its “Comments” section, which allowed readers to respond in real time to what they were reading; young
women, including teenagers, got involved by posting their own writing. Feministing also started a
campus program to provide resources and support to feminist groups and bloggers on college campuses.
Valenti would go on to write a number of popular feminist books aimed at younger women, including
Full Frontal Feminism and The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young
Women, publish op-eds in majors newspapers, and become a contributing writer at the Nation magazine
—so she has not entirely neglected traditional print media. The blog that she started would win numerous
awards, including the 2011 Sidney Hillman Prize for social and economic justice in blog journalism. That
same year, Valenti retired from the blog, stating that she wanted Feministing to provide “a space for new
and young voices” and “remain a place for younger feminists to build their careers and platforms.”^47
Moya Bailey is another example of how the feminist blogosphere has produced a new generation of
writers and activists. After graduating from Spelman College in Atlanta in 2005, Bailey began a PhD
program in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University, where she met other young
women of color who were interested in how to use new Web-based technologies to build feminist
community. This led her to cofound a social network called Quirky Black Girls (QBG), which allowed, in
her view, “a diverse group of self-identified QBGs to post our own videos, music and imagery, all the
while building bravery and challenging each other’s thinking.”^48 From there she joined the Crunk
Feminist Collective, a self-described “hip hop generation feminist blogging crew,” which launched a
popular blog, Twitter feed, and Facebook page. According to their mission statement, the collective use
“crunk”—a southern black term for “crazy drunk,” or out of one’s mind—“because we are drunk off the
heady theory of feminism that proclaims that another world is possible.”^49 “The internet allows for
people who do not have immediate community to build communities online,” said Bailey. “For people
with disabilities, the internet has allowed for community in ways that our inaccessible world [hasn’t]. It’s
made feminist language more accessible. Feminists have used digital media to spread feminism and affect
real change.” Online feminism also provides a space to address white privilege, racism, and other forms
of division that have historically divided feminists. “The divisions remain,” said Bailey, but she thought
that because of the active presence of women of color on social media and blogs, there was “more of an
opportunity for folks to be told when they make mistakes.”^50
As Valenti and fellow feminist blogger Courtney Martin described it in a 2012 essay: “Contrary to
media depictions of online activity as largely narcissistic and/or ‘slactivism,’ young women across the
country—and all over the world, in fact—are discovering new ways to leverage the Internet to make
fundamental progress in the unfinished revolution of feminism.”^51 A protest that same year at Seventeen
magazine illustrates their point. Activists, many of whom were teenage girls, demanded that Seventeen
stop using Photoshopped images of girls, arguing that such images led to unrealistic body ideals, eating
disorders, depression, and low self-esteem. An online petition to Seventeen, on Change.org, gathered
eighty-six thousand signatures, and an online video documentary on the subject, made by two teens, was
viewed by over thirteen thousand people. Protesters also demonstrated outside of Seventeen’s New York
offices, holding a mock photo shoot to honor what real girls look like. These actions worked: Seventeen
editor in chief Ann Shoket publicly committed to ending the magazine’s practice of Photoshopping girls’
bodies in a special “Body Peace Treaty” in the August 2012 issue. In many ways, this protest echoed the
one held forty years earlier at the offices of the Ladies’ Home Journal. As discussed in chapter 2, in 1970
one hundred feminists held an eleven-hour takeover of the magazine, demanding that the Journal hire a
female editor in chief, end its discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, and devote more of its pages
to serious issues. Both protests were successful; both led to changes at the magazines being targeted. The