In the wake of Sassy and as an alternative to the more staid reporting of Ms., Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties
as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed
in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape
reflects and impacts women's lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched
worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence
at the way pop culture informs feminism�and vice versa�and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages
lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment
of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine's first ten years, along with new
pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology
covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby
boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an
attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It's a recent history of feminist
pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism's future.