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Welcome to Double X, a new website written mostly by women, but not just for them. As you scroll through the site, you'll find pieces about politics, culture, fashion, friendship, parenting and much more. Since we're just getting started, and we want to make sure the lay of the land is clear, let us walk you through the site.
At the heart of the site is the XX Factor blog. You'll find it in the center column at the top of the site. As some of you already know from reading the blog on Slate, XX Factor is a place for animated conversation among Slate and Double X women writers about politics and culture. It's also where the idea for this magazine came from. The home page features only the first paragraph of the most recent posts on the blog. To read the blog in its entirety, just click on XX Factor at the top of the column or the words "More XX Factor" midway down the page.
In the window pane you see on the upper left-hand side of the site, we'll promote our regular essays and features. (Use the little pink arrows to scroll up and down.) You can also find our features and pieces posted, in reverse chronological order, on the table of contents, located below XX Factor in the center column as you scroll down.To the right of the blog, we'll be highlighting our favorite photo, video, and quote of the day. On some days, the video will be one Double X has produced. Other days, it'll be the viral YouTube clip we think you'll want to know about. (Elizabeth Edwards on Oprah, anyone?) The photo of the day will often come from other sites, magazines, or ads we think feature some unintentionally revealing depiction of women. We'll be counting on you, our readers, to send us photos and videos you think everyone else will want to see. (You can send your nominations to doublexletters@slate.com.) Last but not least, the quote of the day will feature favorite lines from Double X columnists and commenters. We want to bring the blog's spirit of conversation to the entire site, and we're going to need your help to do it-post your witty, penetrating comments!
Further down on the left, below the windowpane we mentioned above, you'll find two sections called "We're reading" and "We're talking about." These are our aggregators. We know Double X readers are busy, so we created a section of the site where you can get all the news you want to read. Consider it one-stop shopping. "We're reading" is a rotating list of stories we spotted and compiled for your attention. "We're talking about" is a continuously updated feed of women's news from around the web, powered by Google News. It's the first of its kind online; we hope you'll like it.
The On-Ramp, located further down the left-hand column, is Double X's guide to navigating work, life and the recession. It's full of useful data and tips, including a daily crib sheet of everything you need to pay attention to in the financial news. We'll also feature first-person accounts from our readers, about how you're weathering the economic downturn, and interviews with successful women who've made it to the top in a wide range of careers.
Below the On-Ramp, Xxtra Small is our home for kids' fare-coverage of movies, books, video games, and television shows for children. We want to review kids' culture from a modern grown-up perspective, and so we created our own rating system, which we hope will be more relevant to parents than the G or PG movie ratings. Is Wall-E too depressing for kids? What's the hidden message of Wolverine? Find out more when you click here.
In addition to a host of columns, we'll be hosting two blogs, Nick's Dream House, about decorating on a budget, and the Oyster's Garter, a wonderfully whimsical take on biology and ocean science and how it might inform your life.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? We're eager for them. Just email us at doublexletters@slate.com.
Enjoy!
-Emily Bazelon, Meghan O'Rourke, and Hanna Rosin
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If you're reading this you already know that Double X, the new magazine from Slate Group, about "what women really think" launched today. Double X inherits a legacy of women's content that spanned decades of comfort food factories such as Ladies' Home Journal ("Can this marriage be saved?"), McCall's, and Redbook, then spawned junior versions Seventeen, Glamour, and Mademoiselle (featuring David Newman and Robert Benton's advice column, "Man Talk"), before blossoming into the original womyn's periodical, Ms. Magazine, co-founded by the glorious Gloria Steinem in 1971. The many prosaic and pugnacious periodicals with chick mastheads that followed (including, notably, Bitch) offered readers observations, news, tips, and warnings to navigate the brave new world of brave new women. Today, with the immediacy of the blog from which it grew, Double X takes publishing perspectives on how women think to its next iteration. I can't wait to watch and chime in as the newest forum comes of age.
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Dear Double X fans,
As you clearly already know, today we launched our new site, www.doublex.com, a spin-off the XX factor blog in Slate. We've already gotten lots of great press and excited responses but we've also gotten one persistent complaint: People are having trouble logging on.
We hear you and we're working on it. One of the reasons we launched Double X was to hear from all of you, and get you involved in the conversation. So we are just as frustrated as you are. But please be patient and try again soon.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Emily Bazelon, Meghan O'Rourke, and Hanna Rosin
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Today in the American Prospect, Ann Friedman asks a question we've heard from many feminists since we launched Double X on Tuesday: Why do we need a women's web site? Did we kill the "ladies" page in the newspaper only to recreate it online? This is an excellent question, and one we wrestled with ourselves when we decided to found Double X.
One reason is simple. Women have never had a great public interest magazine. We've had magazines with a very narrow understanding of what women are interested in. We've had magazines for the feminist movement. But we've never had a magazine written mainly by women that accurately reflects the range of subjects we think and talk about. Our model here is Esquire, and particularly Esquire of the 1970's. Esquire is clearly a men's magazine but I have read it all of my life. Early on it pioneered new forms of journalism and continues to publish award-winning stories year after year. Growing up, I'd read Esquire, and then a women's glossy, and the difference made me crazy. We don't have nearly the resources Esquire has, but Double X is our small contribution to this historical gap.
Friedman asks whether Slate is signaling that it doesn't want women as its main readers. Definitely not. We don't think of it as either/or, but more! In just our first two days Slate has promoted so many Double X pieces on its homepage, and we've promoted theirs. There's no question that a space dominated by women's voices creates a slightly different alchemy. But it's not instead of a mainstream magazine; it's just another thing.
"Somehow, ‘smart women's magazines' never seem to publish things that influence the national conversation in the way that smart articles in general magazines do," Friedman writes. Exactly! That's what we'd like to change. We are not just interested in changing the direction of feminism. We're interested in influencing many things. The XX factor blog we grew out of is a perfect example: We debated the election, the Supreme Court, torture memos, education policy, and yes, sometimes Michelle Obama's arms and the Real Housewives. This is how we live, and we want a magazine that reflects that.
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Like Hanna, I accept Ann Friedman's welcome challenge. Yes, please! We want to influence the national conversation, and send our writers and editors out to go forth and prosper in plenty of other pastures. We're not interested in roping ourselves off into a pink ghetto. I understand the fear that other people will do the roping off for us. When we first started talking about the idea of a separate site early last summer, several of the veteran women of Slate said, hey, we've spent years getting strong women's voices into the magazine. We've succeeded. Now you're taking us out and putting us somewhere else? The answer we all settled on, in the end, was no. Dahlia, Meghan, me, Emily Yoffe, all the women who write regularly for Slate are still doing that. We're just adding more in a new space, as well.
Why not add more content written by women into Slate? It's a matter of home page real estate. The coveted slots on the home page of every site, the ones that get a lot of eyeballs, are limited. Slate has increased the number of those spots in all kinds of creative ways—with multiple covers, sliding panels, and other clever attractions. But we can't expand limitlessly. At some point, if we want to put up more articles and blog posts and slideshows and video, and give them their due, we need more home pages. And so we've begun collectively to sprout them. Its an exchange: The best content from the sister sites feeds and strengthens the Slate home page. You see that every day, when Slate promotes our pieces, and pieces by The Big Money, The Root, and Slate V. And we pick up the Slate content that we think is most relevant to our readers. It's a work in progress, and an experiment. But if it works, well have the best of both worlds: A women's magazine that has its own space, but lives in a beloved older magazine, too.
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Our first week at Double X is drawing to a close. And we’ve heard all sorts of responses. We’re not feminist enough. We’re too feminist. We say we’re not feminist but then we talk a lot about feminism. We (and Slate) are ghettoizing women. First, I want to second my co-editors Hanna and Emily in what they wrote yesterday and today about why we wanted to create Double X and its relationship to Slate. Second, I want to take this moment to clarify some things about the disparate points of view you’ll find on the site.
The spirit animating the site is the spirit of debate. We do not edit the blog posts before they go up, or read them over to make sure they all hew to a single party line. And so XXFactor blogger Susannah Breslin, for example, may have one take about feminism, while our essays reflect another. When we at Double X have said that we’ll have a “feminist” viewpoint, we do not mean that this viewpoint will be doctrinaire or singular—or even that every piece will have a “feminist” angle. For example, for our launch, we asked a range of women to answer our question, “What is the primary problem facing women today? What is today’s problem that has no name?” Many of the essayists in our symposium chose to point to the problems with feminism itself. We did not coach the responses, or set out to hack feminism off at the knees. The essays reflected the writer’s own views.
And that’s, in our view, as it should be. We created Double X so that readers and writers would get to hear women’s voices raised in cacophonous debate—not in well-oiled agreement. As editors, we believe in the importance of discussing issues of women’s equality and identity, and we are not afraid of the word itself. But some of our bloggers and contributors might not agree with us. Maybe they’ll be cacophonous and contradictory for a while. So be it. That’s the reality of where we are the moment. Let the arguments continue.
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This week, Hanna, Meghan, and I inaugurated the Double X weekly podcast, called the "XX Gabfest" in tribute to some of our Slate offerings, the "Political Gabfest" and the "Culture Gabfest." We hashed out our thoughts about Obama's speech on abortion at Notre Dame, Nancy Pelosi's troubles, and this spring's slew of mommy and daddy books. Like everything else about our dear beta site, we're feeling our way, but you can check out our first effort, or subscribe to the podcast RSS feed, or sign up for it on iTunes. And tell us what you think.
Illustration by Deanna Staffo
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In The Supremes Edition of our XX Gabfest this week, Hanna and Meghan and I talk about (of course) Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Also a new study showing that women are more unhappy, not less, 30 years after the sexual revolution, and why Terminator Salvation has such lame female action stars. Download the podcast, or subscribe to our RSS feed, or through iTunes.
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Calling all intellectually curious, engaged, and excited readers: We're looking for fall interns for Double X. We have positions to fill in both the D.C. and New York offices. Interested applicants should e-mail us a résumé, three clips (published articles, blog entries, and classroom assignments all acceptable), and a short critique of the site. Please specify whether you want to be considered for the D.C. or NYC position, and what your availability will be (part-time or full? away for certain weeks?) for September through December. The deadline for applications is July 1.
