Zines: Create a Zine!

Questions to ask of both mainstream magazines and zines

1. How would you recognize a zine?
2. What purpose does a zine serve?
3. Who might be drawn to a zine?
4. What is and is not covered in mainstream magazines?
5. Who do you see covered in mainstream magazines? How are they covered? Who's bodies are represented? How are they represented? How does this inform or complicate your understanding of women's sexuality?
6. What values are being communicated?
7. What images of women are being projected?
8. How can you use ephemeral materials to do research?
9. How can you make conversations of sexuality accessible through the zine?
10. How can you make these materials your own or challenge what it says (this can be done with image and/or text, preferably both)?
11. How can you push back against societal norms of sexuality (particularly women's sexuality)?
12. How might you use visual or textual content in the zine to analyze and/or challenge sexual hierarchies in popular culture?
13. How might you express this through the form/format of the zine?
14. How might you use a handmade approach to challenge dominant notions of sexuality in popular culture and mainstream magazines and/or messaging?
15. How are zines distributed and/or shared? How does this differ from how mainstream magazines are distributed and/or shared?
16. Does the handmade nature of a zine lend it an authenticity that something mass printed lacks? If yes, why?
17. Why create something by hand and photocopy it yourself instead of creating a blog or Tumblr site?