Hot Spring Trend: Hiring a Feminist Blogger at Your Women's Magazine

Capital New York reported Thursday that feminist writers Rebecca Traister and Amanda Fortini will be joining Elle as contributing editors.

Capital New York reports on Thursday that feminist writers Rebecca Traister and Amanda Fortini will be joining Elle as contributing editors. Last month, Cosmopolitan hired longtime Feministing blogger Jill Filipovic to cover politics on the website. It seems the hot trend this season is political awareness.

Cosmo, especially, has come a long way from oral sex tips. The magazine's web presence is now decidedly feminist — the leading story as of this writing is about Columbia University's sexual assault problem. Ex-Jezebel blogger Anna Breslaw is now the sex editor at the site. In a Reddit AMA earlier this year, she wrote "I was hired to make the site funnier, more feminist and less about creepy servile blowjob magic." It seems to be working. As Capital's Nicole Levy notes, NARAL Pro-Choice and the National Institute for Reproductive Health honored Cosmo and editor-in-chief Joanna Coles this year "for their roles in shaping public discourse in favor of women’s reproductive health and rights." Coles herself asserted back in December that the magazine is "deeply feminist."

Elle's EIC, Robbie Myers, seems eager to hop on the bandwagon. She said in a statement today, 

[Traister and Fortini] were both strong voices in the cultural conversation that erupted surrounding sexism during the 2008 presidential election, and their work continues to push the feminist reawakening we are experiencing in this country forward. I think the next few years are going to be a groundbreaking time for women in our culture, and in politics in particular, so I’m excited to have Rebecca and Amanda on board to interpret that for our readers.

Emphasis added. Here's hoping the feminist reawakening stays in style for years.