Girly indie site www.thelipster.com launched last week. Edited by Jude Rogers of Smoke and Laura Barton of The Guardian, it has a similar look and feel to Drowned in Sound (it's produced by the same company). There's an interesting thread on it on DiS here, which presents the usual gamut of responses to girl-only stuff ('I feel patronised' / 'Why not just hire the same writers to work for DiS' / 'why are they only writing about women? it seems a bit full-on feminist i.e. anti-male' etc). I'm all for anything that foregrounds women and makes men feel left out, just so that male readers can see what it feels like to be sidelined as a result of a gender bias, so good luck to 'em (though the name grates a bit - what's a lipster? A lipstick wearing hipster?) I do wish such projects would be a bit more subtle with the marketing tactics though. Why describe yourself as 'the world’s best new female editorial-led pop culture website' when it's far more subversive to simply present a website full of editorial pop culture that just happens to be by and about females? After all, DiS doesn't broadly proclaim 'TOTAL BOYS' CLUB - MESSAGE BOARD FULL OF MILDLY SEXIST INANITY - EDITORIAL STAFF ALL MALE - COVERAGE OF MALE TO FEMALE ARTISTS APPROX 70/30'. It just does it, thereby promoting the status quo without advertising itself as doing such. Why can't female-focused projects do the same thing but in reverse? I'd love to see that - to see Reading or ATP with a 99% female line-up, or the NME with all the features by and about women, but nary a word advertising this fact. Now that's subversive. Maybe one day. When the world turns on its axis. Until then: The Lipster.

Labels: DIS, feminism, feminist, indie, lipster, music

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