In my life, I’ve gone through a lot of different kinds of music. Since late 2020, I’ve been listening to 90s music, specifically grunge and punk rock. The kind of punk rock I’ve been into is called “riot grrrl”, which is a feminist subgenre of punk. During my first month of getting into this music, I discovered fanzines.
Fanzines, or simply “zines” are self published works that can contain just about anything from art, music, poetry, etc. They’re essentially flip books that can be about anything you want. Many riot grrrl artists also made zines, the most notable being riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna, and they were about feminism and overall activism. I recommend looking up “Bikini Kill zines” or “riot grrrl zines” for more info and ideas on what the ones from the 90s look like!
I was surprised and delighted to discover that people today still make zines! I started reading them, and eventually wanted to start making them myself. After some research, I found out that it’s exceptionally easy. So, for the past month, I’ve been making the first issue of my zine Freakazoid.
My zine is about feminism and music, and it includes my own writings and poetry. A lot of current zine creators have open submissions for anyone to submit anything they want, and that’s something I’d love to do at some point in the near future.
Recently, the idea of zines has been floating around due to the release of Moxie, a movie about a girl who makes a zine at her school after discovering riot grrrl. The idea of the movie is great, but in my opinion it was not executed well. It didn’t do a good job of explaining zines or riot grrrl, and the main character had a white savior complex. Overall, I do not recommend watching it if you care at all about these topics. I’d definitely recommend researching all of this stuff, or watching The Punk Singer, a documentary about Kathleen Hanna.
Like I said, zines can be about anything! If you like to draw, you can create a zine on paper but folding it to be a flipbook! If you prefer digital stuff, I recommend the website FlipSnack! It’s really helpful in making zines and there are a lot of cool things you can do with it.