends Who Folk, the latter of whom performed a weirdly dark and infectious song about the classic 1998 Julia Roberts film Stepmom. Then Reductress staff writer Jasmine Pierce was up. Pierce, who has a warm and convivial stage presence, opted to read her previously pitched headlines that didn’t make the cut; after each delivery — “Woman Proud of Gross Body,” “Man Complaining About Blue Balls Leaves Woman Without Orgasm Every Single Time” — the audience immediately burst out laughing in recognition.

  Headlines are the main draw for Reductress, which bills itself as “the one and only fake women’s news magazine.” The site, which was founded in 2013 by Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo, has expanded to include a podcast, “Mouth Time,” along with the “Haha, Wow!” variety show. On October 25, they released their first book, a self-help spoof titled How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All — And Then Some!

  But back to the headlines for a moment, because it would be a disservice not to share some of my favorites. They range from the faux-servicey — “Trendy Crop Tops for Harvesting Dick“; “I Gave Myself the Prettiest Braid Ever, So Now It Is Time to Die” — to the ever-so-slightly deranged — “Amazing Hot Air Balloon Trips to Corner Him About Those Texts in His Phone” — to the uncomfortably relatable — “Sexy Ways to Low-Key Black Out and Sabotage Something Good” — and they are all deeply, deeply funny.

  Newell and Pappalardo met in 2012 while they were both working on a political-themed sketch show at the Magnet theater. Newell started doing improv at New York’s UCB in 2005 then went into sketch shortly after; Pappalardo got her start at Chicago’s famed Second City in the early aughts and was the musical director there before moving to New York in 2008 and taking a day job as a copywriter then, later, a digital producer. “I came up with the idea for Reductress then emailed Sarah late at night one night like, ‘hey wanna do this weird idea?’” Newell tells me over lunch.

  The two rallied friends to contribute in January 2013 and spent months building a custom site and writing 50-60 articles that would be ready when they officially launched in April. “When we started, it was much more a parody directly of women’s media and women’s magazines,” Newell says. “It’s become a lot broader now, just parodying our own experiences as women.”

  The team has expanded as well. Writer and comedian Anna Drezen was their first hire back in 2014, and she both served as an editor and wrote How to Win at Feminism with the founders. In September, it was announced that Drezen was hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live; although she’s no longer on staff at Reductress, Drezen speaks fondly and with admiration for Newell and Pappalardo and their vision. “You feel like you just have to ingest the garbage tone that the media takes with us and roll your eyes quietly, but this is a way to get through that,” she tells me over the phone. “It was a new way of processing that information that was cathartic and funny. ”

  Nicole Silverberg is now the site’s third editor (they also employ two staff writers and an intern). The operation is still small and scrappy — their shared office at a coworking space in the Flatiron District is roughly the size of my cubicle — making the amount of incisive, hilarious content they churn out ever the more impressive. Their workweeks start with catching up on emails and assigning pitches that came in over the weekend — writers are required to submit ten potential headlines at a time, so they’re typically sorting through several hundred freelancer pitches. “Our goal immediately upon founding the site was to pay writers,” Newell says. Though that wasn’t the case for a while, Pappalardo confirms they are now compensating regular contributors.

  In August 2016, standup comedian and Inside Amy Schumer writer Kurt Metzger ignited a social media firestorm when he published several Facebook posts commenting on UCB’s decision to ban an alleged rapist and mocking the man’s accusers. “If we ask them to even merely also post a vague account of what happened before asking us to believe that would [be] like re-raping their rape! These women are as BRAVE as they are sore!” he wrote. His words quickly spread beyond the comedy community and sparked a mass call for Amy Schumer to address his behavior.

  “When all that stuff was coming out, everyone just felt so shitty in the office,” Pappalardo recalls. “We were really bummed out and not really productive. When we asked people if they had pitches on rape culture at large, we got hundreds of pitches in minutes.”

  They worked furiously over the course of an afternoon to fill their entire homepage with articles like “This Rapist Has Figured Out a Way to End Rape Culture,” “Man Who Sexually Assaulted You Likes Your Facebook Post About Assault,” and “How to Be an Ally to Both a Rapist and His Victim.” Their work received a swell of attention, with outlets like the Washington Post, Jezebel, Mashable, and the Daily Dot all praising them for their work.

  “What was really upsetting to us in the office, maybe more than the rape itself, was just the way rape is usually handled, especially the way rape was discussed in the community among the men,” Newell adds. When I ask about her own experiences facing sexism in the comedy world, she talks about being challenged repeatedly when she ran the sketch program at Magnet. “There was a certain kind of guy that had a very hard problem with females in authority positions. Any little decision I made good or bad, I got called out on it ten times more than a guy would.”

  Pappalardo points to the unequal gender breakdown back when she first started in the industry, something she says has changed for the better over time. But back then, she says, you could pitch something to a sketch team or a writers room — “something that maybe women might appreciate” – only to have the guys shrug and say they didn’t get it. “It’s not like they’re trying to be assholes about it,” she says. “Their lived experience doesn’t match yours.”

  The reversal of that dynamic is one part of what makes Reductress so appealing. And with the surreal buffet of content offered up by online women’s media — from relentlessly positive celebrity coverage to harrowing personal confessions to good old fashioned fear-mongering — Reductress has an endless supply of fodder for satire.

  They’ve also deftly skewered pop feminism and the confused rhetoric that results when complex topics become clickbait — “Why I Feel So Passionately That Sex Work and Porn Is Problematic But Empowering But Good For Them But Bad For Them” is one of their posts that I return to again and again. How to Win at Feminism, in particular, is a beautiful mockery of pop feminism, featuring chapters like “How to Love Your Body Even Though Hers Is Better” and “How to Apologize for Having It All,” with mentions of Beyoncé scattered throughout. “I feel like women’s media all discovered feminism in the same day and they all kind of just got this Spice Girls version of feminism and missed some important details or even the history and the how we got here part,” Pappalardo says. “So that was kind of the inspiration for the book: What would a well-intentioned but ill-informed women’s magazine write about feminism?”

  “Before we were even having the conversation about feminism one thing that was really driving us crazy was the faux-empowerment media that was really just trying to sell people soap or whatever,” Newell adds.

  Because to be a woman on the internet — or watching TV, or thumbing through a magazine, or just existing in the world — is to be bombarded with media and messaging that infantilizes and condescends. Reductress provides us with the most enjoyable way to deal with that: by laughing.

• Reductress - https://reductress.com/about/

  Beth Newell
  Editor, Founder
  Sarah Pappalardo
  Editor, Founder
  Anna Drezen
  Editor-At-Large

• Lesbians Who Tech Web site - http://lesbianswhotech.org/speakers/sarah-pappalardo/

  Sarah Pappalardo
  Co-Founder
  Reductress

  Sarah is a digital strategist and co-founder of Reductress, the one and only satirical women’s magazine. With over 10 years experience in comedy writing, UX design and digital strategy, Sarah worked as an interactive producer and consultant before launching Reductress with partner Beth Newell. Reductress has been featured in Newsweek, Bust, Slate, Refinery29, and Forbes’ Top 100 Websites for Women. Sarah is also a playwright and performer who is active in the queer and comedy communities in New York.

• Ms. - http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/12/15/how-to-win-at-feminism/

  Q&A: Sarah Pappalardo and Beth Newell on Winning at Feminism
  December 15, 2016 by Melissa Scholke | Leave a Comment
  +1
  Tweet
  Share
  Pin
  Share

  Written by the creators of Reductress, How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All—And Then Some! is a biting, satirical guide offering women advice on how to become full-fledged feminists ready to take on the patriarchy. The self-described “wo-manual” pokes fun at contemporary culture and advertising gimmicks by providing readers with information about the tools, strategies and products to embrace feminism and to perfect their feminist image.

  164710The all-encompassing guide offers lessons on how to incorporate feminism into every facet of life, avoid “being too ‘opiniony’,” and inspire friends by “femsplaining” feminism to them. Sections like “How to Apologize for Having It All,” “How to Take Up More Space, But Not Too Much Space” and “Work-Life Balance vs. Life-Work Balance: Which is Right for You?” providing excellent examples of the ridiculous, and often contradictory, standards women are expected to live up to.

  Sarah Pappalardo and Beth Newell started Reductress in 2013. As a satirical women’s magazine, Reductress provides a platform for female comedians to address and critique the ways in which women’s media outlets continue to reinforce stereotypes and to offer patronizing messages to their readers. How to Win at Feminism takes hold of this subversive and hilarious approach to both present and mock a stylish, commodified brand of feminism that isn’t too boring or too aggressive.

  Ms. recently had the opportunity to speak with Pappalardo and Newell about their book and about depictions of feminism in today’s media landscape.

  This interview was edited for clarity and length.

  Your work on Reductress satirizes the themes and tone often found in mainstream women’s media. What inspired you to change your format and to expand your work to a book about feminism?

  Pappalardo: We wanted to write a Reductress book for a long time, but once we observed how feminism was entering the mainstream media and consciousness, looking [at] the ways that it’s good and the ways that it’s problematic, we wanted to explore it in a lot more detail than we would on the site.

  How would you describe the way feminism is often addressed in contemporary media and culture?

  Newell: More and more people are becoming versed in feminist issues, which means there is more intelligent discussion out there, but with feminism gaining in popularity, there is also a lot of watered down clickbait representations of the same issues.

  Pappalardo: I think we’re seeing a lot of genuine attempts to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a feminist in 2016?” coming from the culture at large, as advertisers rabidly co-opt that culture in order to sell stuff back to us.

  How to Win at Feminism makes a point of humorously highlighting commercialism. Do you think there’s been a trend of commercializing feminism in recent years?

  Pappalardo: Definitely! And while it’s not all bad, this commercialized feminism tends to favor the parts of feminism that reinforce the same materialistic, consumerist culture that oppresses us in so many ways.

  Newell: Yes, advertisers love to champion people’s rights if they can do it while selling things to them.

  How do you think satire functions as a good tool to address sexism and inequality in our culture?

  Pappalardo: We aren’t expecting it to change the world, but we do hope to shed light on the subtle messages we often take for granted in our culture and make people more aware of how it shapes their view of the world.

  Newell: Yeah, and we hope that giving women a chance to laugh at these issues is cathartic and allows them to keep fighting the fight without feeling totally exhausted. Avoiding feminist burnout seems more important than ever after this election.

• Salon.com - http://www.salon.com/2016/10/24/yes-feminists-can-laugh-at-themselves-but-dont-be-lazy-with-your-rape-joke/

  Tuesday, Oct 25, 2016 01:00 AM +0200
  Yes, feminists can laugh at themselves: “But don’t be lazy with your rape joke”
  Salon talks to the authors of "How to Win at Feminism" about satire, trolls and commercialized female empowerment
  Arielle Bernstein Follow Skip to Comments

  Topics: authors, Beth Newell, Books, Comedy, Feminism, how to win at feminism, How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All—And Then Some!, Reductress, Sarah Pappalardo, Life News, Entertainment News
  Yes, feminists can laugh at themselves: "But don't be lazy with your rape joke"
  Cover detail of "How to Win at Feminism" (Credit: HarperOne)

  The satirical women’s magazine Reductress emerged online in 2013, and since then has been at the forefront of smart feminist comedy. Sharp, hilarious and easily sharable, Reductress garnered a huge audience of millennial women eager to pore through articles with titles like “Woman Announces Completion of her PhD Thesis with “So I Wrote a Thing…” and “How To Make Sure He Isn’t Just Into You for Your Nuanced Takes on Current Events”

  Salon had the opportunity to speak with Reductress founders Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo on their forthcoming book, “How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All — And Then Some!,” and the translation of their distinctive brand of online humor to a more traditional book format, as well as the serious, and seriously funny, matter of inspiring woman to embrace women’s rights, while pushing back against commodification.

  I thought I’d start by asking about where your idea to write a full-length book came from. Is this something you’ve always thought about doing? Or an idea that came up after you’d been writing for the site for a while?

  Beth Newell: We’d thought about doing a book for a while but the idea for a book about feminism specifically didn’t come until a year or two in.

  ‪Sarah Pappalardo: There was a point when mainstream women’s media “discovered” feminism and were interested in the way they were bringing it into the conversation sometimes in a good way, sometimes not as good.
  Video 14 Times Ciara Made Family Time Look Fun on Instagram

  ‪Newell: And we’ve always kind of been obsessed with media that’s meant to “empower” women by selling them things. And that’s kind of where pop culture went with feminism.

  It’s interesting because that mainstreaming of feminism is seen by some as a real mark of progress, but it sounds like you see it as a little more complicated than that.

  ‪Pappalardo: It definitely is progress! But with anything progressive that hits the mainstream, there is a lot that can get watered down along the way.

  Newell: We are happy feminism is going mainstream. We just don’t always love the way it’s done.

  ‪‪Pappalardo: And commodified. When it’s packaged in order to sell things or in such a reductive way that only serves women who are relatively privileged, it waters down the message and the aims of even the most fundamental idea of feminism. This is why we addressed “white feminism” in the book, the idea that there is a certain brand of feminism that only serves white women or women with a degree of economic privilege. What advertisers might call [cynically] a “lucrative target demographic.”

  It sounds like you’ve noticed a shift in how feminism has been commodified since the start of Reductress. Has this been a gradual trend? Or do you think there was a specific trigger that led to this idea that feminism, and especially white feminism, could be a way to sell things?

  ‪Newell: It’s hard to point to one thing. Maybe as we recycle everything from the ’90s, girl power got dusted off and rebranded for the youth. Social media has done a lot for letting different groups express themselves in a good way, so conversations like #yesallwomen have had a chance to catch on.

  ‪Pappalardo: And a few celebrities sort of warmed up to the term more in the past couple of years: We’re looking at you,Tay Tay.

  One of the things I love about Reductress is the way it satirizes sexism, as well as elements of the mainstream feminist movement.

  ‪Pappalardo: Yes! We have a lot of fun with that on the site.

  ‪Do you feel like it’s ever risky to point out places where feminism might not be successful or where the commodification is sending mixed messages?

  ‪Newell: If it’s done in the right way, I think most people get it. The hard thing with anything that’s meant for women is that any movement starts setting up new standards for us to live up to, in addition to all the other existing reasons we are made to feel inadequate. So when we make jokes about how impossible that is, I think people relate.

  I was thinking about Portlandia’s feminist bookstore skits in preparation for our conversation today. They always cracked me up, but it seems as though there were some real tensions about who was actually the butt of the jokes. What are your thoughts on this idea about “punching up” rather than “punching down” ‪and how can comedians satirize effectively?

  Newell: As feminists, we like to laugh at ourselves sometimes. It’s not that certain topics should be off-limits; it’s that when you talk about certain things, you better have a decent point to make and you better make that point clear.

  Pappalardo: Yeah, and it helps to have been part of the thing you are tackling. You have to love the thing in order to poke fun at it.

  ‪Newell: If you want to be lazy with your poop joke, fine, but don’t be lazy with your rape joke.

  Pappalardo: You can feel when there’s a lot of distance between the subject and their target. It feels hurtful. With some comedy, you have to think of it like an homage to the thing.

  ‪Newell: And you have to know your audience.

  ‪Were there any sections of “How to Win at Feminism” where you felt you had to do outside research or go outside your wheelhouse in order to effectively joke about it?

  Pappalardo: We didn’t have to do a ton of research, mostly just a bit of fact-checking on a few things that we haven’t read since college. These were topics we were very familiar with, right down to the breast pumps.

  ‪You brought up ’90s “girl power” at the start of our conversation. Do you feel like feminism has changed from that era? Or that a lot of today’s discussion feels like a throwback? I know for a lot of my students, they feel that feminism literally began with Beyoncé.

  SPONSORED STORIES

  TOP 5 Fliegende Autos TOP 5 Fliegende Autos dasistlustig.de
  The Most Multilingual People Throughout History The Most Multilingual People Throughout History Babbel
  Starting Quarterbacks Power Rankings From 1 to 32 Starting Quarterbacks Power Rankings From 1 to 32 PointAfter

  Recommended by

  Pappalardo: That iconic moment, where she had the “FEMINIST” sign behind her, was a huge turning point for sure.

  ‪Newell: I think it has changed a lot since the ’90s. The women of that era were trying to get their foot in the door in a lot of fields, and now we’re commenting on what it’s like to be one of two women in the room.‪ We’ve made strides, but now there are new challenges to deal with. And not everyone’s made strides obviously.

  ‪Tell me a little about what it means to collaborate on a project like this. Do the three of you [including Anna Drezen] each bring different things to the table? Do you have to negotiate a lot?

  ‪Pappalardo: The way we wrote the book was kind of like a larger-scale version of how we put together content for the site. What we typically did was agree on the headline, the chapter title first, someone would then write that up, then we’d each punch it up from there.

  Newell: And I bring the mom vibes hard.

  Were there differences in writing for the site and the book?

  Newell: Yeah, knowing this will live on in print for a while and hopefully stay relevant influenced what we’d write about and how we’d write it.

  Could you tell me a little more about that? I always think of things online as “living forever.” Is that not true? Does this feel like it will live on in a more permanent way?

  Pappalardo: We hope so. We tried to tackle as many major issues of feminism happening right now that hopefully, when someone pulls it out of a time capsule in 2050, will make women say, “THIS is the shit they had to deal with in 2016?”

  Newell: Well part of the challenge is that we wrote this a year ago, so we couldn’t be like “Taylor Swift is dating [blank].”

  Pappalardo: And we wanted to make sure we tackled all angles of a topic, like women at work, in a way that we probably wouldn’t do on the site. Our pieces on the site have to stand alone and be strong ideas on their own, but we were thinking about how these chapters all tied together in a narrative.

  ‪As a side note, I love the art!

  ‪Newell: Thanks. The illustrations are mostly Steve Dressler and Carly Monardo.

  ‪Pappalardo: A bit from Tom Pappalardo, too.

  Who do you see as your primary audience? Millennial women? Reductress followers?

  ‪Pappalardo: Perhaps they are one in the same! Definitely millennial women and a few woke men. Maybe a Gen X mom or two.

  ‪Newell: It would be nice to find out younger millennials picked up a copy and got an intro to feminism from this — the same way I might’ve gotten into politics through Jon Stewart or The Onion.

  Report Advertisement

  I’ll confess, I was constantly wanting to click “share” or “tweet” at different moments when reading!

  Pappalardo: That’s what we forgot! Should have put a giant “like” button on every page.

  Who are your biggest feminist inspirations?

  ‪Pappalardo: I love Lindy West and Roxane Gay.

  ‪Newell: Anyone who stays composed after they’ve been trolled on the internet.

  ‪Have either of you personally faced harassment [since] starting Reductress?

  Pappalardo: Not a ton . . . but Reductress as an entity has seen its fair share of Twitter trolls.

  ‪Newell: Mostly around the rape culture home page takeover we did.

  Pappalardo: There are some trolls that seem to treat Reductress as some kind of insolent woman they want to talk down to. And it’s, like, you know, this is a faceless digital brand, right guys? She’s not going to cry over this. She is an LLC.

  ‪I’ve noticed that from articles I’ve written, too. Why do you think there is so much vitriol?

  ‪Pappalardo: I think there are some men out there that need a female target for their rage because they can’t do it in real life without facing real repercussions.

  ‪Newell: A lot of people have a really twisted idea of the meaning of feminism. And a lot of people are just babies.

  Pappalardo: Like, you know how The Onion will do “Local Man does X?” If we do “Woman Does Y,” to some men, they seem to take it as “SEE, ALL WOMEN SUCK! THIS WOMAN IS THE WORST” as if we wrote a headline to specifically shit on women. Where if The Onion did that about the man, they’d just laugh and take it as a joke about “everyone!” And it’s, like, oh, why is it when a woman is the subject, this fictional person suddenly represents all of womankind?

  ‪You must be very proud of the work you do at Reductress, which has really come alive during a time when we have a renaissance of feminist comedy.

  ‪Pappalardo: We are! Sometimes we have our heads down in the work too much to think, but we are proud. We always say whatever Oprah has done in women’s media, we want to do in women’s media satire.

  Newell: Yeah, I think that again is the beauty of social media. Anything can find its audience. So we no longer need white male approval to laugh about being women.

  Pappalardo: Although some white men do approve of us.

  ‪Are there any last points that you wanted to make about your book? Your process? Feminism in general?

  ‪Newell: We actually love capitalism and I take back everything I said earlier. Buy our book!

  Pappalardo: All profits will go toward women giving themselves a big hug.
  Arielle Bernstein's work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The Millions, and RogerEbert.com, among other publications. She teaches writing at American University. You can follow her on Twitter @NotoriousREL
  Follow

• Glamour - http://www.glamour.com/story/the-co-founders-of-reductress-taught-glamour-how-to-win-at-feminism-and-all-about-their-new-book-and-tampons

  The Co-Founders Of Reductress Taught Glamour How To Win At Feminism (And All About Their New Book. And Tampons.)
  By
  Elizabeth Logan
  October 24, 2016 4:00 pm

  Nothing on Reductress is real, but everything is true. The site, a sort of feminist answer to The Onion founded by Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo, satirizes both the way women write and the way women are written about, somehow finding the place where "that's insane" and "that's me" meet. Their tag line, "Women's News. Feminized." sounds just legit enough to confuse a lazy reader, but belies a greater sneakiness. Reductress will trick you into laughing, then ask you what's so funny. Its headlines are relatable to your worst self, so just by clicking, you've bought into the joke. "I Don't Need Validation From Men, I Need It From Everyone," is of course not a "real" article. But also like...true.

  In addition to the site's hilarious written pieces, Reductress also has a podcast and now an actual, physical book. How To Win At Feminism: The Definitive Guide To Having It All—And Then Some hits stores October 25, so even your most luddite friends and family can read their stuff sans Internet. Glamour recently sat down with Beth and Sarah to talk about where the site's been, where it's going, and who, in fact, is winning at feminism.

  Full disclosure: the author of this article worked for Reductress a few years ago and has since written intermittently for the site.

  GLAMOUR: What was your goal for the site starting out and what's your goal now?

  SARAH: I think we just wanted to start a blog.

  BETH: At first it started as just a fun comedy project so that we could have a place to put our ideas, and for other women we know to have a place to write about things they want to write about, but maybe didn't have an outlet for at other places because the humor didn't necessarily ring true to the men in the room. It's evolved more to where we are...I don't want to say we have an agenda, but we definitely love to cover feminist issues and women's issues.

  SARAH: The aim of the site was a little narrower when we launched, and I think once we got some attention and some momentum, there was so much of the Internet worth satirizing thats still women-focused but not strict magazine format. So that's kind of where the book came along. There was a way that the media in a very reductive way that we wanted to hone in on. We've been having a lot of fun with kind of these like, smaller issues that are all part of the larger issue of how we speak to women. That's what we're having fun with now. And obviously every freaking gender and feminist issue thats out there today.

  GLAMOUR: How do you fit into the larger spectrum of women's blogs and media that start from "we're covering issues" and then try to be funny about it? How do you feel different from them, being a place that started as a comedic project that now is tackling issues in a slightly different way?

  SARAH: I think I know what you're talking about. The kind of like, snark journalism.

  BETH: Man Repeller or whatever—

  SARAH: —which we all read and love in its own right. But coming from a comedy background, there was enough snark out there. We launched in "high Gawker" era. It was really important for us to say the same thing in a way that we hoped—just by nature of being different—would have a different impact. And being able to say more by taking on the voice of the thing that we are taking aim at, rather than just being like, look at that dumb thing that person is doing.

  GLAMOUR: Coming back to what you were saying of men not getting the joke: Etsy is not a point of reference for everyone. Have you encountered a time when you were in a co-ed group and people didn't get what was happening, joke-wise?

  BETH: It's frustrating, because I feel like men can bring in a really niche interest or idea, whether it's Pokemon or whatever, and only ten percent of the room really gets it but people will be like "okay, I understand why that's funny to you." But when women bring up something that all women have experienced, [men] have a tendency to write it off as this niche interest

  SARAH: I can't tell you how many Batman sketches I saw when I was in a sketch group. And that wasn't considered niche, that was "general interest." But if someone pitched something about tampons or tampon-related topics, that's niche!

  BETH: We were pitching a lot of tampons.

  SARAH: A lot of tampons. Maybe that was why nothing ever got picked. With the site now, there's definitely a chunk of the material that everyone can understand and then there's a chunk of the material that only someone who's been a woman or been steeped in women's media can understand. We definitely try to balance both for the sake of our readership.

  GLAMOUR: A lot of women's places—even Glamour—are striving to be better and more self-aware and trying to leave behind the really cobweb-y bits of old women's media. Do you think there's more space now to try different things? Is the landscape changing?

  BETH: For sure. We've definitely seen a lot of women's publications shifting gears to a broader scope of topics. And when you see the progress we've had with discussing things like sexual assault and rape culture, it's clear that there's more cultural awareness around certain things where people are willing to look at things from a different angle.

  SARAH: There are a lot of publications, especially on the digital side, that have done a great job of taking on those issues and moving away from the clichés of women's magazine stuff. I think that's what's also allowed us to take aim at other parts of the internet that have taken the place of being this like, damaging...clickbaity things. First-person confessional essays that can veer toward exploitative. It's great that a lot of women's magazines are moving forward. But there's always gonna be something.

  GLAMOUR: What's in your crosshairs now; what have you been thinking about recently that is ripe for mocking?

  SARAH: There's so much oversharing. People who seem to be sharing the most bizarre stories possible. To what end? I don't know.

  BETH: A lot of privileged White women doing one brave thing that they want applause for.

  SARAH: A lot of this like, empowerment porn. Wow, this person was so brave. Brave photoshoot after brave photoshoot. You can't even be a photographer if you don't do a brave photoshoot. That ties into the book,...there's this vein of feminism thats a little naive. It packages feminism in a way thats simple enough to get but loses a lot of what's most important in the meantime. And a lot of that is because it's being used to sell a product.

  BETH: I think we've also had a lot of fun lately making fun of men. As these conversations become more commonplace and men decide they want to weigh in on our experiences, it's really fun to poke fun at how they do that.

  SARAH: Because you can't talk about feminism without including men. That would be really mean of us. So we take aim at a lot of male feminists.

  GLAMOUR: What was the thing you were most excited to do, specifically, for the book?

  SARAH: My personal favorite was the empowerment marketing. In the book there's this classical figure with Dove lotion all over her.

  BETH: What felt fresh to us was the white savior-ing stuff. Because it was like, I don't feel like thats been tackled really heavily in comedy.

  SARAH: A long time ago we did a piece on the site called How To Hug Third-World Children--

  BETH: "How To Take A Photo With Third-World Children."

  SARAH: A lot of people thought it was real, and that's exactly the problem.

  BETH: That's the thing we're often trying to go after. Not the person who's shouting expletives on the street, but the really well-intentioned people who are still hurting us, or hurting other people.

  SARAH: They're dancing that fine line between doing good for the world and satisfying their own identity crises.

  GLAMOUR: It's interesting, you're going after the patriarchy, but you're also going after the people who are going after the patriarchy. You're holding other women accountable for their feminism. Maybe not all feminism is created equal.

  SARAH: In a way we're going after ourselves. The whole idea of white feminism getting in the way of intersectional feminism, and intersectional feminism on the whole is like, a really real thing. I think it's important to check ourselves and our own privilege.

  BETH: Also, the comedy is not going to ring true if we're not making fun of ourselves and things that are relatable to people. It's really easy to make fun of cartoon racists like Donald Trump. It's harder to find our own failings.

  The rest of the interview has been omitted because we mostly talked about mug cakes.

• New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/reductress-editors-win-feminism-trump-era-article-1.2868003

  Know hope: Reductress editors tell us how to win at feminism in the new Trump era

  Tweet
  email

  Sarah Pappalardo (l.) and Beth Newell, editors of the satire site Reductress, vow that Donald Trump and his presidency will be “a prime target.”
  Sarah Pappalardo (l.) and Beth Newell, editors of the satire site Reductress, vow that Donald Trump and his presidency will be “a prime target.” (Courtesy Reductress)
  BY
  Meera Jagannathan
  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
  Friday, November 11, 2016, 6:30 AM

  If you are alarmed that America elected a man who has boasted of groping women, suggested a journalist’s tough questions were menstrually motivated, and speculated about his 1-year-old daughter’s future breasts, you’re not alone.

  But take solace in Reductress, the brassy feminist twin of The Onion, whose editors plan to lampoon Donald Trump with the fervor they already do women’s magazines and rape culture. (They’re off to the races with a post-Election Day column titled “‘How Am I Supposed To Explain This To My Children?’ Asks Melania Trump.’”)

  We asked site co-founders Sarah Pappalardo and Beth Newell — also co-authors of the Reductress-branded book “How to Win at Feminism” — to counsel us through the president-elect’s first term. Below, some nuggets of hope:

  Donald Trump is our next President. Can we still win at feminism?

  South Park re-writes episode following Trump's presidential upset

  SP: If feminism were a basketball team, this is like having half of the 1992 Bulls, except our coach is Donald Trump. So no matter how many small successes we make in the next few years, we’ll be playing on a losing team for a while.

  BN: Sorry I’m too exhausted for sports metaphors or any kind of decent metaphor so I’ll just say — this is like if our President was a racist, sexist xenophobe like Donald Trump. I think we’re gonna need to go hard at the midterm elections. Hopefully we don’t lose too much in the meantime.

  What can women do now to keep fighting the patriarchy?

  SP: The same thing we’ve been doing since forever: Keep on making meaningful political change, and allowing old white men to drift peacefully into an eternal sleep.

  Angry protesters flood U.S. streets opposing Trump's election win

  BN: Keep talking. Keep telling men about the reality we live in. Be better allies to people of color and other disadvantaged groups and hopefully they’ll support us in return.
  Sarah Pappalardo (l.) and Beth Newell, editors of the satire site Reductress, are co-authors of “How to Win at Feminism.”
  Sarah Pappalardo (l.) and Beth Newell, editors of the satire site Reductress, are co-authors of “How to Win at Feminism.” (Courtesy Reductress)

  How will Reductress address a President Trump, a man with an ugly history of misogynistic comments and about a dozen sexual assault allegations against him?

  SP: We’re on a plane right now, and still have a lot of discussing to do. As the new, official figurehead for pretty much everything we’ve been fighting against in the past three years, you can be sure he and his presidency will be a prime target.

  BN: Yes, today we’re kind of in mourning but you can bet we’ll be thinking about next steps and how to show him for the coward he is.

  10 best headlines from The Onion

  Some media types have declared that the rise of Trump signals the death of satire. Do you agree or disagree? How can Reductress get past that?

  SP: People have said that about every great tragedy, and for good reason — it’s hard to make jokes in a time like this. But as reality starts to sink in, it’s the job of satire to speak truth to power, and even though Trump is already a parody of himself, the repercussions of his presidency will give us plenty of fodder to work with.

  BN: It definitely shows you that satire can only do so much, and at the end of the day people really need to show up and do things like vote.

  Early exit polls show about 53% of white women voted for Trump. What do you make of that, and what would you say to those voters?

  Protesting Trump in the street isn't the way to achieve progress

  SP: As my friends from the South say, bless their hearts.
  President Barack Obama shakes hands with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
  17 photos view gallery
  Donald Trump's road to the White House as President-elect

  BN: I would tell them what I tell so many of my friends about the men they’ve fallen for — you can do so much better.

  You dedicated your site to humor articles about rape back in August. Will we see more of that in the future?

  SP: You will see more of us directly addressing the big, whopping problems we are seeing in our country and in the media.

  BN: Hopefully as the site grows (we) will have a chance to do more targeted, organized satire.

  So … what now?

  SP: Hug your family, help those who have been made vulnerable and invest in gold.

  BN: Grab the woman closest to you and get her elected to some kind of office.

How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some!
263.28 (July 11, 2016): p55.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/

How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some!

Elizabeth Newell, Sarah Pappalardo, and Anna Drezen. HarperOne, $22.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-06-243980-2

The writers behind the hilarious satirical website The Reductress skewer the most ridiculous tropes and cliches of millennial-era feminism in this send-up of advice books targeted at women. An "official timeline of feminism" sets the tone, marking women's suffrage and the birth of Beyonce as equally relevant, along with chapter introductions revering feminist "patron saints" like Oprah and Lena Dunham. The writers provide shrewd commentary on the divisiveness of feminist culture in which women are pitted against and ordered to support one another at the same time. Hillary Clinton tops a list of "bad feminists" because "her Twitter is whack." Instead of the no-makeup selfie, they recommend the "no-self selfie" because "it takes a strong, woman to show others the room she's in.". The text is accompanied by stock photos curated for maximum absurdity, funny fake advertisements, and graphs, including one on work-life balance that asks, "What's the most you can achieve without fucking up your kids?" Readers who cringe at popular culture's use of the words spirit animal, don't think their outfits should be a measure of commitment to the cause, and are tired of hearing about "having it all" will enjoy the irreverence. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some!" Publishers Weekly, 11 July 2016, p. 55. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA458915361&it=r&asid=a935c2c3bfdad83ff4081326c62a835c. Accessed 2 Mar. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A458915361

"How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some!" Publishers Weekly, 11 July 2016, p. 55. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA458915361&asid=a935c2c3bfdad83ff4081326c62a835c. Accessed 2 Mar. 2017.

• A.V Club
  http://www.avclub.com/review/reductress-clever-funny-book-teaches-women-how-win-244673
  Word count: 585

  Reductress’ clever, funny book teaches women How To Win At Feminism
  By Caitlin PenzeyMoog@penzeymoog
  Oct 24, 2016 10:10 AM
  Share
  Tweet
  77
  B
  How To Win At Feminism: The Definitive Guide To Having It All—And Then Some!
  Authors: Beth Newell , Sarah Pappalardo & Anna Drezen
  Publisher: HarperOne
  Community Grade (16 Users)

  A-

  Your Grade

  ?

  Called “The Onion for women,” Reductress is a much-needed antithesis to the faux-feminist women’s magazines and their ilk that purport to empower women while really reinforcing the many ways women are taught to feel inadequate. Subversive, satirical, and monstrously clever, the writers at Reductress know how to skewer the “how-to” magazine article as well as the click bait-y listicles centered on self-improvement and products. It’s funny content that’s also furious with the gendered status quo, especially noticeable when Reductress goes beyond workplace sexism and double standards, as it did in August when the entire landing page was dedicated to rape stories.

  And that’s both the good and the bad of Reductress’ book, How To Win At Feminism. It’s high quality and exceptionally well done, but there’s so much information packed into what feels at times like an overlong article. Such wryly self-aware satire is perfect in small, regular internet doses. And indeed, it does feel like much of the content here was written with an internet audience in mind. But spreading it out over the course of an entire book both dilutes the power of Reductress’ sharp critique and makes true the old adage of “too much of a good thing.”

  But taken in discrete parts, How To Win At Feminism is as deviously funny as some of the best Reductress has put out. The passage “Feeling beautiful is the new looking beautiful” is one of the many parts in the book dedicated to feminism’s commodification (“more and more corporations are noticing precisely when and why we don’t like ourselves and are finally starting to help us fix it”). “How to femsplain feminism to your friends” articulates the weird way bloggy output talks down to women under the guise of teaching them about feminism:

  Feminism is all about us women having each other’s backs. But more than that, it’s about setting an example for those who may not be as enlightened as yourself. After all, you’re not really a feminist unless you’re sharing a slice of feminism with all your gal pals and raising them up to your level... Femsplaining allows us to empower ourselves and other women at the same time, while throwing just a teensy bit of shade their way for being so basic.

  It’s fantastic, at times cathartic, at times exhaustingly spot-on. How To Win At Feminism assumes a high level of feminist knowledge—it doesn’t teach feminism so much as it relentlessly, ruthlessly critiques the specifically 2016 ways that sexism wears the mask of feminism, online and in commercials, in pop songs and at work. This isn’t Feminism 101, but it’s not trying to be. For women tired of seeing the same old beauty standards reinforced in Dove commercials that pretend to be empowering, Reductress is a godsend. Like the fight of feminism itself, How To Win At Feminism is an exhausting, infuriating read that never seems to end. Good thing the writers of Reductress make it so funny.

• ArtsATL
  http://www.artsatl.com/review-how-win-feminism-leaves-loss/
  Word count: 965

  Review: “How to Win at Feminism” leaves us at a loss
  Megan Volpert
  -
  Dec 7, 2016
  inBooks, Reviews

  Share 0
  Tweet
  Share 0
  Share 0
  Share 0

  how-to-win-at-feminism-2

  If you enjoy this story, or the other stories you read on ArtsATL, we encourage you to donate to our annual fund. By investing in ArtsATL, you are investing in the arts in Atlanta.

  __

  I am trapped in a love-hate relationship with Reductress, the online publication founded in 2013 with the slogan “Women’s News. Feminized.” Somebody once forwarded me an article from the site that was pretty funny, and after clicking around to determine whether the whole site was similarly on point, I began subscribing to their emails.

  To say that Reductress is a feminist version of The Onion is too reductive. Some sample headlines for you: “8 Women Share Their Worst Dating Experiences and All of Them Were With Brian,” “The Best Workout Clothes to Take Long Fitful Naps In,” and “100 Acts of Self-Care that Still Won’t be Enough to Get You Through the Election.” After enjoying the email list for more than a year, I began correspondence with a lovely woman at Reductress named Intern who eventually rejected my submissions.

  It turns out, I’m too old for them. I’m 35 and embroiled too completely in the cynicism and mortgage payments of Generation X to correctly match the voice of Reductress. As the months slipped by, I realized I had been skimming most of the headlines but not reading any of the actual articles. For me, their headlines contained the entire joke and left no need to excavate further. This is precisely why I picked up their book, “How to Win at Feminism.” My experiences with Reductress convinced me I had somehow missed the point — that I was behind in comprehending the satirical feminist mystique of which Millennials are capable.
  1430622006658-cached
  Two of How to Win at Feminism‘s authors, Sarah Pappalardo and Beth Newell. The book is credited to Reductress, Beth Newell, Sarah Pappalardo and Anna Drezen.

  From the book’s “Femiglossary”: “Privilege: Not super sure, but your friend Jen keeps asking you to ‘check’ it. Sorry, Jen, we mostly use Venmo!” (16). In the worldview presented by Reductress, the conceptual baggage of whiteness and a method of digital payment are both things that are trending. Neither of them is a source of worry, but the writers will gladly toss up an easy apology for Jen if it makes her feel better.

  The voice in this text is strictly for white, femme 20-somethings; however, when the book digs in on intersections of gender with sexuality or race or class or disability, there is some genuine work taking place. For example, there’s a footnote attached to the word “cisgender” that reads, “If you don’t know what this term means, just know it’s referring to you” (36). How to Win at Feminism drops tiny nuggets of the real thing, then smears lip gloss all over it until the book shines with guffaws.

  The shine may blind readers to those truth nuggets, or leave them piled high with an existential ick of anxiety over the extent to which women are still oppressed. Personally, my cold sweats began as I turned from page 53 to 54. It was a section on “Feminist Skin Care” with a two-column spread for daytime and nighttime routines. The morning column says things like, “while leaning comfortably over the basin, drape a soft linen towel over your head,” and the nighttime column says things like, “using steel grit you bought from an industrial supplier with a fake name, blast your cheeks.” It was a funny section covering two-thirds of the page, but then when I flipped to the next page, there were the two columns still running on into the abyss of a punch line that was clear from the first 50 words. Is beating a dead horse feminist?

  This book covers the primary facets of a woman’s life in several sections: “How to Feminist,” “Feminism: Get the Look!,” “Women at Work!,” “How to Love and Sex,” and “How to Savor Being a Savior.” As I made my way through each chapter, I laughed less and less. For me, the work of Reductress stands at the apex of ironic post-modernity by performing an ugly thing in hopes of showing how we naturally rise above it. What is the word for the feminist equivalent of blackface? This book is closer to Spike Lee’s controversial cult classic Bamboozled than Comedy Central’s honest wunderkind Broad City.

  So, How to Win at Feminism does indeed win if the good people at Reductress are delighted that this book made me sick and mad, made me feel old and out of it, made me want to get quickly to the end of it or not dive deep into it at all. Or maybe this is a straightforward, negative review and they are going to be made sick and mad by it; maybe it makes them feel like children patronized by an old curmudgeon who doesn’t get it. For help on this question, I turned to “How to be Feminist Without being Too ‘Opiniony’,” which offered this essential question: “You don’t want us to be flagged by men as annoying or unlikeable, do you?” (29).

  I often found this book annoying and unlikeable. And I’m a woman. That’s a win for feminism, right? Definitely, go check out Reductress. If you can read the articles and not just the headlines for more than 15 minutes, you might like to read How to Win at Feminism.

• Hello Flo
  http://helloflo.com/how-to-win-at-feminism-doesnt-disappoint/
  Word count: 455

  Last week, Harper Collins released “How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having it All – And Then Some!” a book presented by Reductress, the satirical women’s magazine.

  Writers Beth Newell, Sarah, Pappalardo, and Anna Drezen take readers on a satirical journey through the trials and tribulations of being a feminist in today’s society. Starting with Beyonce vs Taylor Swift feminism and ending with overcoming your womansecurities with crystals, “How to Win at Feminism” covers it all.

  The book, aimed at twenty-something women, reads like a series of Reductress articles and so if you are anything like me, it will very closely mimic your Facebook newsfeed. The writing is sharp and witty and clearly well thought out. The artwork and layout is catchy and fun to look at. It’s an easy read filled with ridiculous texting advice, celebrity gossip (is Shailene Woodley a feminist???), and how to make the perfect “no-self selfie” for Instagram (the key is to hashtag everything). Above all else, this book is funny. As a woman in a male dominated field, I laugh-cried my way through the “Women at Work!” section, identifying a little too strongly with the advice to set an alarm to apologize every hour on the hour to whoever is nearby.
  Related Articles

  HelloFlo Is Looking For Contributing Writers Femspiration
  Ashley Judd Fights The Good Fight Against Internet Misogyny Femspiration
  What We've Learned From The Legacies of Carrie Fisher And Mary Tyler Moore Femspiration

  While the book does a great job of poking fun at the daily struggle of being a woman, I have my gripes. While intersectional at points (it even explains what being an intersectional feminist means!!) it is admittedly aimed at straight, white, cis women. The entire dating section was about dating men and the single lesbian article, “How To Do Your Lesbian Phase Right,” was a little tired. I also wish there had been more on the experience of being a women of color. Finally, similar to the online magazine, the book is very topical. This is great because I love a good comparison of Lena Dunham and Oprah, but this book unfortunately won’t stand the test of the time.

  “How to Win at Feminism” is a worthwhile read, although I would skip it if you’re not a feminist millennial woman. You can learn more and buy the book here.
  Image courtesy of Getty Images.

  By Hannah Rimm on November 2, 2016
  Hannah Rimm is a writer, educator, and filmmaker living in New York City. When she isn't writing, she is the marketing coordinator at an Academy Award-nominated arthouse animation company.

Word Count