Name: 'Girls' Producer: There's a Right Way to Monetize on Feminism
Uploaded: 2016-06-09
Duration: 4 min 13 s
Description: Jenni Konner explains how.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on brands that are potentially commoditizing feminism, and whether it's still something that will propel the cause forward? Just to kind of have the message out there still. I think it depends on how it's done. I think Andy Zeisler who founded the Great **** magazine just wrote a book about sort of how the commodification of feminism is problematic and I think it can be, but I think it can also reach women who never would have called themselves feminist ever before and if they're starting to If a well done ad makes someone who would have been like ew feminism that means hating men, if it makes them get a little bit more aware, I can't see how that's hurting the cause as a whole at all. Is it as a consumer reader my favourite thing? No. I'm not gonna say that it is. But I'm someone who's been steeped in feminist rhetoric for as long as I can remember. So I think it's about remembering that not everyone is as up on these issues, or knows Knows about them so deeply as someone who can turn a critical eye to them which again, I think that's totally necessary to be critical of anyone whose trying to collapse a very powerful movement. But I think overall, it's a sort of slight net positive rather than something horrible. I actually think it's flattering. I'm like good use it. Use it. I guess if we've gotten to that point, where you're gonna abuse feminism, great. [ LAUGH ] So I had a question, kind of going back to the newsletter, kind of idea, of there just being news everywhere. And, that kind of being a curation. And, I guess especially how you curate. And maybe the process that you have to ensure diversity within that. Especially with feminism for decades, kind of being accused of whitewashing a lot of things. So. Well, that was just a mandate we had. We set it from the first meeting we ever had with Jess. We all knew that that was a huge priority. And it turns out when you make that a priority, it works. It's been the same thing with girls. After the first season, we learned tremendous lessons and we made it a priority, and it became a priority. It's just, it's that easy. It is that easy. You make a choice, and you stick to it. I mean, when I was saying we're doing the Lenny shorts, it's gonna be 50 % female, diverse Crew. You would not believe how huge a number of that is compared to what it actually usually is on a crew. That's insane. We're right now, we just wrote about trying to pass this bill that's trying to get shows to commit to 4 %. And New York is fighting it. Call your Congressperson. But, you know, that's, that's so so it's just making choices like that and sticking to them. And it's about, just, it's not just making the original commitment. It's looking at every single issue. Every issue we think about, the mix, and making sure that I mean, I think we've had one issue that was all white, and we were like, that should never happen again. I mean, we literally look at every issue in the mix of diversity and the different kinds of voices and we try to make diversity not just about one different, one person of color and then that's okay. We look at it with the illustrators Our deputy editor, who works with all the illustrators and has an amazing eye, she is from Puerto Rico. And she's fluent in Spanish. So she's gotten a lot of international illustrators that speak Spanish because she can work with them. And so we have a lot of international illustrators. So it's not just diversity from You know, one personal color. It's like trying to make it diverse in as many dimensions as we possibly can .>> And we have a diverse staff .>> Yeah .>> And it starts there. Yeah. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]